Married

On July 14 I married the lovely Hannah (aka Cupcake Girl) here in Arlington at the Ft. Myer Old Post Chapel:

True to her alias, we even visited a couple of the local Cupcake shops. We stopped by Georgetown cupcake (Preordering so we could skip the massive line). They were nice enough to also give us a dozen cupcakes.
We also stopped by Baked and Wired (my personal gtown favorite):

then walked over

And visited Sprinkles

And because she worked there for 3 years, we also stopped by cakelove:

Then it was off to the reception at the Shearaton Pentagon City, where we were blessed by a rainbow:

And then partied the night away with good food, drink, and tasty desserts surrounded by friends and family.

So much fun, that you didn't want it to end, but in some ways you did because the moment you stopped you realized how absolutely tired you were.

Assassin's Code

Zombies, werewolves, secret societies (ala Illuminate), super-virus's and even a dragon (all of course with a mostly super-science edge, not paranormal). So the one obvious missing item in our paranormal ecology is vampires, so this book deals it out in spades. As I have read the books in this series the one thing I kept thinking is that the only person who seems to be having a worse day would have been Jack Bauer from the TV series 24. Then I remember the first line above and I am going to have to have to declare that Joe is definitely having a worse time that Jack.

Assassin's Code kept me alive, as I listened to it on a long drive where I was quite tired, but there was no way that I was going to fall asleep and miss what happened next. As it often happens in this series it starts of strong and keeps up the action (with one exception, the interludes to the historical events that provide some of the back story on the organizations) to the explosive crescendo at the end.

Joe, Ghost and Echo Team are in Iran, rescuing some wayward hikers that have been kidnapped by the Iranian's. On their way out they Joe is isolated and forced, by a mysterious sniper team, to meet with the head of Iran's Intelligence organization who provides some specific information (and some generic background stuff) about 7 (big, multi-megaton) nuclear weapons that are being staged around the Middle East as well as possibly in the US.

So without rest Joe and the DMS are thrown into a desperate search to find and disarm those weapons. Along the way we run into the Red Order (a secret order of Vampire Assassin's), a secret anti-vampire organization and even the Holy Inquisition. It even incorporates one of the historical question marks that have confounded scholars for decades, the Voynich Manuscript. This really is some great fun and anytime you stop for that book reading interruption thing called life you feel the twitchy need to get back to it ASAP.