When it was over she called me back - "it was great" she said "you can touch a tiger!" - almost at the same time we said "where was it?"

Neither of us knew - we said goodnight, and I went to sleep wondering how late she'd say up trying to figure it out.

The following morning, when I arrived in the office and checked my email, I had one from Dawnise.  She figured out where it was - a place called Dream World in Australia.  Some sort of amusment park an hour south of Brisbane.

"Ok," I wrote back, "guess we gotta go to Australia."

She thought I was kidding.

If you don't know Dawnise - there's a critical fact missing here - she's an animal nut - and big cats are on the top of the heap in her book.  Touching a living, breathing Tiger was a life dream she never expected to realize.  I knew that I couldn't pass the chance to help her realize that dream - I was completely serious.

It made it even easier since we had never gone on a honeymoon when we got married.  She was in school, I was working, and like most newly weds, we didn't have much cash.  Unlike most newly weds, we weren't willing to be paying off our honeymoon, so we mutually decided to postpone it.  This looked like a good time to me.

A few months later, my project at Open Market was complete, and I was unemployed, with a chunk of money in the form of a "thank you for staying this long and dealing with this shite" bonus and some severence pay to look forward to.

We found an amazing deal round trip air, 10 nights accomidations in three cities, and domestic air between the cities for $1399 per person.  We checked it out a bit, and made the reservations.

Two weeks later, we were in the air, over the Pacific, on our way to Australia, with no plans other than the one day at Dream World.  The rest, we figured, we'd play by ear.
 

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