Hold on, let me do the math to make sure I am getting the numbers right…
17 years ago today, my best girl and I stood on an alter in front of most of the people we know and pledged our love for each other and said “I do” and got married.
That’s right, folks. Today is our wedding anniversary. Happy anniversary to my brilliant, beautiful, amaze amaze amaze bride Jen. I love you, sweetie. I love you a little more each day, and after 17 years that’s a whole ton of love!
18 years ago today I got down on one knee and asked the love of my life if she would marry me.
Even after all this time, I am still shocked that she said yes. I mean, I knew she was going to say yes. We had talked about it quite a bit before the moment actually came. It’s just that I had lived 37 years being solidly convinced that I was never going to find anyone and I was going to be alone forever and then suddenly here I was popping the question and getting a “yes” in return. It was fucking amazing.
I don’t think we’re doing anything special to celebrate our 18th proposalversary. I’m planning on making hamburgers for dinner, which is always cool. I do tend to set off the smoke alarms when I cook burgers in the kitchen though. Cross your fingers for no issues.
Tomorrow evening we’re going to see a Star Wars movie because my childhood obsession still burns brightly and I cannot function in a world where a Star Wars movie is in the theaters and I have not seen it. Here’s to The Mandalorian and Grogu. I have remained utterly free of spoilers and reviews thus far. I just have to stay that way for about another 31 hours. Cross your fingers for no spoilers.
Yesterday I tried to use a post here to alter space and time so that my film photos would get developed, scanned, and uploaded to The Dark Room’s site. It didn’t really work. If it had the pics would have been available immediately. Instead, I got the notification overnight. It was after 1:00am, which means someone in California was putting in a late night. Your hard work is appreciated. I won’t be able to share anything until I get them downloaded, run through Apple Photos, then uploaded to Flickr. Suffice to say, my new camera works.
In closing, allow me to stand in front of the universe of the interwebs and once again declare my love for my bride, Jen. I would propose to her again in a heartbeat. I love her like crazy. Our actual wedding anniversary is a little more than a week away. Another chance to shout my love from the virtual rooftops.
Love you, sweetie.
Today is tax day in the US. It’s also my dad’s birthday. Of course he was a tax accountant. It was his destiny. I miss him a lot.
Today is also the anniversary of the opening of Fenway Park. Also fitting for Dad’s birthday.
It’s the anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s death. He was shot on the 14th and died the next day. My dad was a bit of a civil war buff.
It’s also the anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. I don’t think Dad ever saw that movie.
Google April 15th. For some reason there were a ton of Earth shattering events that happened on that date. It’s weird in a cosmically weird way.
This has been quite the big weekend and it has very little to do with a zombie who gave up his weekend for our sins. But I digress.
Today, April 5th, is the 19th anniversary of my first date with my wife. Clearly she wasn’t my wife at the time, but it was a pretty good first date. Very successul. We celebrated by going to a matinee. We saw Projet Hail Mary again. It was my second viewing and her third. Great movie. If it is playing on an IMAX screen anywhere near us next weekend we might go see it one more time.
After the movie, Jen made a fancy easter/first-dateiversary dinner and it was wonderful. We ate at the dining room table like civilized people instead of slumming it in the living room in front of the TV like usual. It was a very nice moment.
Yesterday we had my in-laws over for a pre-easter easter dinner. Jen made lasagna. I don’t like lasagna so she made me some pasta on the side. She’s the best.
After dinner I hopped in the car and headed to Boston to see a show. Throwing Muses. It was a fantastic show. I was feeling kinda negative at first. I was feeling like I’m too old to go to shows in bars. Two songs into the Muses set though my whole universe changed. By that time I was actively trying to think of a world where I could see Throwing Muses live every day for the rest of my life. It was magic.
There was one negative though. Halfway through their set I got a nose bleed of all things. Not just any nose bleed, but a massive, gushing nose bleed. It was everywhere. I looked like I was living through a horror movie. Gore.
To summarize, it’s been a very good weekend. I’ve been nuts about my wife for 19 years now and I just keep getting nuttier and nuttier as time goes by.
Now, a few pics from the show last night.
16 years ago today was a good day. A very good day. A life affirming, life changing, brilliant day.
Happy anniversary to the love of my life, Jen. 16 fantastic years, and the best is yet to come. I love you more each day.
Woah, boy… today… am I right, or am I right?
The stress level today has been through the roof. The contractor experience went off without a hitch, but the first half of the work day was… woah.
We caught a customer issue before the customer did and went into a mad scramble to get it straightened out for them. It took a little while to get a band aid in place but now we’re dealing with figuring out how to stop it from ever happening again while also talking the customer down from their panicked state. The code/app that my team is responsible for is downstream from the actual cause of the problem. It didn’t happen in our piece of the system, but it did present itself to people using our piece of the system. Yikes is the word of the day. Everyone involved, both on my company’s side and on the customer’s side, did a bang up job getting everything straightened out, and I bet that when the dust settles we’ll all agree it wasn’t that big of a deal… but for the moment. Yikes.
Back to the home owner situation, two more contractors are coming tomorrow. One is a plumber who will put everything that was taken apart today back together again. The other is just a routine maintenance thing. I will be in the office for both of them though. I am thinking about trying to find a way to be able to stay home for all of it. I don’t want my wife to have to deal with either thing. If I work from home tomorrow it means I will have to be in the office three days next week…….. yeah, I think I am going to work from home tomorrow. Command decision made. Three days next week.
On an unrelated note, today is the anniversary of my Uncle Johnny’s death. It’s been 17 years. He was godfather to both me and my sister. He was my father’s only sibling. He had a tough life but he overcame a lot of awful shit. He was good people and I love him and I miss him. I wish he could have known all of our kids. He would have been proud, I know it.
Okay. Back to the stress. Look out below!
Today is an important anniversary for me. It was five years ago today that my company’s Covid-19 pandemic response went into effect. March 13, 2020 was the last day we worked in the office. We were told to clear out anything we needed for our work day (I had a desktop machine at that point so I packed it up and took it home) and to clean off our work areas as much as possible. The operations staff was going to disinfect the hell out of all of our buildings during our two weeks of working at home.
Two weeks. That was the plan. Sure, it was a tentative plan as no one had any idea what they were doing. We thought we’d lock down for a few weeks in order to give medical staff a chance to get out in front of things and then we’d be okay. Two weeks turned into years (plural). Things are more or less back to normal now, though we’re still working from home more often than working in the office. I’m on a laptop now instead of my desktop, and the building I cleared out of on 3/13/20 has been sold. I’m sitting at my desk in a different building, but still with the same company. The higher ups have made it pretty clear that they’d like us to be in the office more often, but the rank and file are pretty adamant about working from home more often. It’s a confusing situation and we’re all doing our best to accommodate everyone else.
I still wear a mask sometimes. Not often. Mostly when I am feeling a little under the weather and need to leave the house. I’ll put on a mask to keep everyone else safe. That’s what the maga cult never understood. It was never about keeping yourself safe, it was about keeping others safe. The maga cult is too selfish to do that particular piece of math. They don’t care about other people at all, only themselves. Whatever. Fuck them.
Just for fun, I went back and read everything I posted on that day. It included a photo of an empty parking lot at work. That was cute. I also wrote this:
So Harry has high school classes at home, Bellana has college classes at home, Jen has work from home, and ol’ Robbie has work from home. All for at least the next two weeks.
It’s going to be tough having all of us trying to work at the same time. We’re going to get in each other’s way and we’re going to get on each other’s nerves, and if everything works out the way we want we will look back on this and see it as a successful waste of time. A little sacrifice today will lead to an easier time for our health care professionals in the coming weeks. That’s the goal at least.
We’re all in this shit show together, and we are up to the challenge.
Who would have thought that “a little sacrifice” was more than half of america was willing to give. Okay, instead of reminiscing here I find myself absolutely pissed off. I should have seen that coming, just like I should have seen everything coming.
Happy fifth covid-aversary everyone.
Four days ago, November 18th, was the 16th anniversary of the start of this blog. Sort of. It was the 16th anniversary of the start of the blog I had on blogger.com that was moved to wordpress.com in 2012 and then moved to medium.com for a while and then moved to a new wordpress.com at some point in time that I don’t remember. 11/18/08 was the day that I started a blog that was public facing, so that’s the anniversary date that I celebrate here. Before that I had private posts on myspace. Before that (briefly) I had private posts on yahoo360 (remember that one? No? Neither does anyone else).
Allow me to celebrate the 16th blogiversary with a picture of a cat because what the hell else would I post to honor an anniversary?
Today would have been my parents’ 57th wedding anniversary. Instead it is the second wedding anniversary since my mother passed away. It’s a sad day, but it’s also a happy day. I need to call my father and just tell him I love him.
Credit where credit is due, my cousin Erin took these two photos at my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary party back in 2017. Thanks, Erin!
Inside the Red Head's Head 