Sarah and I are doing a show!

My long-ish blog hiatus continues, but if you live around Chicago and don't mind late nights on a weekend, you can come see Sarah and I perform our new two person improv show, Couple's Counseling. We ask the audience for their relationship problems (past or present) and then improvise scenes inspired by those universal couple troubles. It's a short late-night workshopping run, but we'd love to see as many of you there as possible over the next month. Saturdays at midnight at Chicago's iO Theater upstairs in the Del Close Theater. You can get the info here.

Also also, keep listening to my learning-about-nerdy-things podcast Stupid Nerd, and my new talk-to-my-funny-friends-about-whatever-they-want podcast, We Wrongly Assume.I'd love for you to listen, and some iTunes reviews would be great too.

Four Months Later...

Our first anniversary.

We took a weekend trip back to Galena, or, as several people jokingly referred to it, "the scene of the crime." We walked around the farm saying, "remember this" and "remember this." We took more pictures. "He's still here," I said, pointing at a fly buzzing around inside the chapel.

No one came up to us asking why we were there, but if they had we would have responded, "Oh, we got married here."

We spent twenty minutes there. Probably less. We stood there for a moment in that way that you do when something is important but you're not sure there's anything left to do with it, and then we got in the car and drove off.

For the rest of the day we hung out at a local vineyard, drinking wine and taking a tour. "This place is beautiful," Sarah said to our guide. "You probably host a lot of events here. How much do you charge for weddings?"

Unlike my wedding vows, I never wrote my groom’s toast out. I ran out of time and things got too hectic, so all I was able to prepare beforehand was some basic beats I wanted to hit.

So… I don’t remember it exactly. Someone somewhere has it on video, but not us.

Here’s my best attempt at recreating it:

“The groom’s toast is traditionally the speech where the groom thanks people, and I take that very seriously, because there are so many people I need to thank for making this day happen. This was truly a collaborative affair. We wanted to get our family and friends involved in as much of the day as possible, not just because it saves money… which it did… but also to make the day something that we all share together. So we asked a lot of you to do a lot of things… a lot of things… so many things, that I noticed some of you stopped answering my phone calls. Understandable. You knew why I was calling. I was calling to ask you to do something. And so many of you did so much. And when I think of all the help we got from our families and from our friends and even from coworkers… I have to ask myself… do I deserve it?

"I… think I do." It’s worth mentioning here that this got a pretty big laugh. Seems important to mention.

"But… whether I deserve it or not, it makes me want to pay it back. To be a better son, a better brother, a better friend.

"And then I think of all the things Sarah did to make this day happen, because honestly, I didn’t do half as much as she did. And I think about how good she is to me, all the things she puts up with from me. All the stereotypical ways that I, as a man, can be difficult… and all the specific ways that I can be difficult as just me. I think of how much better my life is because of her.

"And I have to ask myself… do I deserve it? Do I deserve her?

"I hope so. I hope I do. But even if I don’t I’m ready to spend my whole life trying. I want to be a good partner. A good husband. And someday… a good father.

“Thank you.”

In an attempt to help Sarah out with her going-crazy-working-from-home problem, I tried video chatting with her during the day. Just so she could see a human face.

You know, trying to be a good husband. Helping out.

Plus, whose day wouldn't be improved by seeing my face?

Now what?

Our wedding wasn't the last wedding we went to last year, but it was close. Near the end of the traditional wedding season. And now the next wedding season is beginning. We're heading out of town next week to attend our first wedding of the new season.

I mentioned before that while getting our pictures taken we heard honking and cheering coming from the direction of the cocktail hour area. We learned later that a mother and daughter, visiting Galena to look for wedding venues, and hearing that there was a wedding going on, had tried to sneak in to get a peek at the farm while it was hosting an event. Several people referred to them as "crashers" but I don't know if the reality of it goes quite that far.

Anyway, almost immediately upon getting to the farm, they somehow got their car stuck in a ditch and several of our guests helped them push it out. That was the honking and cheering. They drove off immediately.

Now that it's half a year later, I wonder if that girl is having her wedding there now. It's her turn to be us. And with the passage of a year or a half year, everyone moves forward a notch, from looking, to getting married, to looking back.

I think Sarah may be going a little stir-crazy from spending most of her day at home, studying for school. I asked for some advice from Poland, who's worked from the basement of his home for years now.

Poland: Eat lunch outside. Take at least one walk a day. Sniff glue.

Since Sarah's going back to school full-time, I filled out some paperwork (also printed out on leftover, parchment-style wedding paper) to get her on my health insurance. One of the perks of being married.

Except that my workplace is progressive enough to offer benefits to domestic partners as well, same-sex or otherwise. As I joked at the "Explaining Benefits Changes," meeting, "So, why did I even bother to get married, then?"

When we hired our photographer, there were numerous options for how we wanted our photos (besides digitally), various different albums specially designed and artfully layed out. One option, though, was the old fashioned one: a box of pictures that you could place yourself into a nice book of your own choosing. No graphic design, thank you very much.

I remember seeing an example like that thinking it looked nice but would be a lot of work. Sarah said it seemed like just the sort of post-wedding project she was looking for.

Spoiler Alert: Those pictures are still sitting in the box, and I imagine they always will.

My idea for this blog was to spread the "story of our wedding day" out over the last seven or eight months, story by story... as if my memories would remain as crisp as the pictures. But even the big days fade fast, and every day after becomes more about being married than having gotten married.

So consider this blog, coming close to the end, a half-assembled photo album, with lots of blank pages.

So, Sarah had the idea that after the wedding, she'd ride down the water slide in our hotel while still wearing her dress. A "Trash the Dress" sort of thing.

We weren't sure if the pool would be open, though, so we asked the manager the day before. She said she'd get back to us. I got a call from her in Meador's room the morning of the ceremony.

Manager: I put a lot of thought into your request last night. I slept on it. And I just don't think I can let you do it. I know the chances of something going wrong might be slim, but it would be too horrible if something did happen, so I'm afraid I just can't let you. I'm really sorry.

A small disappointment, but it was amusing to imagine the hotel manager spending an evening of honest soul searching about letting a woman in a wedding dress ride her water slide.

And who knows, maybe her dress would have gotten caught on some twist in the slide, leading to some horribly tragic News of the Weird wedding day story. I mean, it was the same pool that I mysteriously scraped my hands bloody in. Maybe that pool is evil.

The morning of September 11th, 2001, I trudged into work at my uninteresting office job, tired, and only half sensing that things had seemed eerily quiet during my commute. I plopped down in front of my computer and started my day as I usually did then, checking in with an improv internet message board. I had few friends at the time, a job I hated, and a relationship, an engagement in fact, that was starting to fall apart (and would, in fact, continue to fall apart in slow motion for a couple more years). I had just started performing, and it was, if not my entire life, then a very big chunk of it.

Anyway, I logged onto the message board that morning and all the thread headlines were things like, "Plane Flies Into World Trade Center" and "Plane Crashes Into Pentagon" and I remember thinking, "Well, that doesn't seem funny at all."

And that's how I found out. I think of that as a strange, modern sort of story.

Improv takes up a much smaller chunk of my life these days, nearly ten years later, but last night I was sitting in a small black box theater, getting ready to do a late night Sunday show for... not many people at all, when Alex leaned over and handed his phone to me. I read a text from his brother that read, "Osama Bin Laden dead. Twitter going crazy. Announcement from president in 45 minutes."

And then we had to run onstage to start our set, the middle group in a three group show. No time to even tell the rest of our cast. Or to confer about whether we should announce it. "Hello! We're the Welcome to Your Thirties Boys! Osama Bin Laden is dead. To start our show we need a suggestion of anything at all!"

Yesterday was Young's Special Day. A dumb fun day or eating, drinking and comic book buying.

Young: I was happy that my friend's gave me something to look forward to instead of dread. Terrific fun. I hope that's the best not-getting-married party I ever have.

Sarah and I don't have any set pet names for each other, although we do have a handful of dumb joke ones, and a couple we occasionally use just to annoy each other (like "Shitbox").

It would take too long to explain why, but one of the sets of joke pet names we have for each other is Poopsie and Mayonnaise. The short version is, they just sound like ridiculously over-the-top babytalk pet names.

Sometime during the last year, during the writing process for the new You Don't Know Jack game, the idea that the host character, Cookie Masterson, would have two pet cats seeped into the game, and they pop up from time to time in the console versions, mostly in a recurring question type about weird dreams Cookie has where his cats play parts from movies.

Anyway, those cats needed names so... I named them Poopsie and Mayonnaise.

They only pop up maybe a half dozen times in the game, but they're Sarah's favorite questions. "Poopsie and Mayonnaise!," she'll yell, "That's us!"

Maybe the best moment. Near the end of the evening, Toto's 'Africa' starts playing, and everyone spontaneously starts singing along. Everyone still around, whoever hadn't caught a shuttle back to the hotels yet, circling around and belting out the song.

Pretty amazing. Pretty awesome.

And for months afterward, I'd get little texts or emails from friends and family: "Just heard 'Africa' on radio. Still awesome."

Two Junes ago, back in 2009, I posted a picture on my last blog, "A Year in Pictures of Living Together," of the giant paperbacks Sarah and I were reading at the time.

And I wrote, "Just how nerdy are we? We're both reading books from the 'Song of Ice and Fire' series at bedtime. Side by side. She's reading book two, 'A Clash of Kings.' I'm reading book one, 'A Game of Thrones.'"

Now, nearly two years later, we're both reading the same two books, only Sarah's switched over to reading her's on a Kindle.

Okay, the person who was getting married, but now isn't, is my friend and old roommate, Young.

Young: Oh, you should use my name, right? I was a major character in your blog for a long time. It's like when Diane came back at the end of Cheers. I'm frankly surprised you haven't been having a field day with this already. You should use that picture of all the Whirled News Tonight engaged people and talk about how it all turned out.

This is the picture I posted back in June, along with the caption, "And here are all the members of the show Whirled News Tonight that are currently engaged. Megan, Alex, Me, Young. Just under 40% of the cast. Are this many people always getting married or do you only notice it when you're one of them?"

And since then some things seemed to get worse and some things seemed to get better. (For instance, my hair.)

As for "how it all turned out," I don't really have an answer for that. As far as I can tell everyone's doing well, even Young. That's my hope.

Sometimes things get worse. Sometimes things get better. I imagine everyone's had at least some of both.

I've read that people become obsessed with the numbers "9-11." See them everywhere. Signs. Clocks.

It's just selective perception, of course. Like getting married and suddenly noticing how much of the world is about getting married. Secret message to engaged people everywhere you look.

As a kid, I would always notice when a digital clock hit "11:11" and make a wish. But I never really noticed the 9-11 thing... until after I got married on that day. And I still don't notice it much, but when I do, I just think, "Hey, that's my anniversary."

About a year ago, just as a busy wedding season was about to get underway, Steve told me a story about going to a wedding during college, his first time seeing some people from high school, and talking to a girl, trying to impress her... and seeing, out of the corner of his eye, his uncle (I think) talking to the wedding DJ.

Steve: When I was a kid I used to jump around and do a Mick Jagger impression for my family. Just the lip thing and the strut. I didn't even do the voice. And my uncle must have decided that this would be a great thing for me to do now. And the DJ announces that we have a special treat, MICK JAGGER is here. And I had no choice but to do it. And afterward the girl I was talking to was like, "Is this something that you do?"

The painfully awkward story made me laugh pretty hard, and, of course, my first thought was, "we have to trick Steve into doing it at our wedding."

So, Sarah and I came up with the plan to have our MC, Hansen, announce something like, "Steve has a Mick Jagger impression that he likes to do at wedding receptions. He's requested to do it now, in honor of Arnie and Sarah's union, and they would love to see it." Specifically worded to really trap him into doing it.

Like many of our "funny" wedding ideas, we decided not to bother. Probably for the best.

Me: What would you have done?
Steve: Man. I really don't know what I would have done. All I know for sure is that I would have been filled with rage. I should probably figure out a response because it will probably happen someday. I think I would not have done it. But I don't know how I would have gotten away. The problem with it is that I look like an asshole either way. If I do it, I hate every second of it. And people are like "what is this guy's problem?" If I don't do it, I look like a poor sport. But since I've done it at one wedding and felt the awfulness of that, I think my next move is to try just standing there and saying stuff like, "I told you guys I wouldn't do it, so I'm not doing it." I think the worst part about doing it is that any Rolling Stones song goes on for at least 3 minutes. At the wedding it happened at, the first 30 seconds or so were fine, but then there's just that painful, awful 2.5 minutes where everyone is staring at you and nobody is happy. Oh God. I may have to never go to a wedding again.

A Easter picture from my godson, Tate.

Sarah and I had a nice, just us, first married Easter, which we celebrated by seeing the movie, 'Source Code.'

I called my family to see how they spent their day.

Dad: Well, your mother went a little overboard on the eggs.
Me: Will said he found 60 eggs but I assumed he was... I don't know... wrong.
Dad: Nope. He was right. Your mother put out 60 some eggs. For two grandchildren. It took a long time.

Drinks with friends.

Nothing new.

I haven't mentioned it on the blog, but this year a friend of mine had an engagement come to an end. So, he's not getting married. It happens. Hell, it's happened to me.

The date of the "would've gotten married" is next week, so some of his friends are throwing him a party. A "why not use this as a good excuse to get together and have drinks" sort of thing.

I sent out Evites. And here's the thing, this event, to me, seems totally healthy and not weird, but it's kind of a hard Evite to write. What do you call this sort of thing? "(Re)Save the Date?"

It reminded me that when my own engagement fell apart, years ago now, eventually the only awkward part was the explaining.

You know, like this photo from Alex and Megan's wedding. Table photos.

Although, I guess Alex and Megan aren't in this photo. It's just the people at the table. So, whatever. You know what, I'm going to stop worrying about it.

File this under: Things We Didn't Think to Do. "Getting pictures with each of our tables."

We forgot to take the time (but what time?) to go around and get a picture taken at each of the tables at the reception. Sure, we were more interested in documentary style photos than posed, but it still would have been nice to make sure we got a picture with everyone. It's a small thing, though.

I did get this picture with most of the cast of Whirled News Tonight, past and present (minus only Haskins, Young and Padraic).

Eddie, folding his arms in the front, actually had to drive back to Chicago with his wife that night, because of a baptism in the morning. I made a point to thank him for coming as he was heading out, but then saw him, still hanging out, hours later. They must have gotten almost no sleep before that baptism. That's the sign of a good party.

Scene from a marriage:

Sarah: [yelling from other room] Did you turn the shower on?!
Me: What? Did I turn on the shower?!
Sarah: Did you just turn on the shower?!
Me: No! I'm peeing!
Sarah: You're peeing?! Oh! Jeez!
Me: You thought that was the shower?!
Sarah: Yeah!

I was asked to write and perform a piece for The Paper Machete, a live magazine show in town, or, as they call it, "a salon in a saloon." Since Shakespeare's birthday and deathday are coming up, I came up with a little essay about Hamlet's "To be or not to be" soliloquy, and how we've probably referenced it to death ("... that undiscovered country").

It's been a while since I wrote something that wasn't a funny trivia question or a medium-funny blog entry. It seemed to go over well.

You can give it a listen over at the Paper Machete's website.

Stonelake and Aileen at our wedding. They're getting married later this year.

Back before I picked wood for my ring, Stonelake and I were both part of an online conversation about ring materials.

Stonelake: I was actually thinking tungsten, but then I heard that emergency rooms can't cut it off you if you catch your hand in something, which I am constantly doing. The issue is that if you futz up your fingers, like when I crashed my bike last spring and my fingers went in all directions and dislocated and broke everywhere, then your hand swells up and if the ER docs can't cut off your ring you might lose your finger.

I'd hear this rumor as well. I did a little internet research and it's widely believed to be true, but apparently isn't. At least that's what the tungsten-selling people say.

Hedges was the videographer at our wedding. Really all I asked him to do was start the camera recording when the ceremony started, maybe zoom it in, and make sure no one knocked the tripod over. But he went above and beyond, zooming, panning, tilting, even picking the tripod up after and carrying it around outside for cocktail hour.

I felt a little bad, like he didn't get to experience it firsthand.

Hedges: It certainly didn't hurt my enjoyment or make me feel less present to film the wedding, it was my pleasure, I just wish there was more battery so that I could have filmed all the speeches. It was such an honest, funny and original ceremony; seeing it through the camera lens and with the naked eye from my perch in the balcony made it the ultimate 3D movie watching experience.

Also, the country western shirt he wore was awesome.

Hedges: Hey, you said the wedding was on a farm!

Our friend, Hedges, won tickets to a box at a White Sox game. A whole box. He wasn't able to give away all the tickets.

Hedges: I think some people were hesitant to come out because of the rain, but... we're inside! In a box!

Hedges won the tickets from a raffle at a half marathon or fun run or something. He's been running a lot of those lately, losing a lot of weight.

And we celebrated that by watching baseball from a box, drinking beers and eating hot dogs.

Um... I think the Sox lost.

Mimosas and donuts at work to celebrate the release of 'You Don't Know Jack' for iPhone and iPad.

Go buy it! It has different questions than the game console retail versions.

Man... I have written a million questions (and counting).

After that it's mostly dancing (but it gets less awkward).

Sarah has officially started going to school full time.

That means a lot of things, but first it means that she now gets to sleep in longer than me in the morning, instead of the other way around. I’ve noticed she does the same thing that I used to do, immediately taking her phone off the nighttable and putting it on the bed where I was just sleeping.

[Later, while chatting online with Sarah about this post, she wrote, “I'm not just a full time student. I'm also a full time improvisor. But I don't know how you would say that without making it sound douchey.” And then, “Also, I spelled improviser wrong. Because I'm new at this.”]

Sarah's taking a class on writing teleplays, TV scripts. She turned in her first assignment, which was to write an opening death scene for the show, 'Six Feet Under.'

She printed it out on left over fancy paper from our wedding.

Sarah: I'm thinking about writing an opening where you die.
Me: Uh... okay.
Sarah: It has to be somebody.
Me: Why don't you write one where you die, since you already took that class about coming to terms with your own mortality.
Sarah: No. What if I killed you off in every script I wrote? So, I'd write an episode of 'Dexter' where he kills you. Or an episode of 'House' where you're a patient who dies. How would you feel about that.
Me: How would I feel? I guess I'd feel like you were working out some pent up aggression.

She ended up writing a scene where an old woman dies after discovering her dog has died from eating chocolate.

Sarah: I killed off my great grandmother, who did kill my dog with chocolate, but she's already dead, so it's okay.

Since Dad's retirement announcement, Mom's been sending me newspaper clippings and forwarding me links to articles. It's nice to see the outpouring of praise. It reminds me a bit of watching the reviews for You Don't Know Jack come in, and even sniffing around the internet after our wedding for people posting pictures on Facebook. After such a big event, just trying to get some hints at what it all really looked like. Maybe the internet can help me understand what just happened to me.

My dad's always had a coach's stoicism, wisely avoiding any whiff of hubris ("That was a good game/season, but let's focus on the challenges ahead..."), so I hope now he can begin to step back and see what a truly amazing career he's had.

Poland, one of my coworkers, mentioned recently that he actually had a just-in-case speech prepared for the wedding.

Besides being one of the best writers for You Don't Know Jack, Poland also does all the music and most of the sound effects for the game. Over the years, if I couldn't think of a funny joke for a certain dialogue slot, I'd write in some kind of funny sound effect instruction, knowing that Poland would do it, and make it hilarious. This eventually evolved into me intentionally inventing strange sfx instructions just to see if he could do it.

Well, apparently he printed up a list of some of his favorites that I'd written, and although he didn't get a chance to read them at the wedding, here are some of them:

"[sfx: eagle caw and then poop sound]"

"[SFX: parrot vomitting] (sic)"

"(SFX: sheep baa, then gunshot, then thump of sheep hitting ground)"

"[SFX: nunchuk sound, interspersed with painful sounding bonks]"

“eagle shooting lasers out of eyes”

"[SFX: sheep baaing, positively?]"

"[sfx: squawking of multiple falling chickens]"

"[sfx: sad pig squeal]"

"[sfx: pterodactyl hitting a cow?]"

"[sfx: dolphin squeals then 70s porn music]"

"[sfx: background sound of a sort of regal meow]"

"[sfx: two boob honks and a poop sound]"

"[SFX: violin, trumpet, guitar and bongo blasting out noise and mariachi singer yelling ominous things in Spanish]"

"[sfx: angry sounding tinkerbell talking]"

"[sfx: pretty bird sounds, then a loud jet sound, and somehow getting across that the jet kills the birds?]"

"[SFX; fart noise]"

"[SFX: funnier fart noise]"

"[SFX: funniest fart noise]"

Reunited!

Colds mostly gone. Quarantine over!

We had a little surprise party at work for Harry, the company's founder and CEO.

There's new teleconferencing equipment upstairs that's pretty neat. For instance, if there's more than one person video-calling in, the person speaking is automatically placed into the biggest part of the screen, on the left. So, the people are periodically shuffled around the screen as they talk. Pretty cool. Although it makes it a lot harder for those people to try to send a "Happy Birthday" message with signs, and keep them in the correct order.

Sarah did some promotional work last night where she had to walk around a corporate party pretending to be a frazzled bride-to-be, interacting with guests and then later do a musical number on stage. This picture is the slide they used for her character, "Sarah Shaffer."

Me: Was it weird to be dressed as a bride again?
Sarah: Not really. It was a much simpler dress. But I was excited to wear my headpiece again from the wedding.

These sort of being-a-character-at-a-party gigs can be awkward, but they can pay well.

Sarah: I was trying to think of things to say, so I asked one woman where she got her shoes and she pulled me aside and gave me all this wedding advice.
Me: So... she didn't realize it was fake?
Sarah: No, I think she did.
Me: But that was just the conversation she wanted to have.
Sarah: I don't think she knew anyone at the party, so I was someone to talk to. I was slouching a lot, as part of my character, and she gave me all these posture tips for the big day.

This is the apartment building where Young and I lived before Sarah and I moved in together.

Longtime readers of my blogs may remember that there was a crappy open storefront beneath us, then it became the "Mini Flea," a sort of misguided used furniture store that looked like someone shoved a bunch of dingy furniture into a room and called it a store. A dry erase board out front read, "Free Hot Dog All Day." It didn't last long. The "Grand Opening" banner was still up when it closed down. After that it became the home of the local Chamber of Commerce.

Young: I went by there this weekend, and you know where the Mini Flea used to be? It's now the Chicago Tea Party headquarters.

So it goes.

I drove by the new "Mini Tea" today to see for myself and it somehow looks even more slapdash than that resale shop ever did.

Our neighbors in the apartment next to us are a bunch of dumb loud kids. I sort of suspected we were in for trouble when they moved in over a year ago, and one of them had a black eye and was carrying a kegorator up the stairs.

They must be annoying other people in the building because I found this note crumpled up in the trash down by all the mailboxes. I dug it out because I found it funny. My favorite part is the response from the "mailman." I truly hope that it's actually from our mailman and not just someone with a good sense of humor.

Just because I "graduated" from physical therapy doesn't mean I'm done. Now I just do the home exercises. Many of the same exercises, only replacing machines and official equipment with things around the house. You know, like a prison workout.

For instance, in the gym I used to do an exercise where I stood on my left leg, knee slightly bent and placed five small orange traffic cones down on workout bench and then picked them up and them put them down over and over again. For the home version I use this old wooden storage chest and these leftover plastic wedding cups.

The cold and flu season is still in full effect in our apartment. Sarah’s cold is so bad that we’ve decided to utilize “sick bay,” aka “the guest room.” Of course, despite the fact that I’m mostly okay now, I’m the one sleeping sick bay, but, oh well. It feels strange to be separated by this self-imposed quarantine.

Sarah: [via text sent from the bedroom] “G’night Roomie Husband.”
Me: [via text from Sick Bay] “We are not roomies. We are temporarily starcrossed lovers. Our eventual reunion will be beautiful.”
Sarah: “Ooooo. Then are you my Phantom of the Husband?”
Me: “Yes. Especially because that makes no sense.”

Sarah and I, despite being pretty nerdy, keep missing the comic book conventions in Chicago. We keep meaning to go. C2E2 was a couple weekends ago, but again, we missed it.

Young went though, and if this picture he sent is any indication, he had a great time.

Today I "graduated" from physical therapy. My last session in their gym. They gave me a free t-shirt and printed out a black-ink-only graduation certificate.

Therapist: Congratulations. You graduated. You don't have to come back.
Old Black Woman: I wish I didn't have to come back.
Therapist: I know Jeanine, but you're going to be here a long time.

The Wishing Tree from our wedding. (Have I mentioned this yet?) Guest were invited to write well-wishes, encouraging words, or just funny little notes and put them in red envelopes hanging from this tree. The plan is, every year on our anniversary, Sarah and I will open and read two.

Unless we're dying, then we'll probably just open all of them. "This one says, 'Have a long happy life together.' Oo... ironic."

I think the whole Wishing Tree idea evolved from Money Trees, which, and I could be wrong here, might be a Chinese tradition of putting money on a tree for the bride and groom. So, what I'm saying is, there's a small chance that there's a check in one of those envelopes that we won't discover for half a decade.

The thought crossed our mind that after the planned toasts at the reception, we could open the mic up to anyone who wanted to say something. We have a lot of smart and funny friends and family members. Why not? Plus, who wouldn't want even more people to say nice things about them.

But, we couldn't think of any way to announce it that didn't sound super self-indulgent (even for a wedding), and there was already a lot of talking (especially for me) so we didn't do it. We'll probably never know how many great impromptu speeches were lost.

Today, after 39 years as a head coach, 26 of them at the same university (all of which were winning seasons), 598 career wins, and one national championship (that was also a record-setting undefeated season), my father announced his retirement from coaching.

Apparently, when my sister, Julie, told her sons that their grandfather wasn't going to be "the coach" anymore, Ty cried. So Dad called him on the phone to cheer him up and explained that they'd still get to go to the games. "But now I'll be able to come up into the stands and sit next you."

With a little help from our year-end bonuses and our first joint tax return... our wedding expenses are now all officially paid off.

Most Saturday nights after Whirled News Tonight, the cast ends up grabbing some drinks and food at the diner next to the theater. We've flirted with branching out and going other places, but the majority of the Saturdays over the last half decade, that's where we've been.

Tonight, midway through the night, a drunk woman stumbled into the diner, sat at the bar behind us, then swiveled around on her stool and started talking to us. And she seemed to... sort of know us. And we realized she used to be a waitress there.

And then she preceded to go around the table naming the things we would normally order. "And you, where's your coffee to go?"

The more time passes, the harder it is to remember any of it. And not that much time has passed. Maybe I should have blogged about all of this stuff much sooner after the ceremony, before it all started to drift away.

One of the saddest losses is Sarah’s grandfather’s toast. Neither of us can seem to remember beyond the fact that he made fun of the gong.

Sarah: I remember the feeling of it. But there were a lot of historical facts. I don't remember those. It was really awesome.
Me: What was the feeling of it?
Sarah: That it was funny and that he's funny, but our funnies are different funnies but that that's okay and we both think the other is funny.
Me: I remember it as feeling… wry.
Sarah: Yes, fine. Wry. I don’t know what that means but I agree.

We have video of the ceremony. And one of Sarah’s uncles told us a while back that he shot a video of the toasts, so we may get a copy of that eventually, but, “I didn’t record Pa’s speech. I don’t know what I was thinking. So, I don’t have that one. Maybe… someone has it? I don’t know who, but maybe?”

Maybe.

I think (although I could be wrong) that as of today, all the pregnant people at our wedding (even the not quite far enough along to tell anyone yet ones) have had their babies.

My sister, Julie, and her husband Matt (Tate). Tom and Steph (Max). Marc and Odette (Arthur). Sarah's friends Markman and Jenny (Emily) and Joanna and Bart (George). And this evening Joe and Shelby had their baby (Joseph Crash).

Here's a picture of Tom's sons, Sam and Max. I've known Tom since the fifth grade. And we lived together in college, watching 'The X-Files' together. And now he's old enough to have a son who's old enough to hold his little brother.

I love this picture by the way, think it's hilarious. Sam looks like a little Tom, and I can only imagine that this picture represents some of the frazzled anxiety that comes with being a new parent.

Sarah and I keep passing the same miserable cold back and forth, one of us sick, then the other, then the other... and I'm beginning to suspect it's going to be like this for the rest of our lives.