6/14/02 9:46 AM Eastern

Well I'm sitting here at my desk at Smart Solutions. What a fucking drag it is to come back to this. I'm going to try to cheer myself up by finishing up the honeymoon journal. For the last couple of entries I'll be typing them into an AppleWorks document, which I will then go back into and add all of the earlier entries. This way I'll have a nice document which contains the whole thing that I can use to add to my LiveJournal, as well as sharing with family and friends who don't read my journal. I'll probably add a copy to our wedding book as well.

After leaving the sales center in Everett we proceeded on down to Edmonds where we visited a second center. This one carried the home lines of two different manufacturers, which allowed us to see the homes of a total of three companies just by visiting the two centers. Some of the homes this place carried were even more amazing than the ones we had just visited. They were larger, fancier and much more expensive. We still picked up some literature, though, because we wanted to remember them. We stayed there for a bit less time because we were moving faster this time and because there were less homes to look at. We also spent less time in the office, mainly because the staff wasn't quite as proactive or helpful. Based on those two experiences we'd probably go back to the first one when we wanted to buy a home. All the same, when we move out there we will probably visit several more centers to get a chance to see some more manufacturers' lines.

After that we stopped back at our hotel for a little while before going out to the mall to do a bit more shopping for gifts for people. On the way there we stopped at a store called Lovers Package, which appears to be a chain of stores similar to Ambiance. We looked around for a bit and found the selection to be really great. The staff was also much more professional in their conduct and appearance, which also reminded us of Ambiance. It's nice to know that there is a place like that out there to pick up when Ambiance will no longer be around. After the mall we went out to dinner at a pizza place called Rock or something like that. It was really some of the worst pizza I've ever had. Cafeteria pizza is better. Then we went back to the motel to get some sleep before we needed to get up way too early in the morning.

The next morning (Thursday) we were up by 5:00 AM and on our way to the airport by 6:10 AM. We got there about 45 minutes later, got the car returned quickly and easily and got ourselves up to the desk to get checked in. That went pretty quickly as well and then we moved on to the security gates. I got wanded again and then they went through my satchel. I hope they enjoyed wasting their time looking through 40lbs. of maps and guide books. Then it was Lauren's turn. They didn't wand her, but they did go through her carry on (she had the big one). That took a much longer time and resulted in them finding the letter opener we had bought as a gift and forgotten to check. Shit. Fortunately they came up with a way for her to go all the way back to the gate so that she could check it. That took about 20 minutes, but we eventually got out to our gate and then on to the airplane. From there we had two relatively easy and completely uneventful flights that got us into Cleveland about ten minutes early around 6:20 PM. My mom was waiting for us and we were soon back home enjoying the very enthusiastic welcomes of our cats. That was the best thing about coming home.

And that completes the honeymoon journal. Now it's time to turn around and start typing in the first entry. Yugh.