Sunday, November 14, 2004

It Was Twenty Years Ago Tu(es)day...

...that I had the great fortune and good sense to wed JennySlash. We were married in the Rockville, MD county courthouse by the assistant justice of the peace who as I recall was giggly and wore go-go boots. I got the impression they didn't let her marry people very often. We were attended by a couple of guys that I worked with, Doug W as best man and our friend Dirk as "maid" of honor. We'd known each other for less than six months, having met in Chapel Hill after I'd already committed to transferring to the IBM facility in Gaithersburg, MD. I invited her up for a visit, bribing her in part with tickets to see R.E.M. at the Warner Theater in DC, and she never left. I've never been surer that I was right about anything in my life. And I've never once in the twenty years since thought I'd made a mistake (although there've been a number of occasions when I was pretty sure that SHE had).

In most relationships, here's where I'd be reciting the lyrics to "our song", some sappy sweet love song that would send half of you folks into sugar shock. But our songs don't stand up too well when you pull the lyrics out of context - whenever we could get down there, we were hanging out at a place called Cagney's on DuPont Circle and our songs were (and are) things like the Psychedelic Furs' Heaven, Icicle Works' Birds Fly (Whisper to a Scream), Talk Talk's It's My Life and R.E.M.'s Don't Go Back to Rockville (heh). They all still give us a thrill when we hear them, but lyrically they're hardly your standard love songs. But then I guess we've never been all that standard a couple anyway. I mean, she did give me a huge poster for Joy Division's Love Will Tear Us Apart for my birthday one year and rather than be offended I thought it was one of the coolest presents I've ever gotten. We're both fans of the Monkees, schlocky horror movies and extremely spicy food - we were destined for each other! And we've survived owning a business together and having two houses built, so I'm pretty confident that we're in this for the long haul. As I mentioned a couple of months ago, my Aunt Bertha and Uncle Marion celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary earlier this year - I'm planning on us doing at least as well.

Funny how I find myself in love with you
If I could buy my reasoning I'd pay to lose
One half won't do
I've asked myself how much do you 

commit yourself?

It's my life
Don't you forget
It's my life
It never ends

See? Doesn't really work, but there ya go. Anyway, don't expect to see any more blogviating from me for a few days (not that I've exactly been burning up the Internets the last few weeks - work has been murder!) - I'll catch up with you cats and kittens at the end of the week.