Sunday

A short report from Charleston.

Pete's family has moved to a beach-front home for the week.  I'm crashing on a couch upstairs.  This is the view out of the second level porch just off the common area where I call "home" for the evening.

The wedding ceremony was on the front lawn of an estate home that has been turned into a reception/event location.  Think of the place in the movie Forest Gump.  After the ceremony, you just walked over to the mansion, found a bar, and settled in for the evening.  7-piece band.  4 food locations with different offerings.  Butlered wine initially, then two full bars open all night.  Airport-size buses with transportation to the hotels.  Local noise ordinances made for a relatively early close of 10PM.  Then again, I don't think that the wedding party had slept much in the previous couple of nights.

Pete and I and some of the family sat up in the hotel lobby to finish off some of my wine (shock!) and we put the Over/Under on the wedding at $60K.  I'm thinking the Over.

Props to the 24 for a decisive win at Pocono today.  Not a close race.  And he won in a car with the old DuPont paint scheme.  And Junior finished in the top ten too.  They could end up with three of their cars in The Chase.

Count me as a Cleveland supporter when it comes to the NBA finals.  Not that I really care that much.  But Pete's boys and their friends are all committed, so I'm sure where the tube will be set later this evening.

Back to the wine.  My limo driver on Friday afternoon from the airport came back a little later and took me to a store not far from the hotel to stock my local inventory.  (The bottles came in handy for the post-party last night.)  I felt like I needed to eliminate chance and bought another waiter's key.  I'm thinking that it can get through security tomorrow.  There's no blade as the foil cutter is just a small extra pointy-nub at the fold.  Plastic.  But it does have that metal screw.  We'll see.

I know that Pete's family enjoys this area.  They've rented beach houses here many times.  And Charleston has lots of historical sites that could be interesting to visit.  Old downtown has appeal as well.  But I'm not that much of a water/beach guy, and the tourist stuff could get old.  Give me Sand Harbor, South Shore and Mt. Rose.

The teams for Omaha will be set by tomorrow night.  New stadium for the CWS this year.  Tempted, but after traveling two of the last three weekends, home has a nice ring to it.  But there is that second weekend when they're down to only three or four teams...

Maybe a little more here later.

BCOT