Pre-wedding running diary

In Bill Simmons-style, a running diary of Ken’s pre-wedding adventures, up through the ceremony.

9/13 Tuesday

4:15 PM: Ken leaves work until next Tuesday, forgets about HEK293 cells and mTfR2-venus chimeras for 160 hours.

5:00 PM: Ken thinks about everything he still has to do before the wedding, panics.

5:02 PM: Ken realizes it’s like four things, sits on the couch and reads a book.

7:43 PM: Ken and mom reunite. We drove in circles for about an hour trying to find Sellwood. Partly because Sellwood is hard to find, but I swear, if we could have taken the Springwater bike trail we could have easily gotten to Sellwood.

9/14 Wednesday

11 AM: My mom’s mom arrives in town, she came all the way from Japan! She is your traditional cute little old Japanese woman, the way cookie cutter grandmothers should be.

12:30 PM: After lunch, my mom, grandmother, and I are driving around downtown, and out of no where I saw one of my best friend’s from college Anna Griffin! I knew she was in town, but we hadn’t seen each other yet, and we had an awesome impromptu run in.

5 PM: Katie and her mom are moving Katie into our apartment. Ken walks into the apt. This conversation happens:

Katie: Hey, we’re reorganizing!

Ken: Oh, hey the couch didn’t used to be there. Huh, the plates didn’t used to be there. What? Yeah, of course I love the new location for the toilet paper.

Katie’s mom: Ken here’s some advice Katie’s dad would have given you. Just say, “yes dear.”

Marriage begins.

6 PM: Celebration of Ken’s first day of wedding vacation at Hop Haven.

My favorite part was that my friend Barry came. Barry and I ran Hood to Coast, and we are also on the finance team at our church, so we’ve bonded over the past year or so. Barry’s also a grandfather, but I keep telling him he’s way younger than he thinks.

About a year ago I decided that I was too mature to judge maturity based on numerical age. Mostly this was out of defensiveness for this statistic:

Age at marriage for those who divorce in America:
<20 – 12%
20-24 – 39%
25-29 – 22%
30-34 – 12%
35-39 – 7%

I’m 22. I swear I’m a mature 22.

9/15 Thursday

3 AM: Ken wakes up. Officially starting to get nervous and having anxiety.

3:30 AM – 9 AM: Ken goes in and out through sleeping and waking.

10:15 AM: Ken, Katie, and our moms all go out for breakfast. I’m glad they all get along. We eat greasy American breakfast, I don’t think my mom likes it, but she’s polite.

Rest of the day, a nervous blur. Somewhere there was coffee and beer involved.

9/16 Friday

2:30 PM: Keyser and Ken are getting lunch downtown, with plenty of time to get to the rehearsal at 3:00 PM.

3:00 PM: Ken is lost. Close to Tigard, a suburb of Portland. Keyser and I have this conversation:

Keyser: Aren’t you stressed out about this?

Ken: Hmm, I’m not sure if I need to be, I should check with Katie.

3:30 PM: Ken finally arrives at the rehearsal. The minister is also late, so it blows over. I’m telling you, it’s even hard to find Sellwood with God on your side.

5:00 PM: Everyone arrives at Ken’s mom’s rental house for a Japanese rehearsal dinner. Lots of photo’s are taken.

8:00 PM: Ken and friends arrive at 24 hour fitness, pay $20 to work out. Ken plays in his token one basketball game of the year. He took a few shots, and one went in. It was awesome.

My friends Keyser and Heath have the following conversation about five times the rest of the night:

Heath: We could’ve pick and rolled all night.

Keyser: Yeeah, we were all about the pick and roll!

I’m still not exactly sure what a pick or roll is. Oh and this one:

Keyser: Hey, who do you think is taller, you or me.

Heath: Dude we’ve compared like three times already. You’re taller.

2:30 AM: Ken and Needham friends, who’ve known each other of upwards of ten years now, have a slumber party on Ken’s floor. This might be the last night Ken ever gets to sleep on a floor. For some reason, this is a luxury.

9/17 Saturday

12:20 PM: Ken has his first nervous breakdown. Probably the first of many. Ken doesn’t like posed photographs. Sidenote – I’m pretty sure I have some sort of social anxiety disorder.

3:00 PM: Ceremony starts with only a little bit of rain.

3:01 PM: Ken sees Katie and the bridesmaids doing a group prayer, so Ken tries to top them by doing a groomsmen huddle snap bomb. It’s complicated, but you take a snap in your hand, throw it in the air, and snap when you catch it at the bottom. It’s complicated.

3:30 PM: Ken walks down the aisle with best man, Mooks, tries to hold his hand, doesn’t work.

3:35 PM: Mooks tells Elm Bank story, epic. I almost cried.

3:45PM: Ceremony ends, Ken is a little bit relieved.

I wish I was as funny as Bill Simmons.

from ken

Feel free to comment! I would love to hear your thoughts.

Happy Mother's Day

Why I love my mom:

On this rainy Portland mother’s day, I thought I’d write about how I’ve been lucky to have a great mom. I was having this discussion with one of my friends the other day, my parents are divorced, so the odds are definitely against me to turn out into a half decent human being. Thinking back to the conversation, I probably beat the odds because I grew up with the best mom in the world. I think pretty much all of my good qualities, in some way come from my mom.

For starters, growing up, I saw a great example of how I should conduct myself in society. In some way or another my mom has always ended up getting plugged into community and making herself helpful.

My mom lives in an apartment complex right now, and unlike houses or neighborhoods, these sorts of complexes tend to be unsocial places. I don’t know the name of anybody else that lives in my complex, and I pretty much treat it as my solitary retreat to sleep and eat. But my mom has joined the board at her complex, making decisions about the community, holding meetings in her home, and just generally becoming friends with her apartment-mates.

At the Japanese Language School I attended while I was growing up, my mom saw that the school wasn’t getting the funding it needed, so she started a small-scale bake sale. As its popularity caught on, other moms got involved, and it grew into a huge fundraising movement. I graduated from the school about six years ago, but my mom went back to the school recently, and learned that the bake sale still lived on! The ladies there were in awe to meet the legend that had started the Japanese School bake sale.

She spends her free time at work getting plugged in with the multicultural community and leadership. Following the earthquakes that ravaged Northern Japan, she helped organize a fundraising effort, folding countless origami cranes, even being asked to film an instructional video. Since leaving her home, I’ve tried my best to follow her lead and get involved in my community, both at Kenyon and here in Portland.

But I love my mom most because she always cares about me. She always understands who I am. She knows I have to throw myself into my life, and that I’ll always be busy. I appreciate that she stays patient with me when I sound stressed out talking to her on the phone, or selfishly can’t scrape together the time to call her for weeks at a time because I’m overloaded in stress. I love that even after weeks of not talking, she can still sound just as happy to talk to me, and support all of my far-reaching ventures. I know I wouldn’t be able to do all that I do without knowing that somewhere out there, someone over on the other side of the coast is thinking about me.

So anyways, that’s why I love my mom.

from ken

PS – I didn’t just write this because I forgot it was mother’s day, and didn’t send a card.

Are you thinking about something? Write about it and post it here! Email me! ken.e.noguchi@gmail.com