Off to Idaho

Calling wedding rings (as they're known in New Zealand) wedding bands is something my wife and I might have to bear in mind when we go to the States in January to attend my younger son's wedding. 

We'd resigned ourselves to not being able to go, since, when we looked at our finances, we could see that the trip would wipe us out completely, and we'd come back home (if we could afford to come back home) with no resources whatsoever.   Pensioners don't build up their resources quite as quickly (if at all) as people who are earning wages/salaries.

And then, some of the people from our church got together with a plan: instead of giving my son and his fiancee wedding presents (he lives here at present but will be residing in the States after his wedding), they would see if they could raise enough to send us to the wedding - as a kind of 'large' present.  And somehow they have.   (I'm not asking any questions about how it was all sorted; I'm just happy they've managed to do it!)

So we're off to Boise on the first of January, where apparently it's likely to be minus something degrees (!) outside.  I dare say it's warmer inside, but we're going to take plenty of warm clothes anyway.   Can't afford to wind up as a snowman and woman stuck somewhere in Idaho!

Mrs Chrissy Johnson

I find it hard to believe that a post I wrote back in 2007,  partly on the city of Boise in Idaho (where the young lady one of my sons is due to marry in January comes from, as it happens, though I didn't know that at the time); partly on a blogger called Raed who vanished off the Net for a few days and caused a global query, Where is Raed?; and partly on a previously unknown young lady called Chrissy Popadics, is still being picked up when people put the search term 'chrissy popadics' into Google.   Even today, my post comes up fourth on the Google search results. 

Now something I hadn't realised at the time is that the marriage of Chrissy Popadics and the football star, Ian Johnson is inter-racial and that apparently caused some strife, with a number of threatening letters being received by Johnson after he proposed to Popadics on television at the end of a game.   Johnson is only partly black as it turns out, although if it's anything like New Zealand, if you're partly black, you may as well be fully black.  Maori in New Zealand, however much actual Maori blood they have, are still Maori.   It's one of those oddities of life. 

The news on Chrissy Popadics, these days, seems pretty minimal, which might explain why that one post of mine keeps getting high into the search results.  Google has only just changed the way search results appear: the most recent get precedence; the oldest go down the list.   Which means that Mrs Johnson has possibly had her great moment of fame, and is living happily in obscurity once again.