In the jumble of out-of-town weekends that has been the past month, a number of notable events have slipped through the cracks without a mention. Most prominent among them, the aborted trip to Austin for Christy and Mark's wedding. I say aborted because we didn't quite make it.

Way back on August 4th (which happened to be the day of the wedding), we stumbled out of bed and headed to Newark Airport to catch our flight. Now we knew traveling on the same day as the ceremony was a risky proposition but, with the reassurances of the Northwest Airline's website, we were confident we’d make it. Pulling into long-term parking, we noticed that some of the streetlights were out — something we should have heeded but ignored — and grabbing our bags headed over to the AirTrain. The platform to the terminals was surprisingly crowded for this time of day and, as we waited there, more and more travelers packed in. And we waited. And we waited some more. But no train came as even more people arrived. When a train did pull in the station an hour later, everyone pushed on in a panic. But it was already too late. By the time we made it to the terminal, Northwest announced that our flight was closed. People started screaming. Beth started crying. Cats and dogs, living together...

It turns out overnight thunderstorms had caused spotted blackouts around Newark and, grounded passengers from the night before were already 10 deep on the standby lists. Despite her best efforts there was nothing the ticket agent could do. We weren't going to see Christy and Mark get married.

It was sad weekend for us. We knew Christy and Mark would be distracted by the wedding events, but we really wanted to see them and our good friend Polly. Christy and Mark live in England and with Polly on the West Coast opportunities to get together are rare. Despite our absence, we hope that Christy and Mark had a special day. We wish them all the luck and happiness they deserve. Congratulations, guys.