how many degrees is that?

When you move to Ottawa, they will tell you that it is a small town masquerading as a capital. Here's my story:

Last night, I had the fabulous pleasure of attending a work colleague's wedding, at the Blessed Sacrament and the Chateau Laurier. SO fabulous. SO beautiful. Amazing time had.

The bride, C. worked in the same division as me, but not in the same unit. Soon after her engagement, we were talking around the lunch table about wedding planning when she looked at me and said, "I think you know my fiance." "Really?" I said. "Yeah," she said. "When I mentioned you, he said you mean Katie Valentine and showed me a picture he had of you." So then he really must know me. Interesting. But HOW?

Turns out, Mrs. Valentine is the groom's godmother - the groom is the son of close friends of the family. Friends we know well. This relationship - that of Husband to groom, J, is referred to in our house as 'God-brother'.

God-brothers, here, are roughly equivalent to cousins. They're definitely extended family. So I was really excited to have C. joining part of the extended family. Everyone needs more cousins - that's how I look at it.

So I was invited as one of the younger Mrs.' Valentine, but with the additional connection of having known C. from work.

As I was sitting enjoying a wonderful dinner, (thinking up and singing all of the bad love songs Husband and I could use to make C. and J. kiss - umm, Tainted Love! Silly Love Songs! (or whatever the title of that is) Bad Medicine!) I was watching an older very well dressed couple singing - a couple I had been watching throughout the ceremony and the evening trying to figure out why the gentleman particularly, with his white hair and wide, happy smile looked so familiar and familial. Discreet inquiry of the groom's mother led me to this conclusion:

I was looking at C.'s Uncle A., who just happened also to be my mother's beloved god-brother. With whom, after the war, my grandparents lived before their first house was built in the Westboro area and when Mrs. Maiden was a toddler.