an outdoor wedding, in November

And not in Australia, either, but in Texas. Texas.

How bad is the traffic in Austin? The bride was an hour late arriving to her own wedding.

Nor was the wedding in Austin, exactly. You drive way out of town, and turn left on a country highway - well-paved, which is one thing Texas does really well. Then you make a couple more turns and wind up on a rougher back country road. Then you turn right at a mailbox, and find yourself on a one-lane track that rapidly devolves into a gravel path twisting through a bramble forest. Then you park by the side, trample through the forest, and soon find yourself on a lush meadow, where the wedding is set up.

Popcorn snacks before the ceremony, a little girl screeching "Hi Mommy!" at the matron of honor during it, and fajitas for dinner afterwards. Followed by the obligatory several hours of heavy-beat dance music of the kind that isn't objectionable moment by moment, but which a diet of quickly induces in me a sense of oppressed nausea. Before I retreated to the car to read to the more dulcet tones of Austin's classical radio station, I heard just two songs I recognized: Michael Jackson's "Beat It", which I only know because Weird Al guyed it, and Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes", which by some freak accident, or error of the DJ's, is a song I actually like. Both these are about as old as the bridal couple are, so I guess they've lasted. Most of the stuff sounded a lot newer than that.

There was also a rehearsal dinner at a famous barbecue joint more notable for quantity than quality, but the best meal we had was by ourselves at the old reliable Threadgill's, where I eschewed the chicken-fried steak because I'd had enough heavy food already, and went for sauteed catfish and turnip greens, and B. had a spinach salad. Just what we needed.

But the event was joyful, the newlyweds looked happy, and we'll be seeing them again very soon. And at least in November we didn't return to our car to find a blast furnace in it, as happened when I was in Texas in August.