2006 End of Year Review, Part 1
“It’s time again for another year-end roundup. Since I’ve had such conspicuously long absences, I figure this one should be more informative and significant than ever. Assuming, of course, that anyone is still reading my journal.
“For the record, while I do write this journal for my own future benefit, I’m certainly not the only audience member this is intended for. I would not be a good blogger if I was. I’ve grown over time to love living completely without secrets in my life, and I love it when others read and comment on what I write here. Even silly comments like ‘Sanjuro roxxors my boxers’ are fun to read.
“Just when I think my previous year was packed and my life couldn’t get any more dramatic, I have a year that tops it. It almost feels like I’m tempting fate to do even worse.
“Like last year, this is going to be long enough to require me to split it into sections:
Part 1:
Last year’s events actually started on Halloween the year before, when I moved from the warrens to the beach tower. It was a definite step up from the wallowing misery of living with that family. (better off alone, as it were) But even after moving in with the help of my brother and father, it couldn’t help but feel like I was living in a barracks.
That was the way life was when Sparrow came to live with me that December. We spent a brief time with my mother, but we came back to this grim little barracks.
You can imagine, then, what a surprise it was to come home one day during the first week of January to find Sparrow had transformed the place.
In many ways, this year became a series of demonstrations of talents I never knew Sparrow had. For example, when we started taking Lindy Hop classes, she took to learning a new dance faster than many professionals. Every so often, she would surprise me. Over time I came to expect this enough to never underestimate her, especially in the realms of athletics. (It’s kind of funny to think I married an athlete without knowing what she really was.)
Which does bring me to the wedding itself. It had been many months in the works since I had proposed to her last year, but the final plan came to be that we would have to have two separate weddings: one legal contract signing in January (to be within Sparrow’s 3 month visitor’s visa), and another in summer to give us and our families time to prepare properly.
It would be at a choral concert where I would meet the lady who married us. She was a dear old friend of my aunt the Ogre Mage, and an acquaintance of mine. That evening after the concert, the Ent Arbiter told me her specialty in law was divorce proceedings. I joked that I hoped I would never need her services. That was when she told me she also did marriages. So I ended up hiring her on the spot.
The contract ceremony took place in January. When my mother got wind of my plans for the first wedding, she rained down holy hellfire upon me for not having her there for ‘the first marriage of her son’. It took a couple of days of hard negotiation to talk her down and convince her that the proper ceremony would be in May, and this was a contract signing required by emigration law.
The wedding itself was pretty simple-the Ogre Mage’s back garden, leopard print linen decorations and a Chinese teak altar, and four witnesses (two of which were dogs). Actually, looking back it was strangely fitting, and a fantastically happy day. I felt like Sparrow’s and my life was finally moving forward.
The day after, sparrow became ill, and I started work again.
“For the record, while I do write this journal for my own future benefit, I’m certainly not the only audience member this is intended for. I would not be a good blogger if I was. I’ve grown over time to love living completely without secrets in my life, and I love it when others read and comment on what I write here. Even silly comments like ‘Sanjuro roxxors my boxers’ are fun to read.
“Just when I think my previous year was packed and my life couldn’t get any more dramatic, I have a year that tops it. It almost feels like I’m tempting fate to do even worse.
“Like last year, this is going to be long enough to require me to split it into sections:
Part 1:
Last year’s events actually started on Halloween the year before, when I moved from the warrens to the beach tower. It was a definite step up from the wallowing misery of living with that family. (better off alone, as it were) But even after moving in with the help of my brother and father, it couldn’t help but feel like I was living in a barracks.
That was the way life was when Sparrow came to live with me that December. We spent a brief time with my mother, but we came back to this grim little barracks.
You can imagine, then, what a surprise it was to come home one day during the first week of January to find Sparrow had transformed the place.
In many ways, this year became a series of demonstrations of talents I never knew Sparrow had. For example, when we started taking Lindy Hop classes, she took to learning a new dance faster than many professionals. Every so often, she would surprise me. Over time I came to expect this enough to never underestimate her, especially in the realms of athletics. (It’s kind of funny to think I married an athlete without knowing what she really was.)
Which does bring me to the wedding itself. It had been many months in the works since I had proposed to her last year, but the final plan came to be that we would have to have two separate weddings: one legal contract signing in January (to be within Sparrow’s 3 month visitor’s visa), and another in summer to give us and our families time to prepare properly.
It would be at a choral concert where I would meet the lady who married us. She was a dear old friend of my aunt the Ogre Mage, and an acquaintance of mine. That evening after the concert, the Ent Arbiter told me her specialty in law was divorce proceedings. I joked that I hoped I would never need her services. That was when she told me she also did marriages. So I ended up hiring her on the spot.
The contract ceremony took place in January. When my mother got wind of my plans for the first wedding, she rained down holy hellfire upon me for not having her there for ‘the first marriage of her son’. It took a couple of days of hard negotiation to talk her down and convince her that the proper ceremony would be in May, and this was a contract signing required by emigration law.
The wedding itself was pretty simple-the Ogre Mage’s back garden, leopard print linen decorations and a Chinese teak altar, and four witnesses (two of which were dogs). Actually, looking back it was strangely fitting, and a fantastically happy day. I felt like Sparrow’s and my life was finally moving forward.
The day after, sparrow became ill, and I started work again.