For anyone still checking in, I'm back. Yet another blog. Yet another year. This one will involve more pictures of beaches. Go check out A Year in Pictures of Traveling, and if you think anyone would like it, pass it along. Enjoy!

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.