9 Years

On this night nine years ago, right about the time I'm making this post, I was smoking a cuban cigar and skateboarding through my brother's neighborhood in the nude. With my friends. Not really sure why we ended up skateboarding naked in the middle of the night on the eve of my wedding -- I can assure you it had nothing to do with exploring our collective sexuality -- but I think it simply started with everyone mooning the camera. Not really sure. The point is, is that I was young and rash and a bit immature, but still smart enough to know a good thing when I saw it.

Fresh out of college and staring down the life ahead of us, we knew at an early age that it'd be a lot more fun and a lot easier to tackle it together. And so we did. And it has been.

Two years ago we moved into our first house and sleept on the floor in the living room in sleeping bags. When we woke up that next morning it was our 7th anniversary. It was a wonderful coincidence that it happened to work out that way and, after four moves, we were more than ready to finally own a place of our own. It was the ultimate gift to ourselves.

This year there's no gift giving going on. We made a handshake agreement the other day in the car to "only do cards" and I intend to honor that agreement. It's not hard since we never buy each other anniversary gifts. Instead, I'm going to wake up at 5:45 to go have coffee with Kristin at the neighborhood coffee shop before she goes to work and watch the sun come up over the Cascades. And tomorrow night we're going to head back to the city for dinner at the Dahlia Lounge, one of Iron Chef Tom Douglas' restaurants. And maybe afterwards we'll head to one of the clubs in Belltown for a drink or two, but that's all. Nothing too fancy, just an excuse to go out for a nice meal. Not that we ever really need an excuse, but still...

Nine years down, seventy to go.