Hawaii, and things that should not happen prior to the departure for said location.

(Confidential to the anonymous commenter who has his or her panties all in a twist: Yes, I fucking AM married, thanks. It's just that I've been too busy sleeping, eating leftover lobster, and, oh yeah, having sex, to come back solely for the purpose of putting your mind at ease. Alright? Alright.)

So yes, Brad and I did, indeed, get married on Saturday night. It was a lovely evening, at least what I can remember of it, and in spite of the torrential rain that fell throughout the entire thing, I am pretty sure that we had the best wedding anyone has ever had in the history of matrimonial celebration. At the very least, it was certainly the best wedding I have ever had.

Even the weather, which forced our ceremony under cover and subsequently turned the ground under the tent to oozing, gelatinous mud such that every female guest removed her shoes within five minutes, could not put a damper on the fabulousness of the entire thing. There may even be a photograph of me and my friend Kate doing the Charleston with dresses hiked up to display our abundantly filthy feet.

Which leads to the reason for my delay in posting: namely, that we are currently not in possession of wedding photographs which would allow me to do the whole thing justice via blog post.

And I think we can all agree that photographs are an absolute necessity.

So I'm sorry, guys -- I'm married, I swear -- but I'm also photo-less. And therefore, the big recap is just gonna have to wait until I get back from our 2-week honeymoon on the dear little island of Hawaii.

I do, however, have a little something to tide you over in the meantime:

Today, as I attempted to bang out no less than twelve must-do projects in advance of my 2-week absence from the office, my Angry Contrarian co-worker sent me an email that said, "I'd like to meet with you at 5:15pm. Please let me know if that's doable."

"Okay," I wrote back, "But that doesn't leave me much time for edits if you have some changes to the materials I'm writing today."

"No, don't worry about that," he said.

Knowing what I do now, this actually makes a whole lot of sense.

At 5:15pm, with my boss having blithely departed for the weekend ("Have a good honeymoon!" he said) and the other coworkers having left the building, the Angry Contrarian turned to me.

"So," he said. "I just wanted to tell you that today is your last day."

Today is your last day.
I'll give you a couple seconds to let that sink in. God knows I needed them.

It took me a few beats to get my bearings again, during which I stared at him dumbly. My pen, which I had uncapped in order to take notes on any impending assignments, hovered impotently in the air.

"Excuse me," I said, finally, "are you kidding?"

"Well," said the Angry Contrarian, "we just feel that we need someone more... engaged."

There's that word again.

"What the fuck does that even mean?" I said. "I'm doing the work I was hired to do, and I'm doing it well. What's the problem, here?"

The problem, as it turns out, is that my boss has recently decided that he wants to evolve the responsibilities of my position from copywriting -- also known as "the position for which I was hired" -- to more research-heavy and relationship-oriented work -- also know as "something that is not my particular cup of tea". But rather than have a conversation about it, he sent his uptight, prissy, vile little man-servant to fire me.

Without a word of notice.

Today.

That's right, kids -- I have been unceremoniously sacked a mere two days before my honeymoon.

"I'm assuming you realize how extraordinarily unprofessional this is," I said.

"Well, we thought it would be best to do it before you left," said the Angry Contrarian, who was beginning to edge his chair away from mine as though worried that I might beat him to death.

Best for whom, exactly, is somewhat unclear. Certainly not for me -- I can definitely think of ways I'd like to spend my only vacation in more than a year that don't involve the looming spectre of unemployment casting its shadow over the entire thing -- but I suppose that if you are, say, a spineless little man who has no concept of what constitutes appropriate behavior in business, it works very well for you. You know, if you happened to be that sort of gutless wonder. Just saying.

Anyway, this is where I issue a fervent plea for help: I am leaving in 3 days for Hawaii. I will be gone until late September. I am determined not to let my Spineless Boss and his Angry Contrarian Manservant ruin my honeymoon, but on the other hand, I will be rather desperately in need of work when I come back. If you're looking for a good writer -- articles, column, marketing copy, website text, whatever -- get in touch. (Samples of my work, including editorial, ad, marketing and press stuff, can be found here.)

Many thanks to all of you who sent well-wishes for the wedding, apologies for the lousy news, and do keep an eye out for more blogging in another two weeks.

Okay, okay -- you can have ONE picture. (We both look a little shiny, but damn, that was one fine lobster.)