Anniversary

Today (7/12) was our 19th wedding anniversary. In talking to various friends and family, all seemed to have that feeling that years accelerated when one became older. As we started thinking about this, my wife said, "You know, when I look back on my first 19 years, they went much slower than these have gone. " She's right about that one. I have all of these really vivid memories from childhood, with friends, and trouble, and moving, and stuff. Since we were married though, it seems like a steady, quickening blur. Not a bad blur, a good one.

The day was a mixed bag for us. Before we went out to dinner and a movie to celebrate, we had to spend the afternoon at a memorial service for a dear friend of the famly. She passed from liver cancer, and it was such a quick loss, we're all still numb. The memorial was a celebration of her life, but it soon came to everyone that this was a family who was going to be missing their mother. She was a special lady, and had a wonderful laugh. Not one of those cutesie, girly, "I'm being polite," laughs, hers came from her belly and lit up her eyes first, and then her whole being. Oh, we'll miss her terribly.

Finally, between these events I had to miss tonight's version of the Alki session. A couple of the guys said to stop by, but I didn't want her suit to smell like a cigar. I don't smoke them, but a couple of the guys do, and that smoke permeates everything. It takes most of a week before my deck of cards doesn't smell. If you smoke cigars, or like the smell, I realize that would be just heavenly to you, but I don't smoke, *or* like the smell, so it isn't a treat for me.

Guess that is all that's fit to print from the 12th. Oh - one other thing - Batman Begins is finally the Batman that should have been filmed. It has it all, and it is dark and brooding like the real Batman. (Okay, give me a little slack. It is after three in the morning. I *know* there is no *real* Batman, but this one comes close. ) No glitz and glamour in the Batcave, just drippy walls and bats galore. Just the way it ought to be.