It's hard to believe, but five years ago I got hitched in San Francisco's City Hall.  (Five years ago, Monday.  I'm a day late with this post.  Shoot me.)

I frequently come up short when I try to explain what it was like that day.  They had been marrying same sex couples for only ten days.  The atmosphere was celebratory.  It wasn't just the couples, either.  I've never seen so many smiling civil servants. It was amazing.

Paying my money and getting a marriage license was an incredible experience.  I came out at sixteen in 1987.  As an adult, I have never had the expectation that I would ever be able to accomplish this simple act.  Mind you, I always knew that the piece of paper doesn't make the marriage.  I knew that you could have a happy, lifelong relationship without it and a crappy 48 hour marriage with it.  Yet marrying, the kind of marrying where you get an actual license, was for other people and not for me.  I had no idea how important the piece of paper would be to me, just as I did not expect to be so devastated when they annulled my marriage six months later.  

San Francisco's City Hall is a beautiful building.  It is a wonderful place to get married.  I should know.  I've done this twice, now.  We went back last July when they started handing out licenses again.  We're still waiting to hear whether this license will be affirmed or denied.

When Becky and I got married, we had a real sense that we were part of history.  Still, we appreciated it when the officiant took a moment before our ceremony and asked us to take a breath.

"I want you to tune out all of the hullabaloo.  Take a moment to think about your relationship.  Ignore everything else, because that's the real reason that you're here."

The last five years have been extraordinarily happy ones.  I have had good relationships in the past, but I never expected to feel so deeply content in my marriage.  I feel grounded and secure, and yet the woman is a force to be reckoned with.  With Becky, I know that I will never be bored.  Becky is beautiful, smart, wickedly funny, and curious about the world.  I am lucky to have her.

We have had more "sickness" in our lives than we might prefer, although we've been blessed with health, too.  We're really familiar with "poorer," and I could do with more "richer" than we've seen so far.  Some day I'm going to stop going to school and get one of those job things I hear about.  That should help.

It's hard to believe that so much could happen in five short years.  Five years ago, I wasn't even a runner yet.  Who knows what's next?

I just peeked and realized that I had missed my own one-year anniversary. 

It's nice to have a place to brain dump about running, with occassional forays into what's going on in the rest of my life.  I originally started this blog so that I would stop boring people with endless chatter about running.  There are certainly non-running friends and family who read this, but they all get the warning that this is likely to be boring.   I figure, if they read it anyway it's their own fault.

Hey, if this blog makes me even a little more fun at parties, I figure that's worth it. :)