title: How do I declare a constructor for an 'object' class type in Scala? I.e., a one time operation for the singleton
body: <p>I know that objects are treated pretty much like singletons in scala.  However, I have been unable to find an elegant way to specify default behavior on initial instantiation. I can accomplish this by just putting code into the body of the object declaration but this seems overly hacky.  Using an apply doesn't really work because it can be called multiple times and doesn't really make sense for this use case. </p>
  
  <p>Any ideas on how to do this?</p>