Our anniversary is coming up next week.

I've been blogging about my life off an on for the past five years (give or take), so out of curiosity I looked back at the blog entry from the day our relationship started.

No mention of Sarah.

But that makes sense. Dating is awkward enough, without asking if you can blog the very first moments. (Instead, on that day, the 12th, I wrote about how my Mom was sending me socks in the mail)

So, next I delved into my old picture files. What pictures did I take on that day? Apparently none. There's a folder for the 11th, and one for the 13th. But none for the 12th. My camera got no use that day. I must have been too busy falling in looooove.

Oh man, a table in the front hallway of your apartment is the best. The best. A place to set down bags and keys and assorted things from your day. It's the table equivalent of taking your shoes off.

Now, it is clutter, worse yet, clutter right there when you walk into an apartment... but day to day, when no one's coming over, it's real nice.

One last Halloween picture.

A slightly drunk superhero giving out unsolicited life advice.

Otisgiving. A yearly gathering of members of my old, long-retired improv team, Otis.

A good chance to catch up on what everyone is doing.

Marc talked about his recent engagement. In this picture he’s talking about how he made the ring himself (while Duffy and Sarah are apparently in mid-swoon). He took a metalsmithing class and made a ring out of silver and moonstone.

Marc: So, yeah, I made the engagement ring, and I’ll buy the wedding ring. [laughs] Because one of them has to look good, right?

Marc had also grown a thick beard. It was originally part of a plan involving First Look photos for their wedding. His fiancée wanted to get First Look photos, which are pictures taken before the ceremony, of the bride and groom seeing each other in their wedding attire. It’s easier to capture that moment of seeing each other for the first time, that first look, under controlled circumstances. Marc was against it but finally agreed under the condition that he could have whatever facial hair he wanted in the First Look pictures.

They eventually dropped the idea of the First Look photos entirely, but this had been Marc’s plan:

Marc: I was going to have a crazy British poofy mustache, where the mustache goes all the way over and connects with the sideburns. So, she’d turn around and… SNAP, the pictures catch her reaction. Oh, and I was going to be in a wheelchair.

We had to throw out one of our plants, Battlecat. Sarah said the plant had spider mites and had to go before they spread to other plants.

Sarah: It's kind of sad.
Me: Yeah. I always thought of that plant as being you.
Sarah: Me? Why was that one me?
Me: Because I'm the tall one.
Sarah: What about the other two.
Me: They're off to the sides. They're just friends.
Sarah: Well... eventually we can go buy a new me.

At one point during the Halloween party, someone jokingly asked Young who his favorite roommate had been.

Young: Uh... Sarah? I mean, she practically lived here too for a while. More or less.

Sarah and I did spend a lot of time together in that apartment. It's where I relationship formed.

I took this picture on the back porch, where we had our first kiss.

Sarah: This is where we fell in looooooove!

Young's Halloween party in our old apartment.

Young is the Flash. I'm dressed as A Very Old Dracula-esque Vampire That's Really Into Twilight.

I had an improv show before the party. Leaving the theater, several people asked me for Young's address, but even though I'd lived there for years, for the life of me I couldn't remember what it was.

Halloween party in the office.

Tom's son, Sam, is dressed as a conductor.

Tom: We had the overalls, we had the hat. The hat actually used to be mine when I was a kid.
Me: So you just had to go out and buy a handkerchief?
Tom: Pretty much.

Different rooms get different amounts of fixing-up attention. Somewhat randomly.

The guest room is probably the most put together, which is nice for the few guests we have, but kind of a waste, really. Especially considering that the least put together room is our bedroom. Shouldn't we have made our bedroom the nicest? Why do guests get a nicer room than us?

As it is it's just a bunch of dreary empty walls and a giant bed with a comforter that looks like a piece of bacon.

Sarah: This room looks like a depressed person lives in it.
Me: No. It looks like two depressed people live in it.

There's no storage in our building, and very little closet space in our apartment, so we've had to find places to hide our three giant A/C units for the winter.

One is behind the TV.

Can you spot the other two before the blog is over?