Top Ten Week: My favorite moments since 26 August 1992

Top Ten Week has been pretty fun, hasn't it? I may have to do Top Ten Day once a week, because I still have a bunch of lists to zip through. That would be cool - I could do a list of my favorite English monarchs!

For the final day, I thought I would list my favorite personal moments since 26 August 1992, which is the day I met my wife. I was thinking about doing it anyway, but it's doubly appropriate because today is the twelfth anniversary of our wedding. That's right - on 30 July 1994 we were married, and it's been a groovy time ever since! So I thought I would be all sappy. It's my blog - deal with it!

The top three are easy. My wedding day, and the birth of each of my daughters. I'm not even putting them on the list because they're so far ahead of anything else that it's unfair to compare! So, in chronological order, let's go to the other moments!

1. I meet my future wife. I have already told the tale, so I won't bore you again. A good day, needless to say.

2. Our first "date." 10 November 1992, if I'm remembering correctly. We went to a bar together to see a friend of Krys' do karoake. Painful! We weren't a couple yet, but when we got back to her apartment that night, we decided that we were attracted to each other. I used one of the corniest lines ever to get her to kiss me, and she bought it! Hah! (And no, I'm not repeating it. It's too corny!)

3. When I realized I loved her. It was sometime in December of 1992. We went to see Honeymoon in Vegas, which is a great movie (and contains a scene I probably should have put in my list of favorite scenes - when Nicolas Cage is waiting to buy a plane ticket and Ben Stein is holding up the line - classic comedy!), and I guess I was in a sappy, romantic mood, but walking back with her, I looked at her and just realized how much I loved her. It made me feel good.

4. We were camping near the end of our cross-country trip in August 1993 and I was, frankly, sick of camping. I told her I wanted to go home, and she looked all upset because she thought I meant Pennsylvania (I'm pretty sure we were in California at the time, although we might have been in Arizona). But I meant our new home, Portland, in an apartment with her. To quote the old Billy Joel song, "Wherever we're together, that's my home."

5. Our day trip along the MacKenzie River Highway. I have posted pictures of this trip, and it was one of those days on which everything feels right with the world. Nothing to do except drive around looking at scenery, away from anything that might bother you, and seeing things that are beautiful and ephemeral. We knew we were having a great day together, too, which is a rare thing and makes it much better.

6. A couple of plays that we saw in Portland stick out in my memory. Once we saw "The Anarchists' Convention" by John Sayles - well, I don't know if he wrote the plays, but he wrote the stories on which they were based. There were three short plays, and the one about the trucker driving through the night hopped up on amphetamines is stunning theater. We saw it in a garage in the back of a coffee shop - in Portland, anyplace can become a theater! The other play that sticks in my mind is "Arcadia" by Tom Stoppard. We saw this in an actual theater, and it might be the best play I've ever seen. It's unbelievably complex, as he delves into chaos theory and the death of the universe, while telling stories set in the early eighteenth century and the modern day, with human drama winding its way through it all. If you ever get a chance to see either of these, do so. They're both excellent.

7. Our fifth wedding anniversary dinner. In 1999 we went to Higgins, a restaurant at the corner of Broadway and Jefferson in downtown Portland. It wasn't the first time we had gone there, but it was still a fun night. Higgins is a fantastic restaurant, and the service is impeccable. We had the same waiter that night that we had a few years earlier when we went there, and he either remembered us or was very good at pretending. He introduced me to port that first time, and hooked me! Damn him! It was a very nice dinner on a very nice night.

8. Soon after our fifth anniversary dinner, we went on our fifth anniversary trip, which was to Grenada and Venezuela with Windjammer Cruises. We wanted to go on a cruise but not on a huge ship, and this was perfect. A small crew and a small guest list, and we had a wonderful time. I will have pictures posted of our week in the islands when the time comes, and discuss it more then. It's definitely worth it, though. (And I'm wearing that same shirt right now, as I post this! Coincidence? I think not ...)

9. In February 2000 we went hiking. What was so great about that, you ask? Well, we went up to the Mount Hood area and hiked through the snow in snow shoes! It was pretty stinkin' cool. We went with a group of people we had never met before (it was one of these things you just sign up for) and had a blast. The snow was thick, it snowed while we were there, we burned thousands of calories, and had a grand old time. Another thing you should do if you get the chance. We, of course, don't have that chance anymore because we live in hell.

10. In August 2000 we had a nice night out drinking at the Hillsdale Brewery and Public House. It was just like a lot of nights that we went out drinking, but this time my good friend Charlotte was leaving town, and we were saying goodbye. Charlotte is an excellent person, and just like a lot of my great friends, I haven't seen her in a long time - six years, to be precise. We met in graduate school and formed a very nice friendship. And Krys actually likes her too! It was one of those nights where you know things are coming to an end, so it's bittersweet, but you enjoy it while it's happening. Another one that I remember fondly is the last night we hung out with our friends Mike and Gaetana at Philadelphia's, a restaurant near our house that served very good cheesesteaks (which is harder than it sounds). We were leaving town for Tempe, and we just had a nice night talking and eating and drinking. Friends rock.

You'll notice that since moving here I haven't had many favorite moments. Well, the location plays a part in that, but the two children (who were born here, so that's two of my favorite moments) take up a great deal of our time and we don't do a lot of things as a couple. We went out to dinner last night, which was very nice (we wondered a lot about what a couple near us was discussing), but we just don't have the time to do a lot of stuff these days. I don't mind, though - the family is wonderful and fun, and if most of my days consist of trying to keep Norah out of trouble while trying to get Mia to eat, well, that's fine with me.

More pictures tomorrow! Thanks for chiming in with your own favorites of various stuff. It's always cool to hear what other people really enjoy.