yowza.

So much has been going on that I hardly know where to start. I guess I'll hit the highlights.

I had the honor to attend Martin and Erin's wedding the weekend before last. Here's Martin - courtesy of ABC

He was on "Who Wants to Be a Quarter Millionaire" - well, you know what I mean. But that was only after he had been on the show once before and had the distinction of winning exactly $0.

Not to be cute or anything - but Martin didn't just win the big bucks. He also lucked out in finding the most wonderful person - Erin. And he didn't have to ask the audience, use a 50/50 or phone a friend to know how awesome she is (though we all ended every conversation with him - no matter what it was - with the phrase "you need to marry this woman.")

It was nice in that I also got to spend some time with Melody and Rich - who I almost never get to see - and Lexy and Mike, who I see only slightly more often. Lexy taught me how to polka (which to tell you the truth was something that I always felt lacking in and now I can do it - and so naturally I have forced poor Jim into polka-ing all over the living room, which is very likely illegal in Virginia....)

Then it was back to work for my first real week as a curator. I'm loving it. I spent hours in the library thanks to Cathy and Lester who showed me all the treasures they had unearthed. It's all quite amazing.

The holiday weekend was lovely in that we had nowhere to be (though we spent a lovely evening with Dan and Rachel at their house eating crawfish etoufee and playing movie trivia.)

But I guess the highlight of the weekend was that we *think* we've bought a boat.

I know - how do you not know that you've bought a boat? Well - we put in the credit app, but being a holiday weekend, nothing was working very fast, so we only found out today.

We are boat owners.

Now everyone assumes that we would naturally want a sailboat. But they would be sorely mistaken.

See - we're used to square-riggers. And until we can afford one of those, we'll stick to our little center-console. These fore-aft sails are like a foreign language to me - maybe Captain Ron can teach me...

So anyway - that was pretty great news!

Right now I'm in the fanciest hotel I've ever stayed in (yes - even fancier than the Waldorf-Astoria...)awaiting a press conference in the morning about the USS Monitor.

Keep your eyes posted for the AP story...