Wedding Toast Quotes

I'm not gonna wish you happiness, 'cause you've already got that. So I'll just say, may the road rise to meet you. May the wind be always at your back. May the sun shine warm upon our face. May you live as long as you want, and never want as long as you live. May there be a generation of children on the children of your children. May you live to be a hundred years, with one extra year to repent. And may the saddest day of your and Kate's future be no worse than the happiest day of your past.

By staying married, we give something to ourselves and to others: hope. Hope that in steadfastly loving someone, we ourselves, for all our faults, will be loved; that the broken world will be made whole. To hitch your rickety wagon to the flickering star of another fallible human being -- what an insane thing to do. What a burden, and what a gift.

So what's the secret to staying together?" I asked her. "Be nice?" she offered. I laughed, but that may be it, the way a secret to losing weight is to eat less. Be nice. Don't leave. That's all.

God forces us to quantify our religious tenants by measuring them against the family problems they solve. If your religious beliefs aren't solving family problems then something is broke--and it can be fixed. pg iv

As married people, we dwell on a spectrum between happy and unhappy, in love and out of love, and we move back and forth on that line decade by decade, year by year, week by week, even hour by hour.

What I wanted was for there to exist some way for me to say "I'm happy and sad and not jealous" all at the same time, and also "This is a loss and is still beautiful." Maybe that was the wedding toast. "We are really the ones giving you away. And it's hard. And I will miss our life. And I am still so happy for your happiness. And so proud of you.

A toast at your wedding, perhaps?” said Eldric. “I shall never get married,” I said. “But I do like champagne.

(Personally, I have avoided many fights by going to bed angry and waking up to realize that I'd just been tired.)

Do your work, I tell myself. And after? Find a patch of lawn and sit down and hug your knees to your chest and let everything you’ve ever been told and everything you’ve ever seen mingle together in a show just for you, your own eye-popping pageant of existence, your own twelve-thousand-line epic poem. The tickle of the grass on your thighs, the sky moving over you, sunless or blue, echoes from a homily or a wedding toast or a letter your grandmother sent. Remember something good, a sunburn you liked the feeling of, a plate of homemade pasta. Do your work, Kelly. Then lean back. Rest from the striving to reduce. Like the padre said, life is a mystery to be lived. Live your mystery.

Marriage is nothing to underestimate. Success in marriage is about getting back up, again and again. Ultimately, the Shulamite had to write her own role in Solomon's drama. She made Solomon's problems her problems. For her, that was worth every bruise. pg ii

It may well be that an analysis of figures would reveal a law - the duration of a marriage is inversely proportional to the cost of the wedding. Or, to put it another way, any union celebrated with personalized toasting flutes is doomed.

Dating is poetry. Marriage is a novel. There are times, maybe years, that are all exposition.

The romantic fairy tales we grew up with -- where marriage is the happy ending rather than the opening scene -- are not useful for grown-ups.

All the couples therapy and communication seminars in the world won't save you if you aren't prepared to close your eyes and hug the mainmast through a storm.

I want to say that at various points in your marriage, may it last forever, you will look at this person and feel only rage.

...there is so much beauty in the trying, and in the failing, and in the trying again.

...that's part of what marriage means: sometimes hating this other person but staying together because you promised you would.

In a 2008 wedding toast to Cass Sunstein and Samantha Power, Leon Wieseltier put it about as well as possible: Brides and grooms are people who have discovered, by means of love, the local nature of happiness. Love is a revolution in scale, a revision of magnitudes; it is private and it is particular; its object is the specificity of this man and that woman, the distinctness of this spirit and that flesh. Love prefers deep to wide, and here to there; the grasp to the reach…. Love is, or should be, indifferent to history, immune to it—a soft and sturdy haven from it: when the day is done, and the lights are out, and there is only this other heart, this other mind, this other face, to assist in repelling one’s demons or in greeting one’s angels, it does not matter who the president is. When one consents to marry, one consents to be truly known, which is an ominous prospect; and so one bets on love to correct for the ordinariness of the impression, and to call forth the forgiveness that is invariably required by an accurate perception of oneself. Marriages are exposures. We may be heroes to our spouses but we may not be idols.

To love somebody is not just a strong feeling -- it is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise," writes psychologist Erich Fromm. "If love were only a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever. A feeling comes and it may go. How can I judge that it will stay forever, when my act does not involve judgment and decision?

The boring parts don't last forever. In retrospect, they aren't even boring.

Is it possible to make a wedding toast without acknowledging the bride?

Taken as a whole, life always gives us more opportunities for grief than celebration, more funeral drinks than wedding toasts.

It's an extraordinary thing to meet someone who you can bare your soul to. And who will accept you for what you are. I've been waiting, what seems like a very long time, to get beyond what I am. And with Bella, I feel like I can finally begin. So I'd like to propose a toast to my beautiful bride. No measure of time with you will be long enough. But let's start with forever.

Reuben says in many cultures, the wedding ceremony and all of it's rituals are much the same as a funeral: a transition into another phase of life. It is like dying and being reborn, if you believe in the afterlife. If you don't believe in an afterlife, then you are toast

Sometimes we can thank our feelings for sharing and ignore them. Maybe wanting doesn’t have to perfectly coincide with getting. Maybe sometimes not-getting has a value of its own.

Wherever you go, there you are. You would just have different problems. Are the problems you have now so bad that any other problems would be better?

Failure is part of being human, and it is definitely part of being married.

You remember that BuzzFeed post with the Harry Potter wedding? Samantha and I will do something coffee-themed. Everyone will wear barista aprons. Toasting with mugs. My face drawn in everyone’s espresso.

He works fast," Alan commented as he lifted his wine. "David?" Shelby sent him a puzzled look. "Actually his fastest sped is crawl unless he's got a guitar in his hands." "Really?" Alan's eyes met hers as he sipped, but she didn't understand the amusement in them. "You only stood him up tonight, and already he's planning his wedding to someone else." "Stood him-" she began on a laugh, then remembered. "Oh." Torn between annoyance and her own sense of te ridiculous, Shelby toyed with the stem of her glass. "Men are fickle creatures," she decided. "Apparently." Reaching over, he lifted her chin with a fingertip. "You're holding up well." "I don't like to wear my heart on my sleeve" Exasperated, amused, she muffled a laugh. "Dammit, he would have to pick tonight to show up here." "Of all the gin joints in all the towns..." This time the laugh escaped fully. "Well done," Shelby told him. "I should've thought of that line myself; I heard the movie not long ago." "Heard it?" "Mmm-hmmm. Well..." She lifted her glass in a toast. "To broken hearts?" "Or foolish lies?" Alan countered. Shelby wrinkled her nose as she tapped her glass against his. "I usually tell very good ones. Besides, I did date David.Once.Tree years ago." She finished off her wine. "Maybe four.You can stop grinning in that smug, masculine way any time, Senator." "Was I?" Rising, he offered Shelby her damp jacket. "How rude of me." "It would've been more polite not to acknowledge that you'd caught me in a lie," she commented as they worked their way through the crowd and back into the rain. "Which you wouldn't have done if you hadn't made me so mad that I couldn't think of a handier name to give you in the first place." "If I work my way through the morass of that sentence it seems to be my fault." Alan slipped an arm around her shoulders in so casually friendly a manner she didn't protest. "Suppose I apologize for not giving you time to think of a lie that would hold up?" "It seems fair.

I tried to imagine what it would be like if Constantin were my husband. It would mean getting up at seven and cooking him eggs and bacon and toast and coffee and dawdling about in my nightgown and curlers after he’d left for work to wash up the dirty plates and make the bed, and then when he came home after a lively, fascinating day he’d expect a big dinner, and I’d spend the evening washing up even more dirty plates till I fell into bed, utterly exhausted. This seemed a dreary and wasted life for a girl with fifteen years of straight A’s, but I knew that’s what marriage was like, because cook and clean and wash was just what Buddy Willard’s mother did from morning till night, and she was the wife of a university professor and had been a private school teacher herself. Once when I visited Buddy I found Mrs Willard braiding a rug out of strips of wool from Mr Willard’s old suits. She’d spent weeks on that rug, and I had admired the tweedy browns and greens and blues patterning the braid, but after Mrs Willard was through, instead of hanging the rug on the wall the way I would have done, she put it down in place of her kitchen mat, and in a few days it was soiled and dull and indistinguishable from any mat you could buy for under a dollar in the Five and Ten. And I knew that in spite of all the roses and kisses and restaurant dinners a man showered on a woman before he married her, what he secretly wanted when the wedding service ended was for her to flatten out underneath his feet like Mrs Willard’s kitchen mat.

Can I offer you a slice of this amazing caramelized white chocolate apricot brioche made by my favorite granddaughter?" "You may indeed." When you slice the rich, buttery bread topped with crunchy bits of pearl sugar, you get a swirl of white chocolate, which now also has hints of caramel flavor from having been roasted, and chunks of apricot. It is a good one. Herman loved it and immediately said we would have it in the rotation all summer and to order more apricots. Bubbles hands me two thick pieces of my bread, lightly toasted and lavished with butter. It is delicious, if I do say so myself.

Tsundoku (Japanese) Buying books and not reading them; letting books pile up on shelves or floors or nightstands. My parents used to joke about making furniture out of them; instead of being coffee table books, they could be the coffee table. Ditto on nightstands, counters, roofs. When we were kids, my brother and I, teased about always reading, built a wall. Right through the middle of the neighborhood, protected ourselves with fiction and with facts. I loved the encyclopedias best; the weight of them, how my grandmother made me walk with one on my head to practice being a lady. It wasn’t until college that I built a grand stairway out of them; their glossy blue jackets looked like marble in the moonlight. I climbed it, to the top of the wall. Peering over, I found you, on the other side, alone in your bed, asleep. That was the first time you dreamed me. In your dream, you told me not to jump. But to be patient. (We were young then, it would be years before we’d meet) and then this morning, I found you in my bedroom. In your hands, How to Rope and Tie a Steer, a mug of coffee, a piece of slightly burned toast. I took The Sun Also Rises from the wall, made the first window into your heart.

Those of you who know me know that I'm a huge fan of my sister. She's my rock, my soul mate, and the reason that I'm still standing here, alive and well. When her heart beats for someone, mine falls in line and thumps for them too. Baron, there's one thing I cannot take from you–you make her happy. Glow, even... Some loves are old, and sure, others are new and frantic. Yours is both, and that's what made your feelings toward one another outsoar everything. Even the past... I wish you joy, freedom, health, and wealth, though I think you're all covered with the last one... So I guess I would like to make a toast to two of my favorite people. To the woman I love more than life itself, and to the man who spends his life making her happy. Baron and Millie, you don't need my words to make it work. You have this thing covered. But just in case, I wish you everything you wish for yourself and more. Now down these glasses and have some fun.

There are good ships and there are wood ships, the ships that sail the sea. But the best ships are friendships, and may they always be. A toast to your coffin. May it be made of hundred-year-old oak. And may we plant the tree together tomorrow. Here’s to Eve, the mother of us all, and here’s to Adam, who was Johnny-on-the-spot when the leaf began to fall. Give a man a match and he’ll be warm for a minute, but set him on fire and he’ll be warm for the rest of his life. Leprechauns, castles, good luck, and laughter. Lullabies, dreams, and love ever after. Poems and songs with pipes and drums. A thousand welcomes when anyone comes . . . That’s the Irish for you!

I guess that means, I gotta start saving, huh?" Eliza asked me with a squeeze to the shoulder. "For what?" I croaked, still thinking more about what he'd said. "Your wedding, estupid. I'll pay for your motherfucking wedding if you're going to marry Sacha one day." He held up his glass of orange juice in Gordo's direction for a toast. "I like that guy.

May the blessings which flow in all weddings be gathered, God, together in our wedding! The blessings of the Night of Power, the month of fasting the festival to break the fast the blessings of the meeting of Adam and Eve the blessings of the meeting of Joseph and Jacob the blessings of gazing on the paradise of all abodes and yet another blessing which cannot be put in words: the fruitful scattering of joy of the children of the Shayak and our eldest! In companionship and happiness may you be like milk and honey in union and fidelity, just like sugar and halva. May the blessings of those who toast and the one who pours the wine anoint the ones who said Amen and the one who said the prayer

Outside, the rain was bucketing down. We ran along the street, laughing at the madness of it all, and burst into Reece’s, where we had to queue for the set lunch of soup, chicken and trifle. Reece’s had no licence so, when we finally got a table, we toasted ourselves with water. But we didn’t care: we were on a high. A full church wedding with all the extras couldn’t have made me happier.

I want to say that one day you and your husband will fight about missed flights, and you’ll find yourself wistful for the days when you had to pay for only your own mistakes. I want to say that at various points in your marriage, may it last forever, you will look at this person and feel only rage. You will gaze at this man you once adored and think, It sure would be nice to have this whole place to myself.

He tells me about human weddings, held inside or outside if the weather is mild. The couple wear clothes that are painfully uncomfortable and make their friends do the same. An officiant says a few words that neither party has really thought through—sickness and health, richer and poorer, better and worse—or at least don’t believe will be put to the test. Family and friends toast the couple, eat a little, drink too much, give vases, dance badly, and then run for the exits.

I began to realize that my pictures of God were old. They were not old in the sense of antique champagne flutes, which are abundant with significance precisely because they are old—when you sip from them you remember your grandmother using them at birthday dinners, or your sister toasting her beloved at their wedding. Rather, they were old like a seventh-grade health textbook from 1963: moderately interesting for what it might say about culture and science in 1963, but generally out of date.

One woman married for twenty-five years said, "Many times, it simply seemed easier to stay than to figure out how to divvy up the books. And then we broke on through to the other side...like playing a video game where you suddenly hit a new level that you didn't even know was there. "When I wanted to leave, it didn't seem like a good time for various reasons," a woman married for fifteen years told me, "and then when it was a convenient time, I no longer wanted to. And so you sort of stagger on and then you think, "He makes me crazy sometimes, but what would it be like not to have him around? I wouldn't like it.

Kristen and I always have a lot to celebrate at the end of June. First there’s Father’s Day, followed by our wedding anniversary and my birthday. But prior to the Best Practices this two-week season of parties didn’t inspire much of a celebratory mood. It always felt strange celebrating Father’s Day, given that my parenting skills had been something of a disappointment for the first three years, and the tears that Kristen had shed on our third wedding anniversary spoke rather poignantly to the fact that our marriage hadn’t been much to celebrate, either. That left my birthday, a day that was all about toasting the birth of the very person who had made Kristen’s life miserable.

The more I experimented, the more I wanted to discover flavor, texture, scent. Gently toasting spices. Mixing herbs. My immediate instincts were toward anything like comfort food, the hallmarks of which were a moderate warmth and a sloppy, squelching quality: soups, stews, casseroles, tagines, goulashes. I glazed cauliflower with honey and mustard, roasted it alongside garlic and onions to a sweet gold crisp, then whizzed it up in a blender. I graduated to more complicated soups: Cuban black bean required slow cooking with a full leg of ham, the meat falling almost erotically away from the bone, swirled up in a thick, savory goo. Italian wedding soup was a favorite, because it looked so fundamentally wrong- the egg stringy and half cooked, swimming alongside thoughtlessly tossed-in stale bread and not-quite-melted strips of Parmesan. But it was delicious, the peculiar consistency and salty heartiness of it. Casseroles were an exercise in patience. I'd season with sprigs of herbs and leave them ticking over, checking up every half hour or so, thrilled by the steamy waves of roasting tomatoes and stewed celery when I opened up the oven. Seafood excited me, but I felt I had too much to learn. The proximity of Polish stores resulted in a weeklong obsession with bigos- a hunter's stew made with cabbage and meat and garnished with anything from caraway seeds to juniper berries.

I grab the nonstick skillet, put it on the stove, and fetch four slices of bread from the breadbox. I've been playing with a new bread recipe, a cross between sourdough and English muffin, baked in a sliceable loaf. Makes fantastic toast, and I've been craving grilled cheese with it since I brought it home yesterday. I literally butter all four slices all the way to each edge, place them butter-side down in the skillet, and top each with a thick slice of American cheese. That way, as the pan slowly heats up, the cheese starts to melt, and by the time the outsides are crunchy and crispy, the cheese is a goo-fest, and nothing gets burnt. And I always make two, because one grilled cheese sandwich is never enough.

Most of the guests left the rehearsal dinner at the country club; the remaining group--a varied collection of important figures in both of our lives--had skittered away to the downtown hotel where all of the out-of-town guests were staying. Marlboro Man and I, not ready to bid each other good night yet, had joined them in the small, dimly lit (lucky for me, given the deteriorating condition of my epidermis) hotel bar. We gathered at a collection of tiny tables butted up together and wound up talking and laughing into the night, toasting one another and spouting various late-night versions of “I’m so glad I know you” and “I love you, man!” In the midst of all the wedding planning and craziness, hanging out in a basement bar with uncles, college friends, and siblings was a relaxing, calming elixir. I wanted to bottle the feeling and store it up forever. It was late, though; I saw Marlboro Man looking at the clock in the bar. “I think I’ll head back to the ranch,” he whispered as his brother told another joke to the group. Marlboro Man had a long drive ahead, not to mention an entire lifetime with me. I couldn’t blame him for wanting a good night’s sleep. “I’m tired, too,” I said, grabbing my purse from under the table. And I was; the long day had finally set in. The two of us stood up and said our good-byes to all the people who loved us so much. Men stood up, some stumbling, and shook hands with Marlboro Man. Women blew kisses and mouthed Love you guys! to us as we walked out of the room and waved good-bye. But no one left the bar. Nobody loved us that much.

Celebrating something?” she asked. A wicked smile formed on his lips, showing off his dimples. “Just a good night’s sleep.” She smiled, too, though not without some reservation. Just what kind of person had they partnered with? A thief and an arsonist? Camille placed a napkin in her lap and devoured a slice of buttered toast. Oscar hadn’t returned from his walk until well after dark the night before. Camille had already turned down the lamps, pulled the blankets up to her ears, and buried her head in her pillow to avoid having to speak to or see him. “Oscar.” She felt her pulse rise. “What I said to you yesterday was miserable.” He kept his attention on his eggs. “I didn’t mean to be so thoughtless. I was just trying to avoid your question.” Oscar finished chewing. “I’m sorry, too,” he whispered. “So what about Randall don’t you want to talk about?” The fork slipped between her damp fingers, and she set it on the rim of the plate. “It’s just…I haven’t talked about it with anyone. I don’t really know how to put it.” She wanted to be desperately in love with Randall and not just fond of him. She didn’t want to need to marry Randall; she just wanted to want to. It had been her father’s greatest hope for her-and for the company. There was no way to explain it all to Oscar, though, without going into her father’s poor finances. As she drew her palm into her lap, it left a handprint of sweat on the lacquered cherry table. Oscar eyed the evaporating mark. “What are you so nervous about?” She massaged the healed wound on her temple. It still ached, but she couldn’t stop feeling for it each time she thought of her father. “If you were about to be married, wouldn’t you be nervous?” she asked. He took a sip of his black tea. “Nothing to be nervous about if you’re marrying the right person.” Camille dumped a spoonful of sugar into her tea. She knew she shouldn’t have bothered asking anyone, especially not a man. Oscar stopped, his forkful of eggs halfway to his mouth. “Are you rethinking the wedding?” Camille choked on a bite of toast. “No!” she said, hammering out a cough. “Of course not.

We danced to John Michael Montgomery’s “I Swear.” We cut the seven-tiered cake, electing not to take the smear-it-on-our-faces route. We visited and laughed and toasted. We held hands and mingled. But after a while, I began to notice that I hadn’t seen any of the tuxedo-clad groomsmen--particularly Marlboro Man’s friends from college--for quite some time. “What happened to all the guys?” I asked. “Oh,” he said. “They’re down in the men’s locker room.” “Oh, really?” I asked. “Are they smoking cigars or something?” “Well…” He hesitated, grinning. “They’re watching a football game.” I laughed. “What game are they watching?” It had to be a good one. “It’s…ASU is playing Nebraska,” he answered. ASU? His alma mater? Playing Nebraska? Defending national champions? How had I missed this? Marlboro Man hadn’t said a word. He was such a rabid college football fan, I couldn’t believe such a monumental game hadn’t been cause to reschedule the wedding date. Aside from ranching, football had always been Marlboro Man’s primary interest in life. He’d played in high school and part of college. He watched every televised ASU game religiously--for the nontelevised games, he relied on live reporting from Tony, his best friend, who attended every game in person. “I didn’t even know they were playing!” I said. I don’t know why I shouldn’t have known. It was September, after all. But it just hadn’t crossed my mind. I’d been a little on the busy side, I guess, getting ready to change my entire life and all. “How come you’re not down there watching it?” I asked. “I didn’t want to leave you,” he said. “You might get hit on.” He chuckled his sweet, sexy chuckle. I laughed. I could just see it--a drunk old guest scooting down the bar, eyeing my poufy white dress and spouting off pickup lines: You live around here? I sure like what you’re wearing… So…you married? Marlboro Man wasn’t in any immediate danger. Of that I was absolutely certain. “Go watch the game!” I insisted, motioning downstairs. “Nah,” he said. “I don’t need to.” He wanted to watch the game so badly I could see it in the air. “No, seriously!” I said. “I need to go hang with the girls anyway. Go. Now.” I turned my back and walked away, refusing even to look back. I wanted to make it easy on him. I wouldn’t see him for over an hour. Poor Marlboro Man. Unsure of the protocol for grooms watching college football during their wedding receptions, he’d darted in and out of the locker room for the entire first half. The agony he must have felt. The deep, sustained agony. I was so glad he’d finally joined the guys.

A regiment of servants brought out silver platters and trays of champagne, and the guests settled in their chairs to enjoy the repast. They were given individual servings of goose dressed with cream and herbs and covered with a steaming golden crust... bowls of melons and grapes, boiled quail eggs scattered lavishly on crisp green salad, baskets of hot muffins, toast and scones, flitches of fried smoked bacon... plates of thinly sliced beefsteak, the pink strips littered with fragrant shavings of truffle. Three wedding cakes were brought out, thickly iced and stuffed with fruit.

No one had toasted Abby and Bob at their little wedding, and that’s what had been wrong, she believed now. No toast. There had been only thirty guests and they had simply eaten the ham canapes and gone home. How could a marriage go right? It wasn’t that such ceremonies were important in and of themselves. They were nothing. They were zeros. But they were zeros as placeholders; they held numbers and equations intact. And once you underwent them, you could move on, know the empty power of their blessing, and not spend time missing them.

I love the caraway seeds in the classic rye bread, but I wonder if the rich dough might not also hold up to other flavors. I jot down some notes. Aniseed. Fennel seed. Orange zest. Golden raisins. Coarse salt? Maybe if Herman doesn't come down when I am working on the dough, I can use a small batch for a little experiment. I'm thinking rolls, not loaves. The kind of rolls you want to smear with cold sweet butter at dinner, or split and toast and spread with cream cheese for breakfast. Savory and sweet. Maybe semolina on the bottom instead of the coarser cornmeal we use for the regular rye loaves.

There are a lot of really broken people. Unfortunately, especially for women, your sense of self and your viability is so under assault from this terrible culture focused on youth. Men have permission for eternal childhoods. So many people I know by all rights should have been married. They're sad. They're alone. They're hurt. They're angry at all the sexual passing along. Men as well as women. So let's have another reason for marriage. Even people who are divorced have a certain dignity around the fact that that had happened. We need to look at marriage from the standpoint of aging, from the standpoint of cultural disposability, and to look to an institution that says, 'You are precious. Your union is precious. The community is supposed to think your union is precious. We're going to do this in public so everybody knows and everybody is accountable.' That's huge. It's the opposite of saying you're disposable or that there's no hope or help for you if things go awry.

There was a pause. Master and valet both perused the breakfast table, then each other. Finally the table again. Eventually, Grieves realized his mistake and hastily began cutting the toast slices into the preferred “soldier” shapes more suitable for dipping in runny yolk. James gave a small grunt of approval. One must have toast soldiers with one’s egg or else the entire day was off on the wrong foot. There weren’t many reliable things in his life, but a few habits devotedly maintained kept his world from spinning too rapidly. He would feel dreadfully alone if not for those small, comforting reassurances. His valet had suggested it was a sign of old age advancing. James refused to believe it.

And yet being happy with the same person forever requires finding ways to be happy with different versions of that person, and avoiding panic when the person you're with becomes someone you dislike.

Since 87% of the population drinks,40 with those drinkers ranging from the person who only drinks during toasts at weddings to the degenerate sleeping in the gutter, it is not hard to see why society struggles to understand this disease.

I thought we’d whip up some French toast,” says Uncle Frankie. “Should I plug in the toaster?” asks Gaynor.

Taken as a whole, life gives us more opportunities for grief than celebration, more funeral drinks than wedding toasts.

As the Count refilled their glasses, he was struck by a memory of his own that seemed in keeping with the conversation. “I spent a good part of my youth in the province of Nizhny Novgorod,” he said, “which happens to be the world capital of the apple. In Nizhny Novgorod, there are not simply apple trees scattered about the countryside; there are forests of apple trees—forests as wild and ancient as Russia itself—in which apples grow in every color of the rainbow and in sizes ranging from a walnut to a cannonball.” “I take it you ate your fair share of apples.” “Oh, we’d find them tucked in our omelets at breakfast, floating in our soups at lunch, and stuffed in our pheasants at dinner. Come Christmas, we had eaten every single variety the woods had to offer.” The Count was about to lift his glass to toast the comprehensiveness of their apple eating, when he waved a self-correcting finger. “Actually, there was one apple that we did not eat. . . .” The actress raised one of her bedeviling eyebrows. “Which?” “According to local lore, hidden deep within the forest was a tree with apples as black as coal—and if you could find this tree and eat of its fruit, you could start your life anew.” The Count took a generous drink of the Montrachet, pleased to have summoned this little folktale from the past. “So would you?” the actress asked. “Would I what?” “If you found that apple hidden in the forest, would you take a bite?” The Count put his glass on the table and shook his head. “There’s certainly some allure to the idea of a fresh start; but how could I relinquish my memories of home, of my sister, of my school years.” The Count gestured to the table. “How could I relinquish my memory of this?” And Anna Urbanova, having put her napkin on her plate and pushed back her chair, came round the table, took the Count by the collar, and kissed him on the mouth.

I have no doubt that my parents would have relished having more time as my primary family, the people I thought of as *home.* They could have chosen to disapprove of or resent me when I made choices that they did not anticipate, choices that kept me far away form them. But their love for me was never about ownership, or control, or whether I followed the path they expected. They were grateful that Dan and I had found each other, and they weren't afraid that we would struggle, because they themselves had not experienced a life free from struggle. *We're lucky,* my father said in his wedding toast, *to get to witness your love and commitment. We can't wait to see the life you'll build together.* They never saw me as choosing one kind of family over another, one dream or one life over another. They could not imagine a future in which I did not pursue everything I wanted.

her American son became the forefather of many Icelanders. Their American adventure did not change the world – the colonists were too few and the European prizes were too rich. Yet, as a newly discovered Milanese document reveals, knowledge of the continent’s existence was passed down by Nordic sailors.[*16] A Danish king Harthacnut still ruled England, recognizing as his heir the Aethling Edward, son of Aethelred, later celebrated for saintly piety as the Confessor. But on 8 June 1042 Harthacnut, attending a wedding in London, raised a toast to the bride and ‘suddenly fell to the earth with an awful convulsion’. The saintly Edward probably poisoned him. Edward was supported by the prince blinder, mass-scalper and kingmaker Godwin of Wessex, who, married to Canute’s sister-in-law, had helped destroy his father and killed at least one brother. But now they soothed these crimes with marriage: Edward married Godwin’s daughter Edith and raised his son Harold to earl. When Godwin died, Harold, half Anglo-Saxon, half Dane, succeeded as the first potentate of the kingdom, earl of Wessex. Since Edward had no children, who would inherit England? The island was on the edge of Europe, but Canute’s Roman trip showed how this Scando-Britannic empire was now linked by Mediterranean trade routes to Asia. Two coins from a resurgent China have been found in Edward’s England, while in Egypt the Mad Caliph, al-Hakim, had gone much further, contacting the new Chinese emperor.

The Four Courts Irish pub was where we held all our memorials. It had a unique place in my heart because a bunch of assassins had tried to kill me inside the place a long time ago. Bryce wasn’t read into our program, but he believed in what we did, even if he didn’t know what that was. We’d shown up one day toasting a fallen soldier, and then we’d kept showing up, until he’d pulled me aside one afternoon. He’d seen us keeping to ourselves, knowing we didn’t want to be disturbed, and had told me if we wanted privacy the next time, the bar was ours. He’d never asked any questions, and being located so close to the CIA, I’m sure he thought that was where we worked, and I didn’t disabuse him of the notion. All I knew was that when I showed up, he shut down the bar. He flipped the sign on the door to closed and said, “I’ll be serving the drinks.” “I appreciate that. I really do.” I’d initially tried to pay to rent the place, but he was having none of it. He didn’t even let us pay for our drinks.

Last year we’d no summer at all, and this year, we be toasting like bugs on a log.

Sometimes after he’s gone I’ve wondered what it would be like to slip into a different story and actually end up being Mrs Vincent Cunningham. You know, Chapter XXXVIII, ‘Reader, I married him. A quiet wedding we had, he and I, the parson and clerk were alone present.’ (Book 789, Jane Eyre, Penguin Classics, London.) Cunningham is a bad surname, but it’s not dreadful. Not as bad say as Bigg-Wither. Mr Bigg-Wither (not kidding) was Jane Austen’s suitor. He fell in love with the sharp bonnet-pinched look, was very partial to one flattened front hair curl, and tiny black eyes. He pulled in his person and fluffed out his whiskers to propose to her. Now that took courage. You have to grant him that. Proposing to Jane Austen was no walk in the park, was in the same league as Jerry Twomey proposing to Niamh ni Eochadha who had the face and manners of a blackthorn. Still, Bigg-Wither went through with it. He got out his proposal. And Jane Austen accepted. Honestly, she did. She was fiancé-ed. She did her best impression of a Jane Austen smile then retired straight away to bed. Up in the bed she lay in her big nightie and couldn’t sleep, not, surprisingly enough, because of the bonnet, but because of the suffocating way the name Bigg-Wither sat on her. That, and the thought of giving birth to little Bigg-Withers. The following morning when she came down to him negotiating his toast and marmalade in past the whiskers, she said, ‘I cannot be a Bigg-Wither,’ or words to that effect, the engagement was off, and all the world’s Readers sighed with relief. Because a happy Jane Austen would have been useless in the World Literature stakes.

two entertainers got together to create a 90-minute television special. They had no experience writing for the medium and quickly ran out of material, so they shifted their concept to a half-hour weekly show. When they submitted their script, most of the network executives didn’t like it or didn’t get it. One of the actors involved in the program described it as a “glorious mess.” After filming the pilot, it was time for an audience test. The one hundred viewers who were assembled in Los Angeles to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the show dismissed it as a dismal failure. One put it bluntly: “He’s just a loser, who’d want to watch this guy?” After about six hundred additional people were shown the pilot in four different cities, the summary report concluded: “No segment of the audience was eager to watch the show again.” The performance was rated weak. The pilot episode squeaked onto the airwaves, and as expected, it wasn’t a hit. Between that and the negative audience tests, the show should have been toast. But one executive campaigned to have four more episodes made. They didn’t go live until nearly a year after the pilot, and again, they failed to gain a devoted following. With the clock winding down, the network ordered half a season as replacement for a canceled show, but by then one of the writers was ready to walk away: he didn’t have any more ideas. It’s a good thing he changed his mind. Over the next decade, the show dominated the Nielsen ratings and brought in over $1 billion in revenues. It became the most popular TV series in America, and TV Guide named it the greatest program of all time. If you’ve ever complained about a close talker, accused a partygoer of double-dipping a chip, uttered the disclaimer “Not that there’s anything wrong with that,” or rejected someone by saying “No soup for you,” you’re using phrases coined on the show. Why did network executives have so little faith in Seinfeld? When we bemoan the lack of originality in the world, we blame it on the absence of creativity. If only people could generate more novel ideas, we’d all be better off. But in reality, the biggest barrier to originality is not idea generation—it’s idea selection. In one analysis, when over two hundred people dreamed up more than a thousand ideas for new ventures and products, 87 percent were completely unique. Our companies, communities, and countries don’t necessarily suffer from a shortage of novel ideas. They’re constrained by a shortage of people who excel at choosing the right novel ideas. The Segway was a false positive: it was forecast as a hit but turned out to be a miss. Seinfeld was a false negative: it was expected to fail but ultimately flourished.

Kristen and I always have a lot to celebrate at the end of June. First there’s Father’s Day, followed by our wedding anniversary and my birthday. But prior to the Best Practices this two-week season of parties didn’t inspire much of a celebratory mood. It always felt strange celebrating Father’s Day, given that my parenting skills had been something of a disappointment for the first three years, and the tears that Kristen had shed on our third wedding anniversary spoke rather poignantly to the fact that our marriage hadn’t been much to celebrate, either. That left my birthday, a day that was all about toasting the birth of the very person who had made Kristen’s life miserable. But after fifteen months of hard work and soul-searching, Kristen and I were finally able to look forward to this season with real anticipation. We were communicating again, and I was beginning to hit my stride as a father and as a husband. I was folding laundry, Kristen was taking her first uninterrupted showers in years, and when America’s Next Top Model wasn’t on during its regularly scheduled hour, I stayed cool as a cucumber. And that gave us plenty of reason to break out the streamers and party hats. Heck, we could have made a layer cake. In light of all this, I decided that June would be the best time to embark on my most ambitious Best Practice yet: being fun.

This mango daiquiri is to die for.” I popped a juicy red maraschino cherry into my mouth, lifted my tropical drink and toasted the bride. Liz’s hazel eyes sparkled brighter than the diamond-studded wedding band placed on her left hand three hours earlier. She tapped her creamy pina colada, encased in a coconut

Iceberg wedges with a homemade Thousand Island dressing and bacon bits. Prime rib, slow roasted in a very forgiving technique I developed after years of trying to make it for weddings and parties where the timing of the meal can be drastically changed based on length of ceremony, or toasts, or how well the venue staff can change over a room. Twice-baked potatoes, creamed spinach. I have a stack of crepes already made, ready to be turned into crepes suzette with butter and brown sugar and orange zest and flambeed with Grand Marnier, because if you go all old school, something needs to be set on fire. With homemade vanilla bean gelato to cut the richness, of course!

Do they expect us to have sex right here on the kitchen table?" Gunner, who was chewing a piece of toast, paused, considered the idea, and then shook his head. "Too messy. We'd get sugar everywhere. Plus, Cressy might walk in, and then I'd have to get her a second horse.

That's twice you've married because you had to. I won't say I'm sorry. I'd do it again." "I know that, but I don't know why. If it's not the land, what is it?" Cade gave her a curious look. "You have to ask?" Suddenly aware that she was sitting here naked talking to a man who the day before had been only her foreman, Lily glanced around for her clothing while struggling with his question. She reached for her chemise. "I suppose I'm the only single woman over the age of fourteen for fifty miles around, except poor Anna Whitaker, perhaps." Cade's impassivity gave way to exasperation as he gathered up her clothes and dropped them in her lap. "There are women enough out here for men like me. You're the first lady who has ever looked at me." Pulling on her chemise, Lily peered over the top at him in surprise. "I doubt that there's a female over the age of fourteen who doesn't look at you. My word, Cade, we'd have to be blind not to see you." He grinned and handed her a piece of toasted bread. "It's good to know my size warrants notice, at least. But that's not what I meant, and you know it. You're a lady, but you didn't pull your skirts away in distaste when I spoke to you. You didn't talk to me as if I didn't have sense enough to eat. You listened, even when you were talking a blue norther." Pulling on the gingham, Lily left it unbuttoned. She bit into the toast and wrinkled her forehead at this striking new knowledge. "I can't pull away skirts I don't wear, but I suppose it's something to know you married me because I know how to talk and listen. I'm sure that's as good as marrying me because I know how to cook and clean." A low rumble rose from Cade's chest, and Lily was uncertain as to its cause, until he pushed her back down on the robes and kissed her. She thought perhaps he might be laughing at her. "Anyone can cook and clean. No one can do what you do." Cade didn't tell her precisely what she did that no one else could do, but Lily hoped that what followed was his way of showing what he meant. She had to get dressed a second time when he was done making himself clear.

a tea shop in Oxford, Freddie told Tessa about it. ‘If you’re in the Fifth and Sixth, you’re allowed to skate for half an hour before prep. And an hour at weekends.’ ‘Do you remember,’ said Tessa, ‘when we were living in Geneva, and we used to go skating on the lake?’ ‘Mama used to watch,’ said Freddie. ‘She used to sit in the café, drinking hot chocolate.’ They often talked about their mother; had decided to, mutually and silently, three years ago, the spring after they had left Italy, after they had been told that she had died during an acute asthmatic attack. That was how you kept someone alive. ‘We were staying in that funny little pension,’ said Freddie. ‘What was the landlady’s name? Madame . . . Madame . . .’ ‘Madame Depaul.’Tessa smiled. ‘We had toasted cheese for supper every night. Madame Depaul thought that was what English people liked to eat. In the morning, after breakfast, Mama used to put on her fur coat and we’d all go down to the lake.’ Tessa had inherited her mother’s fur coat. When it had first arrived from Italy, Christina’s scent had lingered. Tessa had put on the coat and closed her eyes and breathed in Mitsouko and had cried, her

...even good marriages sometimes involve flinging a remote control at the wall.

People who don't marry miss both the pelting hardships of marriage and its warm rewards.

Forsaking all others means going deep with one person -- exhaustingly deep.

Pru and I had tried to make the Honey Surprise a hundred times at home, until we'd perfected the art of French toast and the perfect golden-crisp pancake, but nothing prepared me for the fluffiness, the buttery sweetness, the crispy crunch of my first bite. It was so good, I moaned. Anders choked on a fry, and chased it with the rest of his tea. By the wrinkle of disgust on his face, the combination tasted terrible. "Can you not?" he whispered to me, coughing. "Have you tasted this? It's delicious. You should have what I'm having." "I don't eat sweet things." "You're missing out. What do they put in this stuff? It's so good." "Butter, flour, and love, or so the sign says," he replied, motioning to the slogan painted on the back wall of the restaurant.

But their love for me was never about ownership, or control, or whether I followed the path they expected. They were grateful that Dan and I had found each other, and they weren't afraid that we would struggle, because they themselves had not experienced a life free from struggle. We're lucky, my father said in his wedding toast, to get to witness your love and commitment. We can't wait to see the life you'll build together. They never saw me as choosing one kind of family over another, one dream or one life over another. They could not imagine a future in which I did not pursue everything I wanted.

Annabeth knit her eyebrows. “We’ll have to talk to Tantalus, get approval for a quest. He’ll say no.” “Not if we tell him tonight at the campfire in front of everybody. The whole camp will hear. They’ll pressure him. He won’t be able to refuse.” “Maybe.” A little bit of hope crept into Annabeth’s voice. “We’d better get these dishes done. Hand me the lava spray gun, will you?” That night at the campfire, Apollo’s cabin led the sing-along. They tried to get everybody’s spirits up, but it wasn’t easy after that afternoon’s bird attack. We all sat around a semicircle of stone steps, singing halfheartedly and watching the bonfire blaze while the Apollo guys strummed their guitars and picked their lyres. We did all the standard camp numbers: “Down by the Aegean,” “I Am My Own Great-Great-Great-Great-Grandpa,” “This Land is Minos’s Land.” The bonfire was enchanted, so the louder you sang, the higher it rose, changing color and heat with the mood of the crowd. On a good night, I’d seen it twenty feet high, bright purple, and so hot the whole front row’s marshmallows burst into the flames. Tonight, the fire was only five feet high, barely warm, and the flames were the color of lint. Dionysus left early. After suffering through a few songs, he muttered something about how even pinochle with Chiron had been more exciting than this. Then he gave Tantalus a distasteful look and headed back toward the Big House. When the last song was over, Tantalus said, “Well, that was lovely!” He came forward with a toasted marshmallow on a stick and tried to pluck it off, real casual-like. But before he could touch it, the marshmallow flew off the stick. Tantalus made a wild grab, but the marshmallow committed suicide, diving into the flames. Tantalus turned back toward us, smiling coldly. “Now then! Some announcements about tomorrow’s schedule.” “Sir,” I said. Tantalus’s

He genuinely liked the noodles and mandu we'd brought. "Do you have any secret ingredients or something? How is this so good? And your mandu sauce---those were so good that there isn't any left!" This has got me thinking. If the church congregation and Daniel liked them, maybe other people would like my sauces too. Aside from staples you could find in any grocery store, such as soy sauce, ginger, sugar, and garlic, most Korean dishes had a base of the same key ingredients, like sesame oil and chili paste. Red chili flakes, rice vinegar, fish sauce, and toasted sesame seeds were also nice-to-haves.

One of the buffet tables was laden with assorted muffins, scones, bagels, and croissants accompanied by butter, cream cheese, and flavored jams. There was a create-your-own-omelet station and platters of maple sausage, crispy bacon, and hash browns. Quiche lorraine and brioche French toast with mixed berry compote and whipped cream rounded out the breakfast part of the buffet. For those who preferred something other than morning food, there was a second table featuring mixed green salad with pomegranate vinaigrette, grilled salmon, chicken picante, roasted vegetables, rice pilaf, a craving of roast beef, lobster Newburg, and shrimp scampi.

And Samuel is your father. Is that going to stop you from putting a bullet between his eyes the second he steps foot into our wedding in five and a half weeks?" Archer gave me a knowing look, before he snagged my last piece of toast. I frowned, considering that perspective. "Well, no. But he tried to fucking sell me on a human black market. He deserves to die." "Didn't try, baby girl. He did sell you. It's just fate that your Prince Charming swooped in and saved the day." He shot me a teasing wink.

Our cook gave a short bow and retired to the servant’s quarters. “There,” Wendell said at length, once we’d eaten our way through a large percentage of the dishes, leaning his chair back as he sipped yet another cup of coffee. “Now that is the civilized way to begin retaking a kingdom.” “You would say it is the civilized way to begin any endeavor,” I said, amused. “Or a day of lazing about.” “One needs a great deal of time to laze about after one has been poisoned,” he said in a complaining tone. “Not all of us wish to go charging off to the library to terrorize librarians and scribble out three papers or more immediately after a traumatic experience.” I merely shook my head and took another piece of toast.

My own parents have been married since 1974, weathering a how-much-time-do-you-have list of crises. I went to my mother for advice once when Neal and I were fighting. "How do you stay married?" I asked her. Her reply: "You don't get divorced.

I watch myself in the mirrored walls, veiled, slide down to sit on the floor and dial the reception planner. “Checking to make sure you’ve arranged a place card and seat for Simone.” “Yes,” she says. “I’ve put her with the table you’ve labeled ‘one-offs.’” “Perfect.” I hang up. The doors slide open. The concierge’s voice trails me out of the elevator. “I’ve heard it’s good luck to say a rosary on the morning of your wedding. I have one at my desk if you…” Minutes down the tree-lined road, the groom is being mimosa-toasted in his aunt Henshaw’s home. The cake is in the shape of the lake. In the morning we’ll return to the city. Alone in the room, I switch the channel to a newscast and slide under the folded coverlet. From the shelf of sleep, I hear local news stories. Henrietta has opened a store during an unfriendly economic climate. Despite everyone’s predictions, she is doing well. In global news, in towns around the world, people prepare for different holidays amid varied architecture.

Mom has a way of dropping out of conversations. she gets a little worse as the years pass. At her second wedding, it happened during her toast, Mom standing at the foot of the long table and going silent fight in the middle of explaining her own happiness, so that Roger had to pick up the thread. Dad would have made fun of her, especially given such a public opportunity, and I started falling for Roger then, when he paused, smiling, and asked her a question to get her started again. pulling her closer to him. Like Liam can be - gentle.

In the story, The Alchemist, a young Shepard named Santiago went looking for treasure. He traveled the world to fulfill his Personal Legend. On his way, he meets and falls in love with a beautiful and exotic woman named Fatima." “He says to her, ‘So I love you because the entire universe conspired to help me find you.’ Noah and Arie, I can assure you that like Santiago and Fatima, the universe conspired to help you two find each other." “I wish you a lifetime of more love than anyone could dream of and more happiness than the grains of sand on earth.

A love fated in the stars.’ As I sat there, watching the happy couple seated on the wedding platform and listening to the toast, I remember thinking to myself there wasn’t a chance in a million that I would ever encounter ‘a love fated in the stars’.

At Emma’s wedding, while we are eating the white cake together after my toast, she says, “Do you hate me for being pregnant?” And I tell her the truth. I feel that her child, in a lesser but still crucial way, will be mine, too. —

tasting the four elements (yoruba) In a ritual adapted from a Yoruba tradition, the bride and groom taste four flavors that represent different emotions within a relationship: sour (lemon), bitter (vinegar), hot (cayenne), and sweet (honey). By tasting each of the flavors, the couple symbolically demonstrates that they will be able to get through the hard times in life and, in the end, enjoy the sweetness of their marriage.

THE MOST FAMILIAR wedding rituals can transform themselves into meaningful traditions when it’s your wedding. The tossing of the bouquet, dancing with relatives you haven’t seen in years, the achingly embarrassing toasts…I wanted it all, and I loved every minute of this Christmas wedding.

Guests came and went as they pleased, filling their gold-banded plates with hot breads, poached eggs on toast, smoked quail, fruit salad, and slices of charlotte russe made with sponge cake and Bavarian cream. Footmen crossed through the entrance hall as they headed outside with trays of coffee, tea, and iced champagne. Ordinarily this was the kind of event Cassandra would have enjoyed to no end. She loved a nice breakfast, especially when there was a little something sweet to finish off, and charlotte russe was one of her favorite desserts. However, she was in no mood to make small talk with anyone. Besides, she'd eaten far too many sweets lately... the extra jam tart at teatime yesterday, and all the fruit ices between dinner courses last night, and that entire éclair, stuffed with rich almond cream and roofed with a crisp layer of icing. And one of the little decorative marzipan flowers from a platter of puddings.

As i take my place at the microphone, a hot flash of nerves spikes, washing away my previous desire in an instant. But I speak from the heart, wishing my sister a lifetime of happiness and threatening her new husband with death and dismemberment if he so much as says one mean word to her. He smiles like I'm kidding, and I slash a line across my throat with my thumb to show that I'm dead serious.

Dashing by Maisie Aletha Smikle On my farm I keep a firearm The deer I charm And then disarm To feed my family venison And stay away from medicine Sheep so sweet We love to eat Young lambs we chop To get lamb chops Pigs in wigs Dished their wigs to do a jig Pigs skinny dip Floated and strip So turkey chicken and rabbit May be covered with bacon strips Cows roaming in the valleys Cats left in the Alleys Bring the cows It's time to chow Beef for steak Make no mistake Mince it grind it chop it We must have it We plant dashene To cook and steam To feed the animals so they keep lean Fit and ready to consume Eat we must Or we'd be dust Knead the dough for the pie crust Get the pan it will not rust We will dine Without wine We will roast eat then toast Thanking God that He is our Host

The advantage of the Reynolds scandal was that I no longer had anything to hide. I found satisfaction in my work—and in Alexander’s. For on the Fourth of July, we’d toasted the state legislature’s passage of a law establishing the gradual abolition of slavery.

Growing up outside of Philadelphia, I never wanted for diner food, whether it was from Bob's Diner in Roxborough or the Trolley Car Diner in Mount Airy. The food wasn't anything special- eggs and toast, meat loaf and gravy, the omnipresent glass case of pies- but I always found the food comforting and satisfying, served as it was in those old-fashioned, prefabricated stainless steel trolley cars. Whenever we would visit my mom's parents in Canterbury, New Jersey, we'd stop at the Claremont Diner in East Windsor on the way home, and I'd order a fat, fluffy slice of coconut cream pie, which I'd nibble on the whole car ride back to Philly. I'm not sure why I've always found diner food so comforting. Maybe it's the abundance of grease or the utter lack of pretense. Diner food is basic, stick-to-your-ribs fare- carbs, eggs, and meat, all cooked up in plenty of hot fat- served up in an environment dripping with kitsch and nostalgia. Where else are a jug of syrup and a bottomless cup of coffee de rigueur? The point of diner cuisine isn't to astound or impress; it's to fill you up cheaply with basic, down-home food. My menu, however, should astound and impress, which is why I've decided to take up some of the diner foods I remember from my youth and put my own twist on them. So far, this is what I've come up with: Sloe gin fizz cocktails/chocolate egg creams Grilled cheese squares: grappa-soaked grapes and Taleggio/ Asian pears and smoked Gouda "Eggs, Bacon, and Toast": crostini topped with wilted spinach, pancetta, poached egg, and chive pesto Smoky meat loaf with slow-roasted onions and prune ketchup Whipped celery root puree Braised green beans with fire-roasted tomatoes Mini root beer floats Triple coconut cream pie

My wife and I can't recall how many years we've been married, but we'll never forget our first backpacking trip together. We'd just begun dating and I was her trail-hardened outdoorsman, a knight in shining Cordura, the guy who could handle any wilderness emergency. She was my...well, let's just say I was bent on making a good impression. This was her first backpacking experience and I wanted to have many more with her as my hiking partner. I'd checked and double-checked everything--trail conditions, equipment, weather forecast. I even bought a new stove for the occasion. We set off under overcast skies with packs loaded and spirits high. There was precipitation in the forecast, but it was November and too early for snow, I assured her. (Did I mention that we were just a few miles south of Mount Washington, home to the worst, most unpredictable weather in the Northeast?) As we climbed the few thousand feet up a granite ridge, the trail steadily steepened and we strained a bit under our loads. On top, a gentle breeze pushed a fluffy, light snowfall. The flakes were big and chunky, the kind you chase with your mouth open. Certainly no threat, I told her matter-of-factly. After a few miles, the winds picked up and the snowflakes thickened into a swirling soup. The trail all but dissolved into a wall of white, so I pulled out my compass to locate the three-sided shelter that was to be our base for the night. Eventually we found it, tucked alongside a gurgling freshet. The winds were roaring no, so I pitched our tent inside the shelter for added protection. It was a tight fit, with the tent door only two feet from the log end-wall, but at least we were out of the snowy gale. To ward off the cold and warm my fair belle, I pulled my glittering stove from its pouch, primed it, and confidently christened the burner with a match. She was awestruck by my backwoods wizardry. Color me smug and far too confident. That's when I noticed it: what appeared to be water streaming down the side of the stove. My new cooker's white-gas fuel was bathing the stove base. It was also drenching the tent floor between us and the doorway--the doorway that was zipped tightly shut. A headline flashed through my mind: "Brainless Hikers Toasted in White Mountains." The stove burst into flames that ran up the tent wall. I grabbed a wet sock, clutched the stove base with one hand, and unzipped the tent door with the other. I heaved the hissing fireball through the opening, assuming that was the end of the episode, only to hear a thud as it hit the shelter wall before bouncing back inside to melt some more nylon. My now fairly unimpressed belle grabbed a pack towel and doused the inferno. She breathed a huge sigh of relief, while I swallowed a pound of three of pride. We went on to have a thoroughly disastrous outing. The weather pounded us into submission. A full day of storm later with no letup in sight, we decided to hike out. Fortunately, that slippery, slithery descent down a snowed-up, iced-over trail was merely the end of our first backpacking trip together and not our relationship. --John Viehman

I’VE ALWAYS FOUND that parties are better on rainy nights. I think it’s because bad weather weeds out the ambivalent, the uncommitted. To leave the house in a storm, you must do the work of finding an umbrella or preparing yourself for a soaking. This requires faith that leaving your dry house will pay off, that you will travel through the cold, dark, unwelcoming night and end up somewhere better than where you left.

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And at last I realized why I’d struggled so much with the toast, why my speech had always felt so false and phony. I suppose deep down inside I had never believed a word of it.