One year resolutions

We celebrated the first birthday of our marriage in style.  

Happy Anniversary to us! We got off work for the night of the 31st and the morning of the 1st, and we relished every nostalgic second of our time off. The arrival of our lovely wedding photo-album only days before made the nostalgia very easy to capture.

Adam surprised me with an evening dinner cruise aboard the Steamboat Natchez, an historical steamer that has live jazz bands and a buffet dinner to accompany the captain's  tales of the Mississippi over the loud speaker.

The woman on top of the boat is playing a calliope

Adam claimed he had commissioned that grafitti just for me

I had a harder time believing him when he said he also requested to the captain that we pass by the sugar factory so he could tell me I'm "sweeter than the whole factory." Just kidding, he didn't say that.

US govt saving on docking fees by parking side-by-side

Sunset on the Mississip'

Still feelin' the newlywed bliss

It was lovely. After disembarking, we snagged some beignets at Cafe du Monde before heading to our  S W A N K Y hotel, the W.

Nom nom nom

Coolest hotel ever

We went through two bottles of wine without drinking one single glass - the first one smashed to bits on the deck of the Natchez (whoops) and the second was undrinkable. bleagh. Of course, Adam and I have no need of alcohol to party, and we had a fabulous time despite the absence of fermented grapes.

The next morning we copied the Arnold newlyweds by ordering room service for the first - and probably last - time in our lives. We ate breakfast in (our hilariously huge) bed and watched TV for hours, two other things we will probably never do again for the remainder of our year in New Orleans. But hey, one-year anniversaries only come once in a lifetime! ("Just like 2-year anniversaries, 3-years, 4-years..." Adam said with an impish grin)

In closing, it was a magical night and utterly decadent morning.  Can't wait for next year!

I love you, Adam. The song "More Today then Yesterday" by Spiral Staircase definitely applies in our case.


POST. SCRIPT.

I just would like to note that ever since August 1st 2009 and it's glory, it has become clearer and clearer every day just how beautiful and precious life is. Fast forward to August 1st, 2010 --> Now that work has calmed down to the point where I actually leave the hostel every day, I've resolved to be a better communicator. With myself, with my husband and with everyone I know. And I've been doing very well so far, though today was very possibly overkill. (In the past 4 hours, I've replied to 5 emails and 10 facebook messages before screwing up my remaining energy and writing this post. )

Life is beautiful and precious and all that, but it's the relationships I cultivate and cherish that make it so. And that's my goal for this year: cultivating the relationships I have and love. I'm in a job where relationships are created and dropped in 3 days time, over and over again. Maybe some of them will stretch into something permanent and surprising, but I don't want the short-term to become my habit.

That's enough - my brain is communicated out for now. Cheers!

Er.

Well, folks, seems I've totally misjudged how I will be choosing to spend my free time. 30 mins a day for a nostalgic, Korea-themed blog post seemed so... do-able. But it definitely didn't make the cut today: I worked from 6:30am-3:30pm (nonstop), took an hour-long nap, ran a shuttle, went to Office Depot, Home Depot and Wal-Mart to purchase necessities for both us AND the hostel and by the time I'd finished it was dinner time (8:30pm) so we ate and since then we've been canoodling with guests, and promoting good cheer and conviviality as best we can. Now I'm spent-tired-yawning and I still haven't said a word about Korea. YAARG!

But I'm so happy, I don't really feel all that upset about breaking my own blogging resolution. Life is very good here, and Adam and I are living it up. The end.

[More interesting posts than this one to follow in the near future. (promise)]