There are good reasons and bad, reasons that are easy to understand and others that are harder to appretiate. When you put them together you get someone who’s found it hard to find joy in anything. You get me.

Saturday night was an exception. Two days later I’m back in the emotional valley, but the memory of our evening out still has the power to make a smile.

We’d done a little research and found a locally owed little restaurant to try. It turned out to be a treat – a break from the trend where the size of a plate is confused with its quality.

The movie afterwards surprised me, even with all the hype.

At some point I will turn a corner. In the mean time I’m going to try and milk a new memory for a while longer.

Cheryl and I rarely go out alone. We have all the usual excuses: kids, work, and the like. But we also have another thing: an unexplainable attraction to misfortune.

I won’t bore you with an unabridged list, but here are some of my favorites:

• During a summer break from UF, not long after we started dating, we planned a trip to the northeast. A few days before we were supposed to leave I came down with mono. The rest of my family was on a trip up north, so when the A/C went out at our house, and I was incapacitated with fever and nausea, Cheryl and I spent a miserable week in a hot house in Florida instead of the cool air of New England.
• Leading up to our wedding we made tentative plans to spend our honeymoon driving up the east coast to see the capital. I know, not terribly romantic. But what it lacked in romance it made up for in affordability. We were both recent college grads and I was still looking for a job. Plus, we both really wanted to go. Ah, but then at the last minute I got a job (curses!). Naturally I couldn’t get the time off, so… we planned to tag along with some family going to Disney after the wedding (we lived in Orlando at the time so it was on the way home anyway). Getting a job was bad enough, but adding injury to insult – the day after the wedding I got food poisoning. I spent our honeymoon in the ER, followed by the floor of my parents house (where I’d been sleeping due to all the family in town). I don’t remember much from that time, but I have this feeling someone nearby was doing a lot of moaning. I suppose it could have been me… I don’t know.
• I don’t know what our plans were anymore, but right before our thirteenth wedding anniversary I was diagnosed with cancer. Looking back it shouldn’t have been a big surprise.
• Last year we kept it to a simple evening out to dinner, which itself was fine… but it led to an unfortunate event in a stranger’s front yard. I’d tell you all about it, but it’s classified.

Tomorrow we plan to celebrate our fifteenth with a fancy dinner and a movie. Again, pretty simple stuff… but just to be on the safe side, you may want to stay off the streets tomorrow night. I’d feel terrible if you got caught up in something meant for us.

If you’re one of the one or two folks who’ve been coming around for a while, this picture may look a little familiar…

I used an edited version of the above picture as part of the theme for an early version of our web site.

Cheryl loved this photo (below)… for about 1.23 seconds. Then she smacked me for closing my eyes. I wonder if I could Photoshop me some open ones?

It was a nice evening to stop by the water for a few pictures. Looking at those tuxes makes me feel like sweating a little even now. Think ninety degrees, layered clothing, and a determined photographer.

Man, those dresses were really blue.

Photos taken in Tarpon Springs, FL.

I hadn’t thought about it before, but a card that came in the mail today struck me as odd.

“Congratulations!” it said.

I’ve said it to other people on their anniversary – many times. But today, at this moment, it seems off… somehow not quite appropriate. It makes wedding anniversaries sound like some kind of endurance award, doesn’t it? You don’t congratulate someone on their birthday, do you? “Hey, congratulations for living 40 years! Way to tough it out!”

Maybe you’re congratulating me for having the kind of marriage that would last this long, but even that seems a little cynical.

Alright, maybe I’m being a little picky – or I would be if I was completely serious.

Just to be on the safe side, a nice Happy Anniversary will do.