Nothing like a camping adventure to make a Solar Eclipse Totality even more epic. Since this past January, I'd been planning to travel to the path of totality for the Aug. 21 eclipse. My love had been planning to join me ever since then, too -- since before we were engaged, let alone married. But being married made it a lot simpler, in a sense: Only one tent meant just enough room in the Miata to go camping in it. Again! You might recall a previous camping trip  where I experimented with packing everything I'd need into the tiny Miata trunk. That experiment proved successful, but I wasn't entirely sure if it'd work for two people. More things and a little less space to pack in, right? Can't stick the picnic basket on the passenger seat this time! And then it got even more complicated -- I'd start the journey without him, picking him and his gear up on the way. He was bringing the tent and an additional sleeping bag, not to mention his backpack of clot

OK, so we didn't exactly elope. We just got married a whopping 12 weeks (to the day) after our engagement, around 12 hours from home, with 12 people watching. Close enough? Circumstances being what they are, we had decided to get married in Canada. No, I don't live anywhere near Canada. No, we didn't go to Niagara Falls. It was just a little family gathering in an uncle's back yard. But when you're planning a drive of several hours -- you make it fun. Miata fun! It worked like this: He drove through the night to reach my house, where he parked and we got into my convertible to embark on the journey. I drove most of the way to Canada so he could nap -- we stopped at a Checkers fast-food restaurant for lunch on the way. It's one of my favorite chains, though I know it as Rally's. He'd never heard of the place, so I introduced him to Rally Fries. Mmmmmmrallyfries. Of course, when you're in Canada, you get Tim Horton's. W

Delayed hope makes the heart sick, but fulfilled desire is a tree of life. --Proverbs 13:12 I remember some nights when I was living on my own, I couldn't fall asleep. On some of those nights, I cried, alone in my room where I was safe from the pitying eyes of my friends. I don't like crying in front of people. In college, my longtime roommate -- my best friend there, in whose wedding last year I was maid of honor -- didn't see me cry until two or three years after we met. It's a trust thing, a privacy thing, maybe a pride thing too. And whether it was lack of sleep or hormones or loneliness, on those nights I cried I knew I'd feel better in the morning, that the inexplicable sadness I felt would not feel so ... unbearable? Most of the time, if I cried -- if, once in a while when -- it was late at night, some hours after I'd seen a touching interaction between a friend of mine and their child, or after I'd watched a chick flick. The kind where the