Yep, there's more...

It was only a matter of time before the inevitable blog about the wedding which, if you're interested, you can find over here.

It's good to be home.

I asked Sarah what I was like to live with.

Sarah: I feel like whatever I say is going straight into the blog.
Me: Pretty much.
Sarah: Uh... good. It's been good. We're building our life together.

Then I tried to take a picture of us, sitting on the couch, holding the camera out at arm's length, snapping, then bringing the camera back in to look at the picture, seeing Sarah made a weird face, trying again, another weird face, hearing her say, "This time I'll do it for real," another weird face, repeat, repeat.

Sarah: You know, I had an idea of how you should end your blog, but I'm not going to tell you until after it's over.
Me: Okay.

Honestly, I don't really have any idea of how I should end this blog. Maybe it shouldn't end. Maybe that's the point. We keep on living together, here, and eventually somewhere else, being goofy, sometimes annoying each other, building our life together, and maybe... someday... actually hanging that mirror up on a wall.

So, the living together continues, just without the pictures.

But here are a couple extras to enjoy on your way out the door. Maybe we'll have you over again sometime.

Tiny fancy chair!

This is one of those rare travel shows where we actually have a little extra time to explore the town we're visiting. Looking through the brochures in the hotel lobby, we picked the oddest thing we could find.

Reptiland.

Snakes. Alligators. Lizards. They were all pretty cool, but the biggest source of entertainment for us was watching how scared Steve is of snakes, alligators and lizards.

Off to Pennsylvania for another Whirled News show. Here we are in the limo to the airport.

During our layover, a waitress said to Glynn, "There were some guys in here from Chicago earlier this week. Or maybe it was Detroit. I just know it was SOME city I'd never go to."

Sarah and I have been catching up on the show ‘Breaking Bad,’ about a high school chemistry teacher who turns to cooking meth after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. It’s good. Depressing, but good.

Sarah: Don’t ever get sick. You’re not allowed to get sick and die.
Me: You either.
Sarah: Oh, I won’t get sick. I sort of know that I won’t.
Me: You know that you won’t?
Sarah: Yeah.
Me: But you think I will.
Sarah: It’s crossed my mind.
Me: Why… why would I get sick?
Sarah: Because you’re so nice.
Me: [laughing] What?
Sarah: The worst things happen to really good people. Am I saying this out loud? [looks at wine glass] I must be buzzed!

We've been having some problems with our DVR. I called the cable company and they offered to send someone out to switch it with a new one, but remembering remembering the eight hour technician visits that happened when we first moved into this place I decided to just take the DVR to their offices and swap it out in person.

The sad part of getting a new DVR is losing the recording of my Dad's national championship game (and my appearance on Friday Night Tailgate) that had been sitting at the bottom of the queue for most of the last year. Would I watch it again? Probably not. But it was nice to have.

And maybe it's good to let go a little of having physical documents of every memory. If Buddha had a DVR he'd probably delete shit all the time.

We have a lot more memory space now for new stuff (mostly the dozens of 'Dog Whisperer' episodes that Sarah records daily).

Of course, I lived with a girl once before. It didn’t end badly, but it did end. I kept a blog about what happened after it ended, A Year in Pictures Following the Breakup. It seems very long ago now.

And when I say “I kept a blog about what happened after,” I mostly mean what happened after to me. In the interest of making a clean break, we didn’t communicate much with each other after I moved back to Chicago.

I did email her (let’s call her N) a yearly update, just a quick hello to let her know what I was up to. She rarely responded. About two years ago she wrote to tell me she was happy and married and had a daughter. I wrote back that I was happy and happy for her, which was the truth.

After that I stopped sending updates. Maybe I finally felt like it was safe for me to stop worrying about her.

A month or two ago, though, it did cross my mind that maybe I should write to her. “Hello. I’m still doing well. I’m engaged!” That’s what people do, right? “Just to let you know from me…”

I even sat down and started writing something. “Dear N. It’s been a while.” But I didn’t get very far. It just sounded awkward. That time is past.

Mostly, though, I think I worried that I was secretly fishing for blog material. An interesting quote. Didn’t I really want to just write, “Hey, what was I like to live with?” And it seemed wise not to open that can of worms.

Sarah and I keep passing the same cold back and forth between us. Sarah's got it pretty bad right now, so I decided to sleep in the extra room with Bear and the chicken.

Luckily I didn't have any night terrors.

For Christmas, Sarah gave me this framed ticket from the showing of 'It's a Wonderful Life' that we went to right after we got engaged. I love it. And the fact that I still haven't gotten around to putting it up on the wall doesn't mean I love it any less.

Every day for the past few weeks I've had a moment where I thought, "I should put that up today. Take a picture of it. Put it on the blog. It would be a nice thing to blog about here near the end."

Today I just gave in and took a picture of it on the table where it sits waiting to be put up somewhere.

I do love that ticket.