“I wish it was foggy,” she said. “It wouldn’t be so hard to leave.”

[Via Vex, who knows her.]

The woman in the little white car wants to merge so he lets her. He tries to let people merge whenever feasible, especially trucks – just working guys, he figures, trying to do a job; the guy in the dump truck waved his thanks. The woman in the white car waves her thanks, as well. He waves back. Don’t mention it, he thinks, I can use the karma, and that semi in front of you is losing ice off the top in chunks like a cross between Frisbees and Louisville Sluggers.

Currently debating whether I should attend Blogtalk 2.0. It’s being held in Vienna. But 5-6 July, those are week days, aren’t they. Feh. I’d have to use up two days out of the 5 weeks vacation I get.

Or feign illness…

Hmm…

Usually the knowledge that you will ultimately die — not now, not soon, rather at some distant, distant, please, very, very far off time, but still, ultimately — is comforting. Or, perhaps by congratulating yourself on your cleverness at deducing that it is death that raises life’s price and maybe even value by giving it scarcity you manage to distract yourself from what might otherwise terrorize you. Whatever. Either way, you accept, more or less, the birth-work-death cycle.

Except on days such as this. This, the day in question, being last Thursday I believe, when I stood at a window at work looking at the snow with a single thought in my mind: I could live forever on a day like this. The snow was perfect snowman/igloo-building snow. The sky was overcast but not dark; pleasantly but not blindingly/skin-carcinogenicly/cataract-causingly bright. Cold so it wasn’t melting but not cold-cold. Just under freezing.

In other words, a perfect day. I even thought of the song.

I could live forever. I suppose I did, in those couple minutes.

Then I went back to my desk and checked my referrer stats again.

Jadedju’s thoughtful essay on dating, Don’t Ever Take a Walk with Me, got me thinking, which is often a bad idea, so I stopped and began to reminisce instead.

Not only is my wife a very sweet person at times and I {{{heart}}} her a whole lot, which by itself is probably enough of a reason to stay married; being married also means I don’t have to date anymore (except for dates with my wife which I enjoy greatly, or dad-daughter dates with my daughters, which is also nice). But dating-dating? First-dating? I am so thankful I don’t have to do that. So, so thankful. I would rather go in for another root canal than go on a first date.

I’ve had a couple memorable dates, though, back in the sad days before I met my wife.

Liisa, for example. A smart brunette of Finnish extraction I met at college in Seattle. Interesting tastes in music and attire. Exotic double vowel in her name. Liked to eat and drink. She invited me over to her dorm room (she lived a couple floors down or up and down the hall) for lasagne and wine. All her dorm-mates were out. We filled up on the delicious pasta dish she had cooked and emptied a bottle or two of red wine.

We sat down on the sofa. She got what I thought was a sort of dreamy or sleepy expression in her eyes and lay down with her head in my lap, and did something I will never forget as long as I live.

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