11 June 2002 - 9:59 a.m.

I am back from Baltimore. It would be back to the daily grind for me if a daily grind was something I had to worry about, which I don't, until June 24. Now that I have a job lined up, I'm pretty psyched not to be working at it yet.

What I should do in the meantime is hammer out a few wedding articles, but I don't really want to. Is it because I don't want to work for anyone who will hire me? No, I'm not that (Groucho) Marxist. I think that losing both Paul McCartney and Professor McHotHot to matrimony in the same week has turned me off weddings.

Ok, I'm not really upset about Paul - better wed than dead, right? In fact I'm probably going to head out to get some cheap champagne to drink to him and his one-legged, formor model bride (you gotta love the one-legged thing.) I hope that everyone will raise a glass to Paul today, whether it be tea, water, absinthe, etc. If nothing else, the couple deserves some good vibes along with all the injured fans who are taking the wedding personally. Here's my thought: Paul is entitled to his happiness, and unless Linda McCartney was your mom, leave him alone. He did, after all, give us some of the best advice in rock history. How much love did you make today?

McHotHot is another story, because I can't help but think of him as perennially single, and while I will probably get used to him being married, the thought of his wedding irritates me to no end. I mean, he's supposed to be an individual - why pick June, the "Wedding Month," and get married right in the middle of it? 6.15.02 - one could not be more entrenched in lame wedding tradition than to get married that day. And of course they will do all sorts of things to make the wedding seem "different" and "special," like including lots of readings from early modern drama; maybe someone will be good enough to amke a groom's cake in the shape of the bard. Their first dance will be to something deep and incurably "rock," like "Something," as if no one had ever thought of that before, as if Gus and I hadn't considered it ourselves last night.

After all this, I have to seem heinously jealous, but the fact is, I'm just disappointed. McHotHot, like McCartney, is entitled to his happiness, and I'd like to think that a bigger part of me is happy that my favorite prof found someone. I just wish that he didn't have to go from prof to groom (ick) to do it. In the way that I will always admire Atich's long and happy marriage, and snicker at Prof. McFilmProf's affair with, and subsequent marriage to, an undergraduate, I think of McHotHot as single. The fact that he'll have been married for over a year, probably with a little McHotHot on the way, or something equally predictable, just confirms a tired old cliche that always proves painfull true: you can't go home again.

Maybe this was just something that I needed to let go of CoMputer U for a while. Up until now, I had been using the fact that I'll be back for another M.A. as an excuse not to say goodbye. In fact, I never diid say googbye to McHotHot, and now I know why that's been tugging at me for so long. I marched behind seven pipers to Scotland the Brave, I yelled along with my college, and flipped my tassel for a reason. When I saw McHotHot for the last time as a single guy, we grinned across the auditorium at one another, and I told myself, "It's okay, it's just another day." But it wasn't. It was over. My time was up.

CoMputer U. is going to go on without me, which is good, because that's what a university should do, and which is clear to me thanks to the McHotHot wedding. So I'll do my best to be a good sport. Though if I write about any weddings today, you can bet I'll be using Paul's for inspiration.

What I'm wearing:

What I'm reading:

What I'm doing after this: