At Times It Was Like Shared Music, at Times Like a Skin Graft or Root Canal — Stephen Dobyns I do at a coffin sale — Dorothy Stewart A Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream Cake …

No one's ever asked me about my wedding before. Have I even thought about it? I don't think so. Not recently, anyway. I was a bride? I have to squeeze my brain like a grapefruit …

I was nervous in the final minutes before my wedding, but not for the usual reasons. I was 22, young, but I had known Deirdre since I was 18 and dated her since I was …

Everyone should be married — once, I think, just as everyone should be fat — once. I am lucky in that I have very little at all bad to say about my one experience with …

We didn't elope in the traditional sense, Annelies and me. No ladder up to her window in the middle of the night. We borrowed her dad's car and left after breakfast. We were married over …

I was 19, Mike was 21, and it was still early enough in the '60s that "The Sixties" had barely begun. My high school sweetie foolishly introduced me to his "brilliant friend" the summer before …

Yes. Steven and I had a wedding. A real celebration of not only our relationship but also a big thank-you to all those close friends and family who gave us support and encouragement. I suppose …

I made my husband Ernie wait three days for an answer to his marriage proposal. I had traveled to be with him for Easter, and he proposed after the midnight vigil Mass, April 1995. I …

Two interesting pieces of information about myself, each of which is 100 percent true: 1) My first Holy Communion was at the second wedding ceremony of my only marriage, and 2) My only religious confession …

Saying "I do" was the easy part. There used to be this redwood church, A-frame, about halfway between Los Gatos and Santa Cruz on Highway 17: some rough-hewn pews, but no altar, no icons, just …

I was wearing nothing but a red plaid pajama top when Bryan proposed to me. He was so many things that my wild, hippie family was not: gentle, legally employed, and in therapy. I adored …

"William, do you take this woman, Lita..." Ah, the Reverend Jones. It's 6:30, Saturday evening, August 21, 1982. I'm standing in front of 35 friends here in the old Authors' Lounge of the Oriental Hotel, …

"Never say never," I thought to myself as I slid into my wedding dress in early May of '96. It wasn't that I had once supposed I would never get married. I was 25, in …

I first got married at 21. I didn't intend to get married. One evening my girlfriend led the conversation into a general discussion of the institution of marriage, and the next thing I knew we …

On September 15, 1962, Ellen and I got married. She was 22 and I was 26. Standing at the altar, I was thrilled as she walked up the aisle with her father to the strains …

The evening after our wedding Kevin and I sat on my — I mean our — vintage mauve velvet sofa and ate Kentucky Fried Chicken. This was before I was a vegetarian, before I knew …

"I probably shouldn't have stayed up so late," I thought as I paced back and forth in the little sacristy at St. Mary's Catholic Church in Ridgefield, Connecticut, nervously flipping the long tail of my …

Happy weddings are all alike; every unhappy wedding is unhappy in its own way. I've been married three times. My first and third were both happy, and startlingly alike. Both took place within a few …

'I think as our vineyards mature, we'll buy less and less from out of the area.'

'Hergé projected everything he wanted to be onto his characters. How different the artist is from his creation is what I found to be the most interesting [about the film]," says Phillip Gay, department chair …

Something about Friday, quitting time at work, is much like Christmas morning as a kid. Of course, nothing will compare with that, but the comparison stands in the sense of pleasant, pleasureful possibilities about to …

A party I went to in Clairemont had trouble written all over it. The host had a live band in a residential area, and he took down the fence separating his house from his neighbor's …

Hello: I received a phone call on my cell phone from 999-999-9999. They kept calling and calling, and for a while I only got dead air when I answered. However once when I answered a …

Dear Matt: In my college days it was "common knowledge" that a sharp rap on a cold beer would "reinfuse" the carbonation and prevent the foam and spray when the can was opened. Any truth …

San Antonio Canyon, a yawning gap in the towering San Gabriel Mountains, serves as the main gateway to the third highest mountain mass in Southern California -- Mount San Antonio, or Old Baldy. At 10,064 …

Last week I had lunch (lunch being a burger and a beer) with a woman I've known since the 1970s. She's a civil attorney now, seven years divorced, and is thinking about rejoining the hunt …

Thirty Years Ago ALL ANIMOSITIES aside, I would like to organize a party for people who regularly place Reader personals. Interested "regulars" reply through the Reader. The Ad Tracer. -- CLASSIFIEDS, June 3, 1976 Twenty-Five …

Social pressure is about the worst kick to the ghoulies that a man in his prime can take. Rowland McCowan would tell you that himself if he were still around. You can be charging ahead …

Red Weather by Pauls Toutonghi. Shaye Areheart Books, 2006, $23, 246 pages. Yuri Balodis, the hero of Red Weather is an exile from a country he's never seen. He's never been there, yet it dominates …

I used to say that you could get married when you ran out of things to do. So we got engaged after two rounds of Long Island ice teas at Carlos Murphy's bar on a …

'Now, with the Internet being where it is, there's little that a record label can actually do for you," says Jamie, a jazz violinist, composer, label owner, and multimedia artist. "The Internet gives you world …

The hard rat-a-tat of the drums set the beat for the choir as they processed into the high-ceilinged church. Swaying, bouncing, and clapping, they mounted the stage and sang out in a near-shout over the …

The trouble about always trying to preserve the health of the body is that it is so difficult to do without destroying the health of the mind. -- G.K. Chesterton "Did you fast?" The seated …

Are You Still There, God? I am not getting married in a church. I guess that is fitting seeing that I have not practiced formalized religion in over a decade. I was raised attending a …

My beloved husband Patrick spent many teenage years on the golf course. He played for four dollars after school and caddied on weekends at a high-end country club near his house. Caddying made him spending …

Chunks of ice rode the whitecaps as the Nantucket ferry steamed out of the harbor in Woods Hole and into the Atlantic. The March wind had driven Isabel into the warmth of the cabin, while …

When former Unbroken vocalist Dave Claiburn left San Diego for the Midwest, he had no idea how much he'd miss the city he called home from 1991--1994, or three of the greatest years of his …

Hardcore punker Sam Ilich now knows that the excessive punk lifestyle has its limits. "After I lost my home and my marriage [in 2000], after a decade of destroying clubs and fights and turning down …

Following the lead set by Jared Leto, Keanu Reeves, and Russell Crowe, Adam Brody of Fox TV's OC launched his career as a touring rocker last week at the Jumping Turtle. His four-man band Big …

Live Irish music has done well for Ned Giblin. It's been packing his Carlsbad restaurant and café Tom Giblin's (named after his late father) for six years. The Irish food/music/Guinness formula worked for him as …

"For years, it was called the KSON Flatbed Show," says Steve Nichols of the mobile soundstage he's renamed the Rolling Radio Show. "Al Turner at KSON drove it, but after he lost his vocal cords …

San Diego's old financial scandals never seem to die. Decades after the principals have gone to the hoosegow and been released, the muck keeps rising to the surface. An example is Whispering Palms, a residential …

The year 2005 saw a significant increase in arrests and incidents for the San Diego Trolley system. According to a report obtained from the Metropolitan Transit System, the agency that runs the trolley, serious crimes, …

How hard is it to get information out of San Diego State University? Very, says attorney Anne Brunkow, an opponent of the school's plan to build 540 units of faculty housing and a hotel in …

Oakland mayor Jerry Brown, the ex-governor and former presidential candidate now regarded as favored to capture the Democratic nomination for state attorney general in next week's primary, has been picking up sizable support from some …

With less than a week to go until the June 6 primary, last-minute money continues to roll into local campaign coffers. Among the more notable contributors, Rancho Santa Fe's Robert Spencer Douglass. Douglass owned the …

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