All in all, I think that Jennifer has probably made the transition from engaged to married more smoothly than I have. While I still find myself stopping dead in my tracks from time to time (inconvenient when I’m driving at eighty miles an hour down highway 80) and thinking to myself, "Wow! I’m really married now!", Jennifer says that she doesn’t feel all that different from when we were just engaged and living with each other. Well, okay, perhaps there isn’t that much different on a physical level — we still breathe the same air, live in the same house, and our feelings for each other haven’t changed. But on an existential level, there is a difference between being engaged and being married. I can’t really put my finger on it, but I’m sure that there is. Or maybe I’m just imagining the whole thing.

The hours leading up to the ceremony were hectic and stressful for me, and nothing compared to what Jennifer and her mother had to deal with, what with the seamstress running obscenely late (the ceremony was nearly an hour late because the seamstress was still sewing the groomsmen’s shirts at the last minute and trying to fix the bridesmaids’ dresses which had somehow become far too small between the last fitting and the day of the wedding). Fortunately one of the dancers from the dance troupe that came to perform at the wedding was well versed in Renaissance garb in general and helped all of us men put our outfits on and made sure we looked at least halfway decent wearing them. The only problem for me was that I wanted to take my groomsmen out to lunch before the ceremony, but between one thing and another we wound up having to go to a different restaurant than the one I’d wanted to go to in the first place, and then my best man and I ended up at the church with about one minute to spare.

I don’t remember all that much about the ceremony itself. I remember seeing the flower girl stumble her way down the aisle, upending her basket of flowers and spilling them all out on the floor and then deciding to take a nap midway down the aisle; I remember something about some vows that we exchanged; I remember Jennifer’s father coming close to tears; I remember my best man clapping me on the shoulder just before the ceremony when I confessed, "Now I’m nervous"; and, of course, I remember Jennifer walking down the aisle, glowing in her dress, more beautiful and radiant than I had ever seen her before. I remember standing up with the minister, holding Jennifer’s hand, and falling in love with her all over again.

As her wedding gift to me, Jennifer gave me a new computer, which her brother-in-law (which, I guess, she shares with me now) had put together and built for me. It’s got Windows 2000, Linux, and just about every bell and whistle that I could ever want. And it’s ironic that while I’ve probably spent more time in front of this computer than I ever did in front of my old computer, I’ve found myself with even less time than I ever did to post to this journal. I’ve been merrily learning about Samba and Linux networking to get my new box talking to the network that Jennifer and I have set up in our house, I’ve figured out how to keep our computers with static IP addresses even though our router is set up with a DHCP server, and I’ve even figured out how to use my old laptop computer as a primitive web server in addition to its duties as a file server and a print server. I haven’t yet figured out how to use Samba to print from my Linux box through the old laptop, but I’ve learned how to use my Linux computer to read files from Jennifer’s old Windows 95 machine. That part was easy.

And in addition to that I’ve been spending a lot of time playing this really cool horror FPS game called Undying. Far too much time, I suppose. All in all, I’ve been sleeping a lot less than I should over the past couple of weeks. I only hope that Jennifer hasn’t been feeling neglected.

Not, of course, that Jennifer is any less of a nerd than I am. For our one-week anniversary, Jennifer and I used some of the gift cards we’d gotten from Best Buy and picked up a Sony Dreamcast game station and a copy of House of the Dead 2. We’ve spent many a happy hour together since then shooting zombies and laughing at the cheesy voice overs and smiling warmly at the oozing green blood of melting undead creatures.

I tell Jennifer that her left pinky toe is corrupt and is bent on world domination, which is why that is the only part of her that I don’t love. She just looks at me strangely and says, "Yes, dear," in a strangely condescending voice.

Last night we went with some friends to see Tim Burton’s "re-imagination" of The Planet of the Apes. I can only hope that Tim Burton’s hands were tightly bound while this movie was being filmed, because it’s the first Burton movie that I didn’t like. Well, okay, let me amend that. When I first heard that Tim Burton was going to remake The Planet of the Apes, I thought, "This could be cool." But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I haven’t seen a single remake of a classic science fiction film that I thought was any good. I could give Tim Burton’s version two stars only because it didn’t suck as bad as I thought it was going to. I can only hope that the reason why Tim Burton made this film was because someone in Hollywood had decided that by God this film was going to be made, and Tim Burton stepped bravely forward and said he’d do it. Sort of like the guy who throws himself on a landmine so that other people can live.

The word "re-imagination" should be banned. It doesn’t mean, "A reinterpretation of the original source material." It means, "Not willing to go the extra distance to make the remake anywhere as provocative as the original." Tim Burton’s film was full of gaping holes, inconsistencies that make you question your very sanity, and unresolved plot lines that scream, "SEQUEL COMING!". And there was a twist at the end, but the twist at the end of this film carried none of the power of the twist at the end of the original. When I saw the last few minutes of this film, I wasn’t shocked or surprised or anything… Instead, I found myself laughing out loud. I couldn’t help myself. It was ludicrous.

If you’ve never seen the ending of the original Planet of the Apes and have no idea what it is (which I doubt, since it’s probably the most classic twist ending in the history of science fiction and has become a mainstay of modern American culture), go out and rent it right now. Go ahead, I’ll wait. I just don’t want to spoil anything for you.

…

Okay, so now you know that Taylor, Charlton Heston’s character, was on Earth all along. And isn’t that always the way it is? Just when you think that you’ve landed on another planet, you discover that you’re really at home after all.

Being married is kind of like that… only without the nuclear holocaust and the enslavement of humanity (though I guess some people might differ on that second point). It’s honestly not all that different from when we were engaged, I suppose, but still… something has changed.

And I’m finding it pretty damn wonderful.