There's actually a long story leading up to the stained glass shop... it was destiny.

I was living with a group of artists in Northern California called the Ooga Booga Bead Band. I had a vision, like an epiphany if you will, that what I needed to do was get married, have kids, buy a house get a Cadillac and live the straight life of a householder. It was something I had never experienced or understood, being "normal", so I set off to accomplish my new found goal.

I left for New York to set up a stained glass factory. I had gotten an offer of tons-of-money to do that so I figured I'd spend a year in NY, get tons-of-money and go to Carmel and get married and settle down.

On my way to NY I went by a lot of old friends' places to say goodbye (two months worth) and when I finally got to Carmel my friends there were freaking out saying they'd been trying to reach me for two months! It turns out a stained glass shop on Cannery Row had closed and they were holding it until they could reach me to see if I would take it over.

I said no thanks I'm on my way to NY cause I need to get tons-of-money so I can move back here and get married and become a normal type guy living a straight life which is my new religious conquest.

A good friend (not the jeweler) talked me in to cutting out the other bit and just staying there to pursue my quest. Within a couple months, I was married, bought a house, had a kid on the way and someone gave me a Cadillac (vintage 1962 CoupeDeVille in showroom condition).

It was fate... it was a bold experiment in conciousness... and the 'straight' part was the only mistake.

You wouldn't believe it, I met my wife on the internet in a guestbook of a music site. Soon we dated for a chat on ICQ also (first time I used it)and then of course met in real life. She came to a event where I was dj'ing, said 'Hi!' and I was lost. We married a year later (last october), still happy. Now we are always making jokes like sending little notes on ICQ. (We are both in the same room at our computers then ) The best thing is we are both pc- and internet maniacs, so no problem in this field. As alredy mentioned we are in the same room when sitting in front of our pc's we can talk a lot of course . I couldn't convince her to buy an OD subscription yet, but well... Okay, both gone to buy a dvd-burner now.

If there were a place on earth I would leave Hawaii for it might be Monteray/ Carmel. Cannery Row... is it still there? I thought I heard it burned down.

GM - it's not the same and hasn't been for over a decade. The whole Monterey Peninsula is turning into a new San Diego. Cannery Row is still there (just asked some friends from there that are visiting tonight, I live in Oregon now). They're trying to put an IMax theatre at one end of the Row and all the shops and restaurants have changed into souless expensive brand-name shopping mall clones. All the cool stuff is gone. Carmel's been culturaly eviscerated and over-run with arrogance. Carmel Valley was forced to succumb to unchecked development of 1,000's of condos and dozens of golf courses.

Hawaii sounds like a nice place though...

'gressey'....good to see nothing's changed...

heh Paul

I met my wife at university. We were doing the same course. One of the first things I told her was that she should let me know if her friend ever split with her boyfriend so I could have a crack. I later found out this didn't go down too well

However, much vodka, pool and late nights on (3 months) we were engaged. 10 years after that we got married. After 9 of those whilst on holiday in Thailand she decided I could afford a better engagement ring. I concluded she wouldn't be brave enough to throw 2 engagement rings in my face, so we got married and I'm even more of a happy man than I way before

I was working as a nuclear physicist at the jet propulsion lab in arizona. I was working late nights on a groundbreaking method for splitting atoms on a subatomic level using a laserlike device to bombard positively charged particles with plutonium ions. It was getting late and I was hungry, so I phoned for some pizza, when the pizza arrived, i was suprised to see a lovely young woman with eyes that wouldn't quit starring at me. She smiled at me and I suggested she could help me eat some pizza. After the pizza she pulled out a sheet of LSD and asked me if I wanted to trip with her, I reluctantly said yes (Remembering my party years at Harvard) and we tripped for the next 12 hours. During this supreme vision, i realized that she was my soulmate and 2 weeks later we married. I also realized that my work in the laboratory was about to possibly change life as we know it by providing mankind with a powerful set of tools that could either destroy the human race or provide knowledge that could make interstellar travel possible by accellerating a fusion drive propulsion system with a plutonium ion beam. Fearing the worst, I sabotoged the whole experiment by changing my mathmatical formulas on the computer and replacing the circuit board in the prototype with a circuit board I removed from a 15 year old pocket calculator. I told my colleagues that such a process is too dangerous to persue and that I nearly had caused a small nuclear holocost. My new wife and I are currently expanding our minds and tripping once a week, while looking for better ways to make our world a better place for all. We have just started a lucrative buisness selling chineese made bicycles in impoverished countries like south africa......Its been 5 long years now and we are still happy love pizza.......

AK

I met my gf through a friend who said - 'You should meet my collage friend, shes just like you, but femail'.. finally, someone who could understand me, so one warm september day, (how did that happen) we went round to her house, by the time we got there it was rainind, and i didnt have a coat
we nocked, she opened the door, she had a recognisable look about here, as if I already knew her, like we had been friends all our lives, but of course i had never meat her in my like, she looked at me, and my mind went blank, thinking of nothing sles to say a just burst out and said 'Im wet', she just looked and said - 'Yes, yes you are', anyway we went inside, played videogames for a bit, I went home that night, and of course ended up back there the next night, watched the excorsist (great movie) we shared our first kiss, she said - 'well, you gunna ask me out then', I did, that was 2 1/2 happy years ago and i love her to peices. she, like me is a genuine child of the eighties, punk, electronica, transformers and he-man, what else could anyone want? - wackaday maybe?

Do that thing, Spinal....
Do that thing, Spinal....
Do that thing, Spinal....
Do that thing, Spinal....
Do that thing, Spinal....

I met my wife-to-be at school when I was 16... I was trying to chat up the girl she sat next to in English class so I guess not all of my considberable charm got wasted!

We've been together now 18 years (gee, more than half our lives), married 11, one 8 year old boy and 24 weeks before number 2 is due.

My husband and I met at church. He was recovering from losing his first wife from cancer and I was recovering from a messy divorce. Pain shared is pain dissipated. We celebrated our 20th anniversary last March.