If you blinked, you missed it. For a brief, 3 minute period today, my webcam was a nudie sexcam.

No, it wasn't me. Stop gagging.

It was Beth. She was up here talking with me, topless, as usual, and I sort of casually aimed the camera in her direction and let fly with the images of my wife's bountiful breasts.

Okay, I'm lying, a little. She wasn't topless, but I did talk her into flashing some tittie for the camera. Five times.

It had to be five times because I was trying to make the cam grab a shot and she was trying to do it without me getting the shot. I kept missing the shot, so I was begging, "C'mon, do it again. Pleeeease?" until I finally got one.

It was a lot like sex night around here, only with a camera.

Just kidding. Sort of.

Anyway, I got the one shot of my wife's boobies (yes, that is an actual medical term) up there on the web. Three minutes later it was replaced by a picture of something else, probably my wife's empty chair.

If you blinked, you missed it.

Monday -- June 21, 1999
Ringwrecked

Tonight, I'll tell you about the time I lost my wedding ring. On my honeymoon.

A lot of men I know don't wear wedding rings. I've never understood that. I'm married, I'm proud of it, and my ring is my way of showing it. It's a symbol of my marriage, of the commitment I've made. In an extreme sense, my ring is my marriage. I sort of feel as though if I didn't wear the ring I wouldn't be married. (Maybe that's why so many cheating married men don't wear their rings -- not to hide their status from prospective ladyfriends, but to hide their status from themselves.) It's not like I never take it off, but I feel weird when I'm not wearing it, sort of at loose ends. The longest I've ever gone without it was one day, when for some reason I left it on the bathroom counter and forgot it when I left for work. I felt weird all day.

So, clearly, I'm a ring guy. I have a lot invested in it. I'd never lose it, right? Ha.

When Beth and I were married nearly four years ago, we honeymooned at Club Med in Cancun, Mexico. Don't get me started on Cancun. I loved it there. Even though we were bookended by hurricanes that season and there was a mosquito invasion on our second-to-last day and it was hotter than blazes the whole time we were there... I absolutely loved it. The sun, the sand, and most of all the crystal-clear water. I can't wait to go back. To Cancun, that is. I can do without another dose of Club Med, but that's a tale for another entry.

Anyway. Club Med Cancun. It was a watersports kind of vacation, and no, I don't mean that kind of watersports. Sure, we took the tours of the Aztec ruins and shopped at the bazaars in town, but we spent most of our time in or near the water. My favorite thing was the snorkeling bay, which I returned to anytime I wasn't doing something else. We also snorkeled a reef out at sea, went waterskiing, and took windsurfing lessons.

Windsurfing. Uh, yeah. Have you ever tried windsurfing? Here's a close approximation: take a bowling ball, balance it atop another bowling ball, balance an ironing board atop that, then balance a tabletop on one corner atop that. And then climb on and balance yourself with all of it in gale force winds while sadistic dwarves kick both bowling balls. Now do it wet.

You tend to fall off a lot.

Getting up on the board isn't that hard, really. What's hard is grabbing the sail and pulling it vertical. You do this by holding a broomstick-thick handle thingie on the sail and yanking it up. You'll get it near vertical and then everything will go ass over teakettle.

I was doing this in waist-deep water about twenty-five yards offshore when my sail tanked me for the umpteenth time. I climbed right back on, and as I almost successfully got my sail vertical, I noticed my wedding ring was gone. The broom handle thingie had hooked it right off my finger the last time I went down. I was ringwrecked.

So I'm standing there on a moving platform, twenty-five yards offshore, in waist-deep water, with the bottom made up of seagrass and sand. And my ring was down there ... somewhere. Oh, this was bad. Losing my wedding ring on my honeymoon held such ill portent that I couldn't believe it. I wondered if this was a sign from on high that I was really supposed to be with the topless French girl from the complex swimming pool the day before.

What else could I do? I jumped off the board, planted myself and hollered to Beth for help. She brought me a mask and snorkel and I started diving for the ring. I wasn't sure I'd lost it on my last dump, I didn't know just where I'd lost it, I sure wasn't sure I was looking anywhere near where I'd lost it, but I looked anyway. I was dealing with soft sand, the push and pull of the waves, tall seagrass, shifting light patterns, and the rest of my windsurfing class going on around me.

Every time I came up for air Beth or one of the people around me would ask if I'd found it yet. I'd say no and go back down. The longer this went on, the less hopeful they sounded. After about 15 minutes they stopped asking if I'd found it and started asking why I didn't just give up and replace it. I didn't bother answering that, I just kept diving.

I couldn't replace it. Couldn't. Even if I did get a new ring, it wouldn't be that ring, it wouldn't be the ring I was married with. Every time I looked at it I'd know the real ring was somewhere offshore in Cancun, maybe found and pawned by some other honeymooner, but certainly not on my finger. That was my marriage down there. Not finding it would be such a bad omen for the future of my marriage that I'd probably screw it up subconsciously. I had to find that ring.

I kept diving for nearly half an hour. And then, finally, there it was, nestled in the seagrass, half buried in the sand, winking at me like a cheeky monkey. I snatched it up, stuck it on my finger, and shot to the surface.

"I found it!" I yelled.

Nobody could believe it. Even I couldn't believe it, a little. What were the odds? We hadn't had our rings inscribed, but mine had some imprinting from the manufacturer, and I triple-checked it to make sure it was my original ring and not some other poor schmuck's I'd found. It was mine, no question.

I think about that sometimes. Just as I would have thought losing the ring on the honeymoon might have meant our marriage was doomed, I also think the fact that I found it against all odds might mean the marriage is blessed. I try not to be superstitious most of the time, but I am a little bit about this. I think it's a good thing to be superstitious about.

At the very least, it makes a good story.