sea salt

Our first skydive together, 2008 "You've been skydiving?! Twice?!" This is usually the reaction I get. I went skydiving for the first time in college, and then again when Kevin and I had been dating for about 5 months. Both times were fabulous - and both times I tried to convince people that it's not scary, and that they should definitely do it. At least once. But most people don't believe me. In their minds, skydiving means a terrifying leap, a dizzying frenzy of clouds and screaming, and a potentially body-crushing landing. They couldn't be more wrong. Skydiving has 3 phases: free fall, glide, landing. The free fall is the frenzy - screaming, waving at the camera, whizzing through clouds at a high speed - but it's over in 60 seconds. It's crazy, but it's literally one minute long. The landing, if you lift up your legs, is like going over a speed bump too fast in a car - a little surprising, but over in a flash. The best part of skyd...

In five months, we've made some good friends who have helped us out with everything from airport pick ups to recommending a good car mechanic.  We've appreciated these people all along the way, but didn't realize how much we needed them until this week - house week. It's been a little over 1 week since we moved into the new house, and in that week we added to this extremely important group of people...people to call in a crisis.* I. Moving In the city, moving is like going out to the movies - you know who to call, you know who will most likely be interested, and you know who has their own car.  Kevin and I each had our Boston regulars, people we always called to help us move apartments (usually in and out of 3rd floor walk-ups), for the small price of pizza after the move.  We had the friend with the truck, the friend who could lift a dresser by himself, the friend who was great at organizing boxes in the back of a car.  When we moved into our apartment in Nas...

I arrived early for my appointment at Porter Square Veterinarian, so I checked in and sat next to my cat Lucca, who was crying from his little blue carrier.  The vet came out to see me, apologized for the fact that I'd have to wait, and said, "I'd see him early, but I'm about to euthanize." Suddenly I wasn't grateful that there'd been no traffic, that I'd managed to get Lucca in the carrier in just a few minutes, and that for once I wasn't rushing into the vet five minutes after my appointment.  I didn't want to be around for this, and I didn't want to be the next appointment after the vet had just euthanized somebody's pet.  Dr. Champagne rushed into the back room with the swinging door, and came out a few minutes later carrying a white, medium-sized dog.  The dog's legs dangled from the vet's arms, and despite the fact that he was too big of a dog to be carried on a regular basis, he didn't put up a fight.  He swun...