Married now. We've been home for exactly one week as of today.
 The wedding was fantastic. It was held in Promised Land State Park, PA, which is in the Poconos. I take joy in the fact that my wedding was held in a place that a lot of people hold their honeymoon. Eveyone looked fabulous (but nobody cared, everybody was looking at Shannon); the minister gave a nice ceremony, and everyone seemed to think it was pretty nice. It was pretty short, too, which was a Good Thing; there was no air conditioning in the church and it was 90 degrees outside. Add 130 people in uncomfortable pews, and you've got a recipe for disaster if the ceremony is longer than about 30 minutes.
It did make for a somewhat painful picture-taking process. Shannon was miserable through the whole thing, which lasted about another half hour. I'm not used to wearing formal shoes, so by now my feet were killing me, which just added to the fun. This was, by far, the worst part of the whole wedding-reception process.
Then off to the reception, which was held at a place called Erhardt's, right on Lake Wallenpaupack. If you get married in northeastern Pennsylvania, have your reception here. These people really took great care of us. The back wall of the reception hall was lined with windows looking due west over the lake, which resulted in the most breathtaking sunset I've ever seen.
Our party favors were bubbles; we had a small bottle at every place setting. The tone for the reception was set when, during the first dance, some of Shannon's relatives came up and started blowing bubbles at us. Promptly thereafter, I changed into sneakers, which certainly loosened me up, and I think helped set the vibe in the rest of the room. In another highlght of the evening, our friend Juan caught the bouquet, raising some eyebrows among the more conservative of the friends of the family (the rest of our single guy friends prompty drew straws to decide who would propose). We had friends dancing with my mother, with each other, and with us. In short, it was a great party, and everyone seemed to have a great time.
Traveling sucks, paticularly when it involves 3 airports and 2 long car rides. We departed Sunday morning from Promised Land for JFK in NY. This took about two and a half hours; we arrived in plenty of time for our 3 PM flight to San Juan. This flight was about 3 and a half hours, putting us in San Juan at around 7:30. We sat in the bar, had a few drinks, and then hopped on a little prop plane (the Super ATR Turboprop), and 2 hours later landed at Vigie Airport in St. Lucia, which is essentially a long strip of concrete next to a shed, and we were very happy to finally be there.
But we weren't done yet. Still to come was a 24-mile car ride that took 80 minutes in a diminutive passenger van through the windiest roads I've ever seen. We didn't get to the hotel until 12:30 AM, at which point we were very, very sleepy and starting to feel a bit queazy due to the car trip.
Luckily, the resort was the Jalousie Hilton. If you're taking a vacation in St. Lucia, go here. Nestled right between the Pitons, it's a collection of villas overlooking the crystaline blue water of the eastern Carribbean. It's a truly breathtaking place. I'm very glad we got bumped from the Hyatt Regency; I can't imagine a more beautiful place for a honeymoon.
Of course, it helped that we had the best villa in the complex. We were told that we'd been booked in a mountainview villa with no plunge pool, so when the man driving us to our villa at 12:45 AM Monday morning asked us, "Did you request this villa?" we weren't sure what he was talking about. The villa was extremely spacious with high ceilings, a ceiling fan, and flower petals on the bed (which were replenished every day). Walking onto the deck, you're treated with a view of the Carribbean not 100 feet away; look right and there's Petit Piton staring you down (Gros Piton is hidden behind some trees to the left). Look down and, sure enough, there's a plunge pool, which is a private pool about 5x6, 4ish feet deep.
Exhausted though we were, we decided to take a quick dip in the plunge pool to relax after all that travel. So we went in for about 10 minutes, and then decided to go in and get some much-needed rest, only to discover that we'd locked ourselves out. So I drape a towel around myself (yes, we were wearing bathing suits) and start slogging back to the front desk, about 3/4 mile up the hill. Luckily, there was a security guy with a walkie-talkie about 100 yards down the road, and he took care of things for us. We didn't lock ourselves out again.
The only other debacle from the honeymoon was when I went snorkeling on Monday without putting any sunscreen on my lower back (at times I can be profoundly stupid). I'm still peeling. Other than that, we had some great meals, a stunningly beautiful and relaxing sunset sail, a tour to the heart of a volcano, we bathed in mineral springs, and on the last night lay on our deck looking at a brilliant starlit sky. The honeymoon could not have gone better.
The trip back was almost worse than the trip down (imagine 300 Puerto Ricans on a plane watching Gosford Park), this time involving an overnight in New York on my best man's futon in he and his girlfriends' third-floor un-air conditioned apartment in Queens, but we got home fine. I've been slowly but steadily getting back into work, Shannon is looking for both a job and a car, and is beginning to domesticate this place so it's more a home than a bachelor pad.
Over the weekend, we adopted a 4-month old short-haired kitten named Chloe. She got spayed this afternoon, and we brought her home tonight. She seems to be settling in nicely; this is already starting to feel like home.
9:10:12 PM 
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