A bit of a different slant--Father of the groom shenanigans. When we got married, I bought my fiance a nice navy suit, which was quite the chore back in the day before there were lots of options for tall guys; he is/was 6'4" and 180 lbs. Anyway, I found a nice 3 piece suit in a conservative navy. My father had a nice suit in a conservative navy. I asked my future FIL to wear a nice suit in a conservative navy. At which point he went out and bought a nice suit in a conservative BROWN! I was sooooo angry at him, and since he was the best man I was convinced my dream wedding image for the guys was ruined. So, on our wedding day there was my FIL resplendent in his brown suit. I was still a tad miffed, right till we were all leaving the church and as we walked out the doors, he suddenly gave me the world's biggest hug, with the joyful comment 'now you're part of the family!' and the world's biggest smile to go along with it. He's gone now but thinking of that moment still makes me smile every time. It was a good lesson too about whats important and what's not on a wedding day. Happy memories come from what we do and say, not what we wear...have a wonderful wedding! Ann

They say the US has boosted its Nat Gas reserves by 50% by new methods of measuring reserves. Yet my gas bill just went up 30% in September. http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/energy/2008-07-29-natural-gas_N.htm Something wrong with that equation? A 50% rise in reserves yet my gas bill goes up 30%?? Can you imagine once all the cars and trucks start using CNG. NG prices will really skyrocket and large amounts of people will freeze to death. We heat with NG and keep the thermostat set at 64 at night and keep the heat OFF during the day. If it is in the teens outside the house gets down into the low 50's in daytime. I usually turn on the heat around 9 PM and shut it down at 8 or 9 am. To heat this 'part time' way cost us $325 a month for a modern, highly insulated 2400 sq ft house. (including garage as it has some water pipes in its ceiling). Let's get real about renewable energy...a survivalists view I marvel at some of the cornucopian's outlooks for our future. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornucopian Recently the cornucopians are putting their hopes in keeping the jets flying on algae oil? Well, who knows?? I am not like the atheists that claim they know everything under the sun...I am just a lowly agnostic that in the end does not know. But the cornucopians still have a way to go with algae powered jets. When the cornucopians can pave roads and make roofing shingles out of corn instead of asphalt and make tires out of sewage sludge instead of crude - maybe their time will have arrived. Whether one is an intellectual, cornucopian or survivalist, they all have to live in the future to some extent with their thoughts. The difference between a survivalist and the other two is this. The intellectuals can keep their mind fixated on the future and fantasy as long as they want. They have no reckoning in the present. Their currency of trade is in 'thought' and not in practical application. The survivalist on the other hand must come back to the present to prepare for and implement via 'practical application' what his future needs will be. As futurists we try to anticipate future events and the direction the world is headed in and as survivalists we try to prepare for those circumstances. So I'd suggest to Al Gore or any politician that takes up the renewable energy challenge to open up your eyes to truth of 'what is,' develop a survivalists mentality and not get lost in the fantasy of 'wishful thinking' with how you hope things to be. But being truthful is lofty goal in and of itself for politicians, irrespective of changing our entire world when it comes to powering it. The mantra of the ego based, power hungry politician is; "Give me power for a day and I hope the roof waits to falls in on the next guy and the music wont stop on my presidency." Everything they do while in office is aimed not at truth and what is best for our country, but at spin, lies and making themselves look good in the eye of the voters. All you political knuckleheads that go to these rallies to kiss the asses of your political deities - pin them down on 'Peak Oil' and see what they say. What you will get is NOTHING from them. They could not utter the words Peak Oil if their life depended on it. So it goes with truth and politicians - they do not mix. Al Gores proposed a challenge to both political candidates to switch all electric generation in the US from fossil fuels to renewables within 10 years. Mr. Gore is way off mark with what we will need for future energy generation in the US. He has not addressed a realistic view of the problem. He needs to increase his goal to a minimum of 300% to 400% of our current electric generation capacity. Then he may be approaching what America will really need. And I am conservative in my outlook. The actual number may be closer to 500% to 600% of our current capacity when we factor in the IF'S, AND'S & BUT'S. In the US, 93.2% of our electric comes from nonrenewable, fossil burning or greenhouse gas producing methods. If we are looking to hydroelectric and renewable sources, 4.46% of our electric comes from hydroelectric and 2.34% comes from renewable energy production. Out of this 2.34% of renewable sources, an undisclosed portion still contributes to global warming despite its prestige of being a 'renewable energy source' as it involves the burning of wood, black liquor, wood waste, municipal solid waste, landfill gas, sludge waste, tires, agriculture byproducts and biomass. Only a fraction of the 2.34% of renewable electric energy that is produced comes from geothermal, solar thermal, photovoltaic energy, and wind. These are the areas that Gore wishes to expand. http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epates.html Electricity is where mankind will turn to for power requirements when all fossil fuels as well as uranium dry up in the near future. We can see that humans love affair with fossil fuels will look like a blip on the screen of humans historical record on earth. from:LATOC If you don't know what peak oil has to say about our world and don't want to read the rest of my post, then at least check out: http://www.energybulletin.net/primer 1) When everyone switches to electric cars and plug into the grid, the demand for electricity will go up tremendously. 2) Homes that use natural gas, propane, heating oil will switch to electricity as the fossil fuels will dry up. The highest demand areas such as heating our homes, heating water and cooking are areas that can't be done on practical basis with solar in many parts of the country Sure if you life in CA or AZ you got some hope with the solar hot water. Maybe the NE can also get some hot water in the hot humid summers. But the goal of this massive energy change is to make it as seamless as possible. Proper planning is the difference between part time and full time power. Proper planning is the difference between less deaths versus massive deaths. http://dieoff.org/ 3) All trucks, trains and airplanes will have to find new power sources. Trains can switch to steam, electric or electromagnet. Truck may have to be smaller and run on electric or bio fuels. Farm equipment can be powered by bio fuels. But all these bio fuels take away from our food production. We can see that adding 5% of corn ethanol does to the food picture - and we still use 95% gasoline. What will happen to food when we are 0% gas and 0% diesel and 100% bio fuels and ethanol? Airlines? My prediction is they will eventually shut down. Although one commentator on CNBC puts her hopes in running planes on algae oil. Again time will tell. But as a survivalist I must go with 'what is' and not fantasy of the cornucopians. In any case, trains, especially electric trains will be a big area of transport in our future both for products, food and people when airlines cease operate. 4) Population increase. More people = more demands for electric. When people feel bad they look for diversions from pain. If they can't get drugged up with alcohol or drugs, they also like some genital situation to escape a hellish life. More sex = more people. I don't see the pop trend changing any time soon unless people can't get food and starve or freeze from lack of heat. 5) Global warming - hotter people demand more electric for A/C. 6) Solar and wind are good supplemental power sources but crappy uninterrupted power sources. One person said that on average a wind farm that is spread out will yield power about 33% of the time, as the wind is blowing on average in some part of a large geographic area. So, to make up for when the wind does not blow, we will need much larger scales of wind generation than we anticipate now. We get brownouts even with full capacity and fip the switch, fossil fueled convenience. Exporting the power is another problem. We can make electricity in high wind areas, but will lose much of it if we have to export the wind generated electric long distances to the big cities. Solar only works for a few hours a day in ideal circumstances...and does not work much at all if the sun is not out. Our countries power needs are 24 hours. The sorry thing about electricity is it cannot be easily stored. (We can store the 'energy' of electricity by pumping water via electric pumps uphill and having the water drain back downhill to power a turbine at a later time.) 7) The US will go back to being a manufacturing nation and have to cut it's addiction to cheap Chinese and other foreign goods. All these cargo tankers run on diesel. So, as we cut back on shipping, local manufacturing will return more so out of design than by desire. More industrial manufacturing = more need for electricity. 8) Without energy our country is open for takeover ... no jets...no tanks...no transport on the ground or in the air. Luckily we will still have nuclear powered submarines and aircraft carriers as long as the uranium holds out. But the jets on the flattop all use jet fuel. All the supplies for those subs and carriers petroleum dependent. Will our military be as successful as it is today when it is all electric? I don't know, but I do know an all electric military will drain the grids capacity even further. As a survivalist I cannot afford to live in dream land as the mind manacled intellectuals and cornucopians do, I don't pretend to have a crystal ball and be able to predict the future. I can only prepare for 'possibilities' of what are to come. Intellectuals and cornucopians put all their faith in predicting an unknown future that is based on lofty hopes, dreams and wishful thinking. Whereas the successful survivalist puts their hopes and dreams in preparing for an uncertain future and knows that 'wishful thinking' does not go far in life or death situations. In Richard Heinberg's book 'Power-Down' he contrasts the survivalist mentality with that of the preservationist. The wiki on this topic: "A survivalist is a person who anticipates and prepares for a future disruption in local, regional or worldwide social or political order." "Preservationism...as a term distinguishing between survivalist groups who wish merely to survive a collapse of civilization, and communities who wish to preserve as much of human culture as is possible in the event of collapse." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivalist http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preservationist Mr. Heinberg talked about a gene bank founded by Nikolai Vavilov in Russia and the dedicated preservationists that guarded the seed and gene pool. He went on to say how 9 of the scientists and workers starved to death because they refused to eat the seeds and tubers in the gene bank. Now, I don't know if a few seeds or tubers would have made much difference in their surviving. But I can say a survivalist would have eaten the first one to die. While their efforts were most admirable, we can say their life was not an enviable one for us to emulate. And in the end they failed miserably at self preservation and survival. But Mr. Heinberg brings up a good point - balancing the two areas of survival with preservation. For we may well survive, but if we do not preserve a semblance of a somewhat livable world to survive in, we may not wish to survive in what remains. In summation: Renewables are our future. Renewable are not a seamless and fungible replicant for fossil fuels. Renewables do not replace the petrochemical uses of crude oil. Renewables do not replace the specialized uses of natural gas in industry or food production. Renewables will be our future by design and not by desire. But they are the default choice for our furture power needs as ALL fossil fuels and nuclear energy source will be depleted in the near future. The more realistic we are with our evaluation of the conversion to renewable energy, the less deaths will occur from fantasizing about the improbable future that the intellectuals, cornucopians and political spin doctors have dreamed up.. Book and DVD list. All available from your local library. Beyond Oil: the view from Hubbert's Peak by Deffeyes, Kenneth S. http://www.princeton.edu/hubbert/ The Coming Economic Collapse - how you can thrive when oil costs $200 a barrel by Leeb, Stephen A Crude Awakening - the oil crash Lava Productions AG, Switzerland DVD http://www.oilcrashmovie.com/ The End of Suburbia - oil depletion and the collapse of the American dream by Greene, Gregory DVD http://www.endofsuburbia.com/ Fed Up http://www.amazon.com/Fed-Up-Angelo-Sacerdote/dp/B000CNGC6G High Noon for Natural Gas: the new energy crisis by Darley, Julian http://www.highnoon.ws/ The Long Emergency: surviving the converging catastrophes of the twenty-first century by Kunstler, James Howard Oil Apocalypse History channel DVD Peak Oil Survival: preparation for life after gridcrash by McBay, Aric Powerdown: options and actions for a post-carbon world by Heinberg, Richard Resource Wars: the new landscape of global conflict by Klare, Michael T http://www.amazon.com/Resource-Wars-Landscape-Conflict-Introduction/dp/0805055762 A Thousand Barrels a Second: the coming oil break point and the challenges facing an energy dependent world by Tertzakian, Peter Twilight in the Desert: the coming Saudi oil shock and the world economy by Simmons, Matthew R. Well written book examining 12 of the key Saudi oil fields. Who Killed the Electric Car? Sony Pictures Classics release http://www.sonyclassics.com/whokilledtheelectriccar/ Zoom:the global race to fuel the car of the future by Iain Carson and Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran.

When I remarried, I walked myself down the aisle. I also liked the idea of the wording of "support" rather than giving. We did something along those lines. sunshine4376 - Both lines were mixed as far as my line was not all female and the other line was not all male. I wanted my son standing up in my line and that is exactly where he stood, on my side. So just because you're dealing with sons does not mean they can't be attendants on your side. We did not use the terms bridesmaids or groomsmen. We used attendants and "Attendant of Honor" for both lines. We used children as young as 7 as ushers. They can handle the responsibility and they feel so grown up. My son (16 at the time) was the head usher as well as in my attendant line. Then we had (2) seven year-old ushers. They did very well and my 16 year-old directed them appropriately. We had 2 ring bearer's. We each had a 4 year-old little boy in our respective families and so we each put them in the wedding. There's no we could leave one of those precious little guys out. It's your wedding ... do what you want and what makes you happy.

ROFLMAO! I just seriously laughed so loud that I scared my coworkers! Sylvia - I think I know a few girls who might have done that very thing! No nekkid friends at our wedding, but there was my FIL telling everyone the "Titty Fairy visited me". LMAO! This isn't as great as the nekkid female friend, but it was pretty embarassing. Thank GOD it wasn't my wedding (this time). My X best friend had her wedding reception in the smallest banquet room of a motel. It was just the reception because they went to the JP the day before (if they were going to get the banquet room anyway, why didn't they just have the ceremony there?). Anyway, the groom is a rather sweaty person and in the middle of his solo dance to Michael Jackson's Beat It (which consisted of spanking himself a lot), takes off his shirt to reveal his undershirt with HUGE holes in it! Then lifts up said sweaty undershirt and does to do a belly-roll.....right in my FDH's face! Like 2' from where he was sitting (alone) and looking right at him. LMAO! FDH looked at me across the room like he was going to die right there! Classy!