Photos of People Having an Authentic Time at my Wedding

I'm going to give you a bunch of details about the wedding with some actual wedding photos, etc. in the coming days. But for now, I want to leave you with this gem.

In the chaos of the morning and the photos with family and friends, someone took my phone. I think it was in my pocket and it was suggested I remove it for the pictures. I don't remember, really. It was all a whirlwind.

At the end of the wedding, my friend Caitlin handed my phone to me, saying she had it for a few hours and "don't worry. I took lots of pictures of people having a very authentic time."

I thanked her for her thoughtfulness and took the phone. On the drive back to the house I started looking through the photos she captured and discovered, well . . .

Yard-Life Crisis

Skylar and I had a midlife crisis about our yard and in the last two weeks we have used all of your college funds to toil and labor our Earth.

I'm sorry. I know you wanted to be astronauts. But you're just going to have to settle to be asstronauts instead, which is a job waiting tables at a gay-themed restaurant over by the airport.

I don't remember exactly how it started, but I think it was something Skylar said. We've had an ongoing fight about our landscaping because we have completely competing visions and tastes for this sort of thing. I want it to look like if Walt Disney designed a garden for Joseph Stalin, with straight lines, perfect symmetry, not a thing out of place, and ongoing mysterious disappearances of my political enemies.

But if you ask Skylar what he wants, he's like "IT MUST LOOK LIKE NO HUMAN HAS EVER EXISTED." Skylar wants an organized mess. He wants the equivalent of sexy bed head for the yard.

Because we have a total inability to see eye-to-eye or compromise MARRIAGE IS GOING TO BE SO GREAT we have been at a stand-still all year, vetoing one another's ideas, and getting nothing done in the process.

Until two weeks ago. I had finally had it with this, and so had Skylar. So we had a conversation wherein we discovered that we both really just wished our yard looked like our neighbor Lynne's yard. Lynne has somehow captured both of our conflicting tastes at once. Her yard is like if Disney gave Stalin bed head. And then murdered his political acquaintances.

There Will Be Some Kids

Halloween is a stressful day for me because I so want it to go well but it pretty much never goes well.

I want to live in that neighborhood from the movies where all of the kids are out in traditional Halloween costumes, marching up leaf-fallen pathways to Victorian brick houses, adorned with intricate pumpkin carvings and emitting smells of hot cider. That's all I want. Not much to ask for.

But that's not how it goes on my street.

The houses are dark, almost comically so. Windows are practically boarded. My first Halloween in my home I had about 4 trick-or-treaters.

It's gotten slightly better since then, probably only because I have aggressively shouted children down as I've seen them passing my street to move on to friendlier territory, convincing them to come over.

I never planned to be a man in his thirties screaming at kids to come to his house for candy, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

Last year, thanks largely to my Halloween advocacy, I had nearly 30 trick-or-treaters. At least two of those were full-fledged adults, out without any children, but they were wearing costumes so I rewarded their commitment to sugar.

Susan

First of all, Strangerville Live is THIS FRIDAY. Come, please. We even ordered in some extra chairs so more people can attend and so we'll look really popular. But seating is still limited, so if you can make it, get your tickets HERE or HERE or HERE or HERE (those all go to the same place. OR DO THEY?).

Two cranky ladies will be checking names at the door (hi Anna and Emily thanks for working for me for free all the time and not filing sexual harassment complaints against Jolyn).

Second of all, to get you excited for Strangerville Live, here's an episode of Strangerville!



Finally, last night Skylar and I walked two houses down to Lynne's place for a backyard party. Lynne's backyard is like something out of a hipster magazine. She has two gorgeous patios, one with a perfectly-manicured tree canopy completely covering it, the other with a wisteria tree growing over the top of a pergola surrounding it. Both patios are lit by flame and bistro lights. And you've probably never even heard of it.

Mr. Pham's Patio Project

I told you a little while ago about how I hired Mr. Pham to do whatever the hell he wants with my yard. I had given Mr. Pham a vision of what I was looking for, and he didn't seem to hate that vision, although he did yell "NO" at me a few times as I was explaining some details of the vision. Then he took money from me, marched to his truck, and drove away.

Over the next couple of weeks I would come home from work to find Mr. Pham ripping giant bushes out of my yard and hauling away concrete that I didn't even realize I had back there. On two separate occasions The Perfects yelled over to me to ask what Mr. Pham was doing back there. I told them the truth: "whatever the hell he wants."

I had my own problems dealing with the dying grass situation in my front yard, one which Skylar is convinced is evidence of a hate crime. When I asked him what someone might hate about me he just said "EXACTLY" so I'm probably offended.

Finally, I left town for the Half Ironman, wondering when Mr. Pham might be done.

Mr. Pham

Please enjoy this week's Strangerville Live, and today's story:
 

My neighbor Lynne's landscaping could be in a magazine. Every flower and bush is perfectly manicured. I want to be buried in her backyard one day. Especially if I'm dead.

I was amazed that she had achieved everything she has by herself, especially considering that she's a flight attendant and is often gone for many days at a time. Then one day she told me about Mr. Pham.

I don't know Mr. Pham's first name and I'm not sure Lynne does either. He may not have one. She found him a few years ago and hired him to do some landscaping work on her property.

Mr. Pham is probably a genius. He is an exceptionally talented landscape artist. Lynne liked him instantly because of how proud he was of his work. He takes pictures of yards he's worked on and prints them out to put into a binder, and he likes to pull it out, a huge grin on his face, and show people that he meets. Lynne told me that only people who are really good at what they do care that much about it, so she trusted him and had him start helping her with her yard.

Grass Seed and Drug Cartels

My street is on a hill, which is a problem for three reasons:

1. Sliding past my driveway on icy days and having to circle the block multiple times to give it another try;

2. Losing balls that Duncan suddenly decides to set down on the ground mid-walk for reasons he refuses to explain to me;

3. The thing that happened on Saturday.

About three years ago I decided to base 100% of my self-esteem on my yard maintenance. This was a dangerous decision because a weed can send me to therapy now.

On the plus side, I can accidentally steal someone's car and get chased down by multiple employees of a car dealership and still think I'm a perfect human as long as my lawn is looking healthy that day.

Diphtheria OMG I actually spelled that correctly on the first try

Last month the Stranger troll said I was desperate because I shared the most recent Strangerville episode twice in one week and I'm nothing if not consistently pathetic so you should all definitely click on the below. Every time you do a troll learns one new grammatical rule.


In other news, I'm still alive, thanks for asking.

The neighborhood was probably worried starting around 9:30 on Saturday night when I found myself slumped over on Lynne's couch while two dozen well-dressed people tried to make conversation with me. This included our mailman, whom Lynne invited to our party after apparently developing a much more successful relationship with him than I have.

I really probably should have gone home. Nevertheless she persisted. I stayed out at the party until around 1:00 in the morning. So late that you can see Bob and Cathie shaking their heads from space.

Two Adults Came To My Door

So the other day I posted that thing about how I ain't much for book learnin' and I told you how I'm trying to read now so I don't get executed for failing to know how many characters in Of Mice and Men are mice. And then you guys left eleventy million comments about all of the books I should be ashamed of myself for having not read. And this level of response really surprised me. Because I had previously assumed 97% of you were illiterate.

Anyway, the comments section of Stranger turned into a full-blown cyber attack on the public education system, which was new for me because it's usually an attack on how tight my clothes are or how I'm not supposed to offer to slap your children at the grocery store.

I haven't referenced that in a while. Were any of you around when that happened? I made a joke about how I'm totally willing to help slap people's children in the grocery store if they're acting like brats and then every single mom on the entire internet emailed me and was like "I'M REPORTING YOU TO THE BETTER BUSINESS BUREAU" and then I had to respond to every single one of them with badly-photoshopped pictures of me petting kittens so the internet moms would know I was actually gentle and nominate me for employee of the week at Shakey's instead.

I got side-tracked.

Pictures from my Phone & Weekly Distractions

Tonight Lynne called me to see if I wanted to walk over to a city council debate between a few of the candidates in our area. I wasn't home so I told her she would have to go without me and then let me know after what she thought. I also asked if she knew whether one candidate in particular was still in the race and told her that this candidate was an attorney with whom I was somewhat familiar.

An hour later Lynne texted me and said "I just talked to the candidate--you know, your friend--and I told her that we're neighbors and then I gushed all about you and I felt like such a mover and shaker because I never know ANYONE in this town but there I was rubbing shoulders with the who's who!"

Note: This candidate doesn't actually know me. We're not friends.

And now, your Pictures & Distractions:

Lantern Festival

About a month ago my neighbor, Lynne, texted me and asked whether I wanted to go to something called "lantern festival" with her. I said yes because the event was a few months away and I always commit to things when they are a few months away because I just assume I'll be dead by then. This is why I have gone camping 14 times in my life.

It's apparently a Chinese thing. I will not pretend to be enlightened or cultured. We were just a couple of very white people driving out into the desert because they were lighting crap on fire and we were bored and we may as well have been wearing Native American headdresses over Japanese Geisha robes for how much HASHTAG cultural appropriation was going on.

That last sentence is exactly how I plan to explain to my future children how I got married one day.

Skylar came with us, too, buying a ticket at exactly the last possible moment. He drove while Lynne and I gossiped about our entire neighborhood, speaking in hushed voices as though people might hear us.

When we arrived it was cold and windy and there were thousands of people who had already been camping out on the gravel field for the whole day.

Pioneer Day Marathon

Yesterday was Pioneer Day and Tami's birthday so obviously Tami and I did our favorite activity--the one that brought about her existence--and ran the Pioneer Day marathon.

A few things you should know about this experience:

1. I, Eli Whittletown McCann, have gained nearly 30 pounds since November ("What!? You look so fit and beautiful!" stop it you guys).

2. I signed up for this race a few months ago, thinking that having one on the calendar would, oh, I don't know, motivate me to change my life.

3. There were exactly two pairs of pants left in my house that I was still able to button up. Notice I said "were." On Sunday, a button violently popped off of one of those two pairs when I bent over to pick up a piece of fried chicken that I was 10-second-ruling from the floor STOP JUDGING ME.

4. Be ye warned, oh ye little ones, when you turn 33 you are no longer able to eat and behave however you want and anticipate absolutely zero repercussions.

CSI Salt Lake City

I pulled up to my house on Thursday and there was a cop car and a CSI van out front.

I had the following instinctual reactions in the following order:

1. Keep driving; never look back.

2. Pull in, act surprised at whatever they accuse you of doing.

3. Not "act." Of course it would actually be a surprise. You're not a criminal, Eli.

4. Actually, can you go to jail for stealing Netflix from your friend Corey for nine years?

5. Oh, and Hulu Plus. And Amazon Prime. And some food from Lynn's house whenever she goes out of town.

6. No. They wouldn't call the CSI van to the scene of the crime for Netflix.