One of the nice things about marrying a person you've known for six hundred bajillion years is that there's a pretty good chance his parents still live in the town where you met. My parents used to live there too, of course, which makes any visit back an exercise in fitful nostalgia. There's your old house, says Sean as we drive past it, and I crane my neck to peer into the kitchen. That's where my brother and sister used to wait for the school bus. There's the store where we bought our bread and our milk.

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Your eyes do not deceive you, I do indeed have a new website. Well, not a new website; more like a gently and professionally buffed-up one. A redesign, I believe the kids are calling it, though I prefer to call it a small cosmetic surgery: the equivalent of calf implants, perhaps. Just a little boost!

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One of the things I wasn't expecting about marriage is how soon afterwards you start thinking about having kids. I'm sure it's not this way for everyone, of course---plenty of people have kids without being married, plenty of people get married and don't want kids---but for me, at least, it's been something of an eye-opener. And when I say it's been something of an eye-opener, I want you to imagine someone dropping a bucketful of ice down the back of my shirt just as I'm starting to fall asleep. That kind of eye opener.

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About a month ago, Sean decided to grow a beard. I don't know why, exactly: maybe because it was winter and it seemed a manly thing to do---Man freezing! Man grow hair! Scarf for little girl, man say!---or perhaps it was a daring sociological expose into the general public's reaction to hirsuteness, who knows? Maybe he just got lazy and decided he was going to stop shaving. (More than likely that last one.)

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The day was magical, no doubt in part because of all the wonderful vibes and love sent along by the Internet. This is one of the very few pictures we have so far---taken by Sean's best man, Tony, who was, as I understand it, quite a hit at the wedding---but I thought I'd post it quickly from the Melbourne Library (what, isn't the library the first place you'd go on your honeymoon?) just in case you were wondering how it all went. As you can tell, it went pretty splendidly.

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Well,  I'm all ready for my trip to the Bahamas on Tuesday. I've bought three different kinds of sunscreen, a package of Dramamine---or Wal-Dram II, as the Walgreens store brand is ominously named (can't you just imagine a pompous stockbroker named Wally Dram the Second?

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Internet, you have been hiding something from me. Seriously, you've been holding out!  I mean, you must have been, because why else would I have made it 29 years---much of them spent living IN ASIA---without ever having owned or used a rice cooker?

That's right, a rice cooker. Have you ever used a rice cooker? Because I used one for the first time last night, and I have to say, I don't think I'm ever going to be the same again.

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So I turned 29 on Sunday, which kind of sounds like one of those fake ages no-one really is. I mean honestly, 29? That's like the punchline to a bad joke some grizzled cashier at the drugstore tells her friends over a Jack and coke: "oh, just turning 29 again!" on her 52nd and 53rd and 54th birthdays. Before I turned 29, I didn't actually know anyone who was 29, and it almost seemed like maybe I'd just skip right over from 28 to 30. Because really, when it comes down to it, what's the point of 29?

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