Indulge Your Shelf

Our vacation at the Blue Bay Villas in Puerta Plata, Dominican Republic was more wonderful than I could have imagined.  An all-inclusive, adults only resort, it was sparkling clean and had fresh, delicious food that was different at every meal.  Fish, tropical fruits and juices, hand made desserts -- it was spectacular.  We spent day after day on the beach, which always felt about 10 degrees cooler than the hotel just feet away.  It was "off" season, in the 90's every day, so the beach was completely uncrowded and we had it to ourselves a lot of the time. The skies were blue and we had a few sprinkles on random afternoons that lasted a few minutes, and then one spectacular rain storm that had us all running into the bar!  My favorite days began with waking up, putting on our swimsuits and going to the ocean.  Then sipping coffee under a cabana, and going back to the room a couple of hours later, showering, then going to breakfast.  Then it was usually...

Dennis and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary on June 21 of this year.  We were in paradise on that day... more on that later!  For now, I want to tell you what we did 25 years ago after our wedding:  we made a Time Capsule!  And, when we arrived home from our anniversary trip last month, we opened it! The only thing that I remembered for sure that was in the time capsule was the TIME magazine from the week we were married in 1991.  But, upon opening the container I saw that we'd also saved the San Francisco Chronicle -- our local newspaper -- from our wedding day. It was so interesting to read it; back then, it seems, we were mostly concerned about the environment.  Our main news stories weren't about terrorism, but about technology and all the scientific advances that were becoming a part of daily life. Other things I re-discovered were: the receipt from our wedding cake, a wine label from our pre-wedding trip to the wine country with ...