Tuesday, June 17, 2008

The Honeymoon!

Jonathan and I are now official! We got married on Saturday June 7th (pictures of the wedding reception to follow in about a week) Anyway, because we are now a single family unit we are merging our blogs for time and all eternity into one. As you can see we kept my title and Jonathan's cool "extras." Note the URL: blog.Jonathanclare.com

We got back from the honeymoon on Sunday night after spending a wonderful week in the Mayan Riviera. We stayed at a resort about 20 minutes south of Cancun. This place is amazing! It was very humid but overcast most of the week and breezy which made it not too hot. The ocean is amazingly blue-green and the sand is just powder. The resort also had pools and we spent all week in our swimsuits. We took a day excursion to some Mayan ruins which I will devote another blog to and I got to go swimming in an underground pool. We got massages and spa treatments one day and overate everyday! on the delicious food (another blog will be devoted to this subject as well.) Every night there where performances with dancing or circus type acts. Everyone was very nice to us. In short we had a great trip and were thoroughly pampered the whole time. Here are just a few pictures.
fountain and courtyardmain poolcheck out all the cabanas (prime "lounging by the pool" space)

Another courtyard area--the resort was particularly beautiful at night.
Here's some of the plant life. We noticed when we flew in that the entire region, besides roads and built areas, is covered in dense high vegetation. When driving it is literally a wall of green to your left and a wall of green to your right.When we arrived at our room there were rose petals on the bed and fresh flowers and fresh fruit on the table. Please note our complementary his and hers hats and polo shirts. This is the main temple at Chichen-Itza. We took a day trip to the Mayan ruins and took a ton of pictures. (I'll share those in my next blog--very cool stuff)
Us, on the 'moon.

Monday, June 2, 2008

Captain's Log... Supplemental

Here we are almost at the beginning of another week. I know I talk a lot about time and the perception of it, but seriously; it creeps by so slowly when you watch it and when you are not looking it speeds right past you. It feels like it has been an eternity since Anna and I got engaged, even longer since we first met. These times are so fleeting in my memory, and time has a way of deteriorate memories to mere still images that flash through my mind. I can not blame time alone for this; my memory is not that sharp either… It has not helped that a lot of good memories have been crammed into a small space of time these last couple of months. It seems like there is always something going on. To preserve my memories and keep an accurate time line, I dedicated myself long ago with keeping a journal. Yes, I know we are supposed to do this anyway, regardless of ones own ability to rehash and reconcile the past. But seriously, how many of you out there actually are diligent about writing everyday, or month for that matter?

I found the best way to remain diligent was to keep an electronic journal, I used to keep a copy of it on my computer at work and computer at home, and then on my laptop as well. This allowed me to access it anytime I had a spare moment to record happenings, or as people from Texas would say “Big Do’ins”, in my life. This, of course, has its drawbacks. For one, it was hard to keep the most current copy up to date in all the locations I stored it. Second, it is kind of stupid putting something personal like that on a work computer. As technology improved, and the invention of the flash drive came to be, I solved the problem by keeping my journal on my flash drive, which stays on my keys, that way it was only in one location, and it would always be with me. Plus there was a smaller risk of it being viewed by unwelcome eyes. Now one might say, what happens if you loose your keys… this would be a good question. The file itself is password protected, which does not provide much security in today’s tech savvy world. There was a space of a year were I did not write, and when I went to make an entry I forgot the password… Needless to say I was able hack into the file and retrieve the entries. It does, however, detour the common snooper. You have to really want to see what is inside the file to get in it, and if someone actually does go through the process of hacking into it, I say, enjoy. Hundreds of pages of my own wandering meanderings are all you’re going to get. Rats, I got side tracked again. Anyway, I back up the file every other week so if I did lose my keys, the loss would not be that great…. Well, except for the fact that I would have lost my keys at the same time. Car keys are extremely expensive to replace now-a-days. The remote and key set costs over a hundred bucks to replace. So I guess that would be a big loss, that and if I lost my keys and I was in the middle of nowhere.

The point! The point is that keeping an electronic journal on me at all times has helped me keep track of my past, and stayed the deteriorate process of time. As I have reflected back on my entries, I am grateful to have records of what was going on, and how the events of life have played out. It is amazing how far back it seems now; kind of funny to read how I was feeling at the time. So a message to everyone, keep a journal, especially during the eventful times of your lives. Good or bad, you will appreciate going back and seeing how you felt at the time. Either you will strive to feel like that again, or you will be grateful that you are not feeling that way now.