Returning…

The wedding is finally over. I am absolutely savoring the stark contrast between pre-ceremonial bustle and post-honeymoon lethargy. Rushes of urgency will still, on occasion, sweep over my mind, but the realization that nothing remains to be done before some looming deadline is a sweet, sweet feeling. This, of course, does not count wedding announcements and thank-you cards. We’ll get to those eventually. My wife (what an alien word) and I decided to take our honeymoon vacation in Kauai for one week, leaving another week for rest. The latter description is not quite accurate, given that we spent quite a large amount of that second week opening and organizing the wedding gifts and cleaning up the apartment.

Kauai was a pleasant getaway. The native population of the entire island is less than that of the city where I currently reside, so beaches (and Kauai locales in general) were intimate and undefiled affairs. Contrary to what one might believe, I did not go insane without the use of a computer or the internet for the duration of our stay. I was quite happy to settle into Kauai’s slow-paced, laid-back lifestyle, even if only for one week. Besides, I had my DS with me to subdue those game cravings. (I know – so bad…)

We actually did quite a bit of activity in the course of about five to six days. As you may have read in my wife’s post, we spent an entire day just driving around the eastern side of the island, from our hotel in the southern town of Poipu going counter-clockwise around the island to the end of the highway at the northern edge of the Na Pali coast. We made a lot of little stops along the way, exploring the various towns and landmarks and stopping to wade at random beaches. On other days, we went kayaking up the Wailua River, glimpsed the Waimea Canyon, took a rugged raft ride along the Na Pali coastline, snorkeled around a Na Pali reef, and got some high-class Hawaiian Lomi Lomi massages. And the food was pretty darn good. I’ve posted a few of the better pictures from our vacation on Flickr. Here’s my wife’s favorite:

Some completely random asides – one of the guys on our raft during our tour of the Na Pali coast was an artist working on the PSP version of God of War. I thought that having two unrelated people from the game industry on a raft of about ten people was a funny coincidence. “So both of you are gamers?” asked one of the native-Kauaiian guides. I could hear a hint of ridicule in his voice. I don’t blame him. Playing in a virtual world probably pales in comparison to the beauty they experience daily. But hey, there was a Gamestop in Lihue. I even went inside to see if I could pick up Metroid Prime 3: Corruption or Eye of the North with Hawaii’s 4% tax rate. Sadly, I had no such luck. (I know – so bad…)

Anyway, our second week of vacation is almost over. I didn’t get to write much of anything during the time. I’ve been too busy cleaning and catching up on a lot of things I’ve missed during our vacation. And by “things”, I mean TV and games. But I’m hoping to return to a more frequent blogging schedule. I’ve been playing a lot of things lately (Bioshock, Rune Factory, Guild Wars, and Metroid Prime 3, to name a few) and have been meaning to write something about them, so stay tuned!