here i sit in belize. it's been a full week, as anyone who is reading this can probably attest and probably experienced. marriage, travel and job change, all in one week.

of all the places i've traveled, this is quite possible my favorite. it is exactly what one hopes to find in a caribbean destination, but so rarely does. it is not industrialized, and although it is touristy it feels right that it is so. it has more civic pride than syracuse (perhaps not saying a lot) and feels tremendously safe. tourists co-exist with locals, there is no sequestering of outsiders in order to give them some sort of idealized vision.

we're at an internet cafe that offers free internet with drink purchase; aaron was kind enough to surrender his internet time to me. although it is more likely that he was using it as an excuse for beer.

for some reason everyone feels compelled to take our picture. i've never experienced that before. do we just exude some sort of newlywed aura? not sure. we've already given our e-mail address to two separate groups who want to send us our picture.

aaron is having ring difficulties. apparently this is the first time in his life he's worn a ring, he's constantly afraid he's going to lose circulation in his finger. maybe this is some peculiar form of claustrophobia caused by marriage.

although my big plan here was to dive, i came down with a cold on monday which hasn't yet passed. all last week my mom kept saying "allison, you have to get more sleep! you're going to get sick..." and she was right. so i longingly look at the dive boats while hacking up one more loogie.

we're currently on ambergris caye at san pedro. this is apparently the biggest tourist spot in belize, we figured we'd start here and filter down to least touristy. tomorrow we go to caulker caye.

rum drink's almost gone and the air conditioning is working it's magic.

Countdown continues... Friday is my last day at work, I think Sparky will get initiated this weekend. I'm in the process of cleaning out my office, traumatizing coworkers with my messiness. I move into my SU office tomorrow; I don't really need it yet, but it's so unbearably hot in our apartment that I can't get any reading done. I can't decide if I want my own office w/ not windows (an old photo lab) or whether I want to share an office w/ a window.

I'm also trying to convince Aaron that we need to buy a laptop. I wonder if he'll notice if I just come home with one some day...

The combining of finances is an interesting pursuit. I have found myself spending more money than I should lately, for two reasons. Reason one is that I'm about to have no income; some people would take this a reason to save money, but I, in my infinite foolishness, look at it as a last hoorah. I just checked a calculator that compares military pay to civilian pay (http://www.dod.mil/cgi-bin/rmc.pl). Although I only get taxed on $29,000 a year, this thing tells me I make the equivalent of $52,000 in the civilian world. Damn, this is going to be painful.

Reason two is that soon Aaron will be able to see everything that I put on a credit card. I'm not too terrible, but it's going to take me time to ease back into the student lifestyle. I talked to a lot of happily married friends, and everyone recommended financial clarity, nothing hidden between us. Sheesh.

Okay, time to do work (kind of.)