The Honeymooners

For our honeymoon, we settled on Savannah, Georgia. I vaguely remember going there as a kid and seeing all of the live oaks, Spanish moss, and large grassy plains. And so I figured what could be a more romantic spot than a place that resembles a wild African jungle?

We both had a blast and learned a lot about Savannah's history starting off from the first settlers landing there up to modern day. I think my favorite bit of history was the War of Jenkin's Ear which was fought between the Spanish Floridians and the then British Savannahians. Apparently what had happened is that a British sea captain named Jenkin was doing his thing out on the open sea and was headed home to Savannah, but then the killjoy Spaniards boarded his ship and told him to hand over his booty. Jenkin probably said something like, "Can you say that again in my good ear?" which the Spaniards saw as an opportunity for dark humor and lopped his ear off before absconding with the loot.

This went over with the British like passing gas in church. They gathered up as many men and guns as they could and proceeded to route the Spanish while yelling, "REMEMBER JENKIN'S EAR!"

And on that note our historical tour segued into a tour of the places and events featured in "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil," which seeing the actual places and the background of the more colorful characters just made you stop and think, "By God...These people were real and they were *(&!#@ crazy."

While in Savannah we toured the Mercer house, saw several Federal style buildings, and had the most fried food in our whole lives. I thought Paula Deen's restaurant was just ok. It was expensive food that's just a few steps up from the standard fare you could find at a K&W Cafeteria. However, her brother Bubba's restaurant was waaay better. We got oysters and po' boys there, and then trekked over to Tybee Island the following day to go to the crab shack where we had crawfish and crabcake sammiches. 

And so with our heads full of the newly discovered information and our stomachs full of fried low-country cooking we bid adieu to Savannah and drove back to Richmond.

Grind My Teeth

Everybody has their pet peeves, but sometimes it's hard to understand why they're so irritating to us. And sometimes these mysterious pet peeves are so severe that they make us grind our teeth, stamp our feet, and punch walls while onlookers make a wide berth.
One day my loverly wife and I were riding in the car. Naturally I was singing all the hits of George Gershwin and Lara cranked the radio up to drown me out. That is, until a radio commercial for Schwarzchild Jeweler's came on. "...Dining al fresco!....Strappy SANDALS!" the lady intoned. "GAAAAH! I HATE this commercial!" Lara hollered. She then reached over and flicked the radio off and we drove on in silence until  I remembered the words to "It T'ain't Necessarily So."
On the ride back I switched over to Cole Porter and was singing "You're the Top" in my best Louis Armstrong voice and another Schwarzchild Jeweler's commercial came on, but this time a man was extolling the virtues of eating by "the rolling waves of the mighty James river!" Lara's reaction was the exact same, so I crooned "From this Moment On" to get her mind off the commercial. When we got home I just had to ask her why she hated those commercials.
"They're so STUPID and irritating! They come on all the time!"
Naturally, my response was to help her and the way I best determined was to desensitize her to these commercials. When I would pass by her, I would intone in a chipper, falsetto voice "STRAPPY SANDALS!" and in a baritone "the JAMES RIVER!"
She was not amused and sleeping arrangements were made for me on the couch. I decided to abandon the desensitizing therapy and just let the commercials run their course.
A few weeks went by and one commercial kept coming on over the radio that stuck in my craw.
"It means more, when it comes from Cowardin's," the singer crooned. And then a voice came on describing the story of how the jeweler's was founded, "The year was 1865 and Richmond was still burning..."
 It was jarring. Irritating. And most of all, I felt like driving my car into the mighty James river whenever it came on.
So far neither of us has found that panacea to cure us of these irrational pet peeves. Until then, we'll just have to continue singing, grinding our teeth, and gripping the steering wheel whenever we hear "STRAPPY SANDALS!" and "CO-WARDIN'S!"