Chapter the Tenth: Visions of wedding bells and moving vans.
Life continues to be busy and colorful.
Marilyn and I are very happy together. 'Smatter of fact, this past June, I asked her to marry me. She said "Yes." The wedding is this coming September in Tacoma. "Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, I'm so excited I could just plotz!!!" (Okay, okay, so when I bought the tuxedo this spring, I was figuring that I'd be able to use the tuxedo at the wedding, too.) Check my website for occasional bulletins. There's a website for news about the two of us, www.marilynandjohn.com. (Yes, it's true: I am a geek!)
Mind you, it's not just me that's been having a great year professionally. Marilyn's been a Washington State Industrial Appeals Judge for a number of years, but late this fall, after 6 years on the lists, she got a job as a Federal Administrative Law Judge working for the Social Security Administration Office of Hearings and Appeals. She attended training in D.C. for about a month. I flew to Baltimore the last few days to see her graduate and take the oath of office. We flew home Thanksgiving Eve, did family things, then flew to Ft. Wayne, IN, where her new job is. We got her set up in an apartment and started experiencing the Midwest. I had to return to Seattle a week later, so we'll be having a long-distance relationship for a while.
With Marilyn in Ft. Wayne, I'll be moving out there June or July. That's the next big news item: after 24 years, I'll be moving from Seattle and heading to the Midwest. Sure, it'll be scary, but I'm very excited about this, too. It'll be a great adventure and a real pain: the cost of moving stuff is about .50-.60/pound, so I'm going to be getting rid of a lot of stuff. I've a veritable wall of boxes of copies of old books (many Peachtree Accounting books of earlier vintage are going to be leaving) and there will be a lot of other things that just aren't going to be worth the cost of moving cross-country. I'll be having an enormous garage sale at some point or maybe two of them. Anyone who knows what to do with a few dozen copies each of about 15 different books I've written, please let me know—I don't want to recycle them but I'm not sure what to do with them, either. Stuff about Ft. Wayne: There are lots of good restaurants in the area, the people are really friendly, and it's flat flat flat. Housing is half to two-thirds the cost of houses in Seattle and gasoline is really cheap (it briefly dropped below $1/gallon while we were there). Winters get medium cold but not too snowy and summers aren't going to bake us in steam. And we'll be able to grow anything we like, even cantaloupes! Overall, my first impression is that Ft. Wayne is a heckuva lot like Eugene, OR. I have heard disparaging words from many other people, but I think I'll like it a lot. It'll be different and fun. And Marilyn will be there, which'll make it wonderful.
September 11th was just as horrible for me as it was for everyone else. I am pleased I didn't lose anyone in the attacks. But it was as horrible as anything I've ever experienced and then some.
I've been doing lots of STC speaking this half year, notably Portland, OR, in October, Tampa, FL, in November, and Phoenix, AZ, and Vancouver, B.C., the first half of January. (I'm going to miss Vancouver a lot when I move; it's such a beautiful town.) I'm slated to be in Austin, TX, in February and then do a phone seminar later that month, after which I'll be in Tucson for a celebration in honor of Bill Burgess, my high school drama teacher.
Besides speaking trips, I took Marilyn to Victoria, B.C, in early July. In mid-October, we drove across the state from Seattle to Newport to visit my Dad and Teri Ann and their son, James. It was a great visit. I also flew down to Tucson to see an old friend and classmate, Helen Gregory, get inducted to the Sahuaro High School hall of fame. I spent much of early December, blessedly not required to fly anywhere or talk about anything. I sent Yule cards, upgraded the computers, built a network, and started work on book #23, another book on RoboHelp.
Marilyn's younger daughter, Susan, is finishing her last year in HS (and getting outstanding grades!) and is staying in Tacoma at Marilyn's condo with Marilyn's son, Lars, who's gotten two promotions this year at the pizza place he works at. Marilyn's older daughter, Sarah, lives in Philadelphia, is in a post baccalaureate classical language program at U Penn and is applying to grad schools to do a Ph. D. program in Classics.
My holidays started well, but didn't continue as well as I'd like. Marilyn came back to town on the 21st and I picked her up at the airport. We spent the next few days together at her place in Tacoma, getting shopping done and so on. Christmas Eve, I was feeling a little ratty. Christmas morning, my stomach definitely felt feathery and I skipped breakfast. I got a number of wonderful gifts--lots of great books and a "Shrek" video and the soundtrack to "O Brother, Where Art Thou?"--but I was feeling increasingly bad. Around lunchtime, I lost the previous day's dinner and figured "Aw, hell, food-borne illness from the restaurant we ate at yesterday." I felt so-so the day after Xmas, but starting around 5:00am the following day, I spent about 5 hours in the bathroom and things really started going downhill. I had a nasty cyclic fever and finally, after I threw up again, Marilyn said firmly "We're going to the doctor!" The long and short of it is that I was very dehydrated and they plumbed me for saline and kept me for a day in the hospital while they pumped about 9 liters of saline into me. I did lose 6 more pounds, which was nice (I've been trying to lose weight with some fair success; I'm down 20-25 pounds out of a total of 45 I'm shooting for), but it is not the way I prefer losing weight. The doctors said that it was probably some GI virus, a hypothesis that's unfortunately supported by Marilyn, who ended up getting the same bug (though thankfully not as severely) a couple days later. Yes, I think we've both had better holidays. I'm very much hoping that Valentine's Day this year turns out better.
I'm looking forward to singing once again with the Washingtonians in late April for a show called "Can't Stop the Singin'!" They're going to become the first annual "Scrapple County Jr. College and Vocational/Technical Institute Choral Contest and Sing-abration!" There's even going to be a performance by the wonderful "Angel's Overbite," an all-girl (and one boy) group from Holy Heart Academy for Orthodontic and Oral Maxillo-facial surgery. I'm very pleased to be singing with them one more time and terribly sad that I can't imagine a singing group as silly or as fun as the Washingtonians in Indiana. Leaving the group is one of the worst things about moving.
I've just refinanced the house so I can do some remodeling before selling the place: adding a gas furnace and painting, mostly, although I'm likely to sand and varnish the red oak floors in the living room that were under the old rugs.
I'm looking forward to the wedding in September and moving and being with Marilyn. There are things to do to get there in the meantime, but it's very exciting stuff!
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