Back from Hawaii! I've got to say that being married is the best. We've been busy setting up our apartment and have become frequent guests at our next door neighbor's place, IKEA. If you have any interest in talking to this happy couple, I'm sure if you wait outside IKEA's glass doors long enough, you will eventually see over-excited Melissa and good-sport Christopher wheeling a cart stacked with things for him to put together. Lucky I married a patient man.

Besides the apartment, we are back to work and feeling a little blue about it. So to cheer myself up, here are some Hawaiian highlights. Enjoy.

  

--having to say Aloha at least 3 times at each event at the Polynesian Cultural Center until we reached the entertainer's enthusiasm satisfaction.

--playing with the sea turtles and swimming with the dolphins.

--seeing a couple dressed to the limits of tourist style (complete with matching flower print shirt and shorts for the woman, fisherman hat and fanny pack for the man) in two different locations on two different days.

--getting a worthwhile sugar headache from a strawberry shaved ice/vanilla ice-cream treat at Matsumoto's in Haleiwa.

--playing on boogie boards in the ocean with Christopher.

--having a husband who loves me enough to help me build a sand castle replica of Thomas Cole's Course of the Empire series complete with snapshots of all five phases...Savage State, Arcadian State, Consummation, Destruction, Desolation...yeah, we already made fun of ourselves enough thanks.

--eating stuffed shrimp at Jameson's overlooking the ocean.

What a great trip.

here we go!

Time to get married! Well, we actually have an inauspicious thirteen days, but we're getting close. Needless to say, we are very very happy. It is so strange that life is normal, and then you decide to get married. Things stay normal, other than a sparkly ring on your left hand, and an ever-present guilt caused by years of swearing that you will never worry about the colors at your wedding celebration, and then actually wanting to cry when the paper store runs out of chartreuse and you're stuck with olive. But one day, you walk into a pretty building with your special friend of choice, someone says a few words, and presto! Everything is different. New ward, new apartment, new utensils, and new kitchen appliances you never knew you needed. Also, you have a new roommate. A boy... And the thing is, semesters, contracts, and study abroad have no effect on the longevity of this roommate experience. No, it doesn't matter if they always forget to rinse their macaroni bowl, or if they use your toothbrush. You can't move home, or politely decline to sign up with them again in the fall. Which is why I'm really lucky that my roommate is Christopher. Because we'll make up for each other's weird habits, I think. I'll let him beat me every time in scrabble, and in return, he'll let me steal his sweats. We'll learn how to use those exotic kitchen appliances together. Everything will work out, just like he's been telling me all along.

Some luck lies not in getting what you thought you wanted but getting what you have, which once you have got it you may be smart enough to see is what you would have wanted had you known. --Garrison Keillor, Lake Woebegone Days

I made this blog today. When it came to the section where I had to name this thing, I panicked. What clever, witty, charming, appropriate title could become the name of my blog, which I am not even convinced I want yet? So I opened my Latin textbook and found that mensa secunda means dessert. Perfect. Thank you, Professor Frederick Wheelock.