1 down, Quite a lot more to go

Happy Anniversary to my lovely wife! Of course, I get to celebrate too, for fairly obvious reasons.

This has been a good year for us, but a rough year. We've had a very close family member go through chemotherapy, we've moved (twice, if you're being a little lax about the timeframe), we both changed jobs, we got rid of one of our cars, and countless other little bits n pieces were harrowing us. All these externals could have shot our newlywededness in the foot, and yet it didn't. Our relationship is stronger than it was before, and we have vaulted over the hurdle of the first year of marriage. This gives me hope for the future.

This weekend we've been kind of kicking around, just relaxing and doing whatever comes to mind with no real schedule, other than that which we decide on the morning we're doing it. It's led to a lot of indecision this weekend, but it has been very relaxing, and we've been able to experience a lot that the city has to offer. I think the best thing though, is that we're understanding that our life together is and is going to be pretty good.

Go Team Fisher!

A Very Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to all! We've finished with our Christmas festivities, having spent time with my family last weekend and time with Heidi's family yesterday. It's been a kind of stressful Christmas season, but there were two standout high points: The Willow Creek Christmas service was the most spectacular (not necessarily the most moving, but definitely the "biggest") church service I have ever attended. It was like a variety Cirque du Soleil/Comedy/Muscial show, with a Christmas message. People were saying it was going to be huge, and dang were they right! The second wonderful high point was Heidi cooking the bet prime rib I'd ever had just a few hours later.

It's always a pleasure to get together with people I don't normally get together with, and this was no exception. Heidi's brother's fiancee's parents are great people, and we don't really get a lot of chance to spend time with them because they are fairly far removed from our normal daily life. But yesterday was one of the days we got to, and that was freakin' awesome.

So in all, it was a good Christmastime. It had some significant crap to it, but I choose to dwell on the happy things.

I'm not old... I'm 37

The first person to get the reference and post it in the reply wins; I don't know what you will win (it will depend on my relationship with you), but you win.

So I'm a day older than I was yesterday, but I tack another year on the roster today. 36 was a good year, as I predicted, and I'm expecting just as cool stuff to happen in my 37th year here. Admittedly, different cool stuff, but big things nonetheless. Tonight, to start 37 off, I'm actually preparing Christmas presents for the "less fortunate" at church. I figure a good way to spend my birthday is to prepare gifts for someone else. That just feels right for some reason.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hey, I bet you thought I forgot about the holiday. It's been a busy weekend so far, but I did want to wish anyone reading a very happy Thanksgiving. It's traditional to tell everyone that for which you're thankful, but I've never been one for tradition, and I don't want the post to go as long as my list would make it. A short and vague list would be friends, family, home, and opportunities. Yes, I'm missing a lot even in those huge generalizations, but you get the picture. I have a lot of thanks to give.

It's been a busy weekend. We're getting stuff ready for our big tree trimming party next weekend, and we have two families with which to celebrate (both of which like to eat). Getting Christmas gifts is also a high priority, but we need to make sure our house is in order first. So, it's been a busy but fun weekend.

Hope yours was just as good, if not better!

Well, Blow Me Down!

Shiver me timbers! It be International Talk Like a Pirate Day, and I didn't even remember it until about 3 o'clock today. I had been plannin' a whole mess of promotions ahead of time, but with the nuptials and bein' away and all, I plumb fergot. Ah well, can't win em all, and this next year will be one to remember!

Happy Independence Day!

Happy 4th of July! For those coming here from outside the United States, this is the American Independence Day. What this means is an opportunity to set off fireworks, and usually a barbeque. Nothing more (of course, it's been 230 years since we secured our status as a nation, and much like the prodigal son, we now like our "parent" again).

In any case, I'm showing the apartment a bit today, and then going to Heidi's folks for the aforementioned barbeque. I think we're even having satay (mmmmmmm), because nothing says "America" like a meal that originated in Thailand. After dinner, we may do some suburban fireworks, maybe not. In any case, there will be much eating of meat, and much relaxation, and my last batch of laundry before the move into the new place.

Happy Father's Day

Happy Father's Day everyone! Mine was better than last year's, but still a little meh. I had lots of grilled meat over at Heidi's family's place, which was cool, and did my laundry there, which was way cool. Other than that, it was sort of OK. I've been trying to catch up on my sleep, and also trying to show my apartment so I can sublet it recently, and both of those goals did moderately well today. Other than that, a little tired and blah right now. But Happy Father's Day!

Happy Mother's Day!

To all those who are of the maternal persuasion (to my knowledge, none read this blog, but someone might), Happy Mother's Day! Yesterday Heidi & I took my mom out to eat (at a Chinese banquet, of all places), then was the time of naps, followed by the packaging of the invitations. Today, we went to church with Heidi's folks at Willow Creek (the largest church in the world, in terms of building square footage), and Heidi made her mom a Tuscan style pork tenderloin. Mmmm mmm! Good eatin!

In other news, I've been back to being really tired lately. Admittedly, I'm busy, and I've started being more faithful with the seizure medication, which wipes me out, but this is kind of concerning. I sleep a lot more than I'm comfortable with, even without caffeine, and with vitamins, and with exercise and good nutrition and yadda yadda yadda. I hope this isn't a sign of something more annoying. Because that would suck.

Happy Easter

Happy Easter everyone! Today was a busy one for me. I acted and did stage hands at church for both services, and then Heidi & I helped build a set for the upcoming play. Nothing really festive, but It was good to help out friends, and I did get to feel manly, playing with powertools. And I retain the use of all 10 fingers! Woohoo!

Happy Anniversary

Please note: If you're linking here from a goal update, this is our second trip. Our first is here.

Today is the one-year annivesary of when Heidi and I met in person. She came to see the play I was in, and we hit it off over a Belgian beer with Matt, Lisa and Cori. Anyway, what we did to celebrate was go to Galena. We stayed at the Irish Cottage Hotel, which was amazing. I've very rarely had such splendid service at a hotel, to say nothing of the entertainment. They had a (moderately) authentic Irish Pub connected to the builidng. The pub-ness of it was authentic, but most pubs in Ireland aren't quite so big. We got to listen to a whole mess of fantastic Irish music by a few different folks, the lead of which sounded freakin' exactly like Chief O'Brien from the Star Trek series (Next Generation and DS9). He was the lead, but the star of the show was this 15 year old kid who was wailing on his fiddle, while the guys with decades more experience were just barely keeping up with him. In the morning, we went right back to the pub to have probably the most authentic Irish breakfast you can get in Illinois, and then headed into town for a bit of shopping and fun and cool stuff. We had scoped out the places the evening before, but a lot of the stores close early in Galena, so there really wasn't a lot to see or do the previous evening (except go back and drink and listen to Irish music). Anyway, a couple of our choices for the first places to hit were a chocolate shop and a cheese shop (yes, I was making today my free day from the diet instead 0f tomorrow). The chocolate shop was expensive, but exquisite. We both liked everything we had from there, but the wine-based chocolates (the port and the bordeaux) were stunning. The cheese shop was less impressive than we thought it would be, but Heidi managed to find Wallace & Gromit Wensleydale Cheese. Rock on! We did a little wine tasting at a sparsely-but-interestingly stocked wine shop, and then we stopped in to a toy store. This had all the kitschy old toys that people had grown up with, and a few newer things. I was tempted to get their Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots game, but didn't succumb. We ended up getting some "Bubb-a-loons," which are little tubes of highly toxic-smelling gel, that you blow up into balloons. Heidi had grown up playing with it, and I had never heard of it, so we got some, so she could school me. When we got back to her parents' place, we made a small balloon sculpture that smelled like a cross between model glue and gasoline. Anyway, we ended the day having satay over at Heidi's folks house, and enjoying the fact that we could tolerate and enjoy one another's company for a whole year.

Update: I just realized, two days after I posted that, that the beer mentioned in the first thought was misspelled. It's Belgian, as in from Belgium, not Beligan, which could be mistaken for an obscure local brand.

Happy Birthday to Heidi!

Today is Heidi's birthday. She's not one of those to be embarrassed about her age, but I still won't be the one to tell you what it is. Considering how good she looks, I'd be proclaiming it loudly. But anyway, tonight's activities will probably be very low-key. We'll be going out for Caribbean food, to a place I've never been, and then relaxing at her home for a while. For her gift, I got her something I thought would make a much better impression than it did: I registered a star with the International Star Registry for us. I haven't actually seen the details of where it is, and I doubt it can even be seen with Chicago's light pollution, but it's there for all the world to see. Bright and shining. Much like our luuuuuv.

Update: The star is actually magnitude 11.6, near Deneb, in the constellation of Cygnus. being 11.6, it's invisible to the naked eye. But it's permanent. Much like our luuuuuv.

Singin for dinner

We had Heidi's friend-birthday celebration last night (which was an interesting choice, because it also happens to be the birthday of three other friends of mine). There were a whole mess of Heidi's friends who I sort of know, my friends who Heidi sort of knows, and Matt, who we're both pretty close with (but has about 12 years more history with Heidi than I do). Fortunately, we're doing as pretty good job of making each other's friends our friends. Anwyay, this was done at a fun little Vietnamese place, that has cheap Asian knockoff Karaoke. It took them a while to actually bring out the English songlist, but we made do with what we had. I was a little uncomfortable with getting up and singing, but once I did (actually, once Lisa got up and did "Fame" very flamboyantly) the stopper was unplugged and I was in full-on ham mode. My best performance was probably "Sweet Child of Mine" with Dan, despite the fact that I don't particularly care for the song. Towards the end of the evening Matt sang a song he wrote called "You Have New Mail" sort of to the tune of "A Whole New World." He sang it intentionally off key, and it had been more fun reading the lyrics. But as Lisa was the catalyst to get the party started, Matt ended up being the catalyst to finish the evening at a reasonable time. But in all, it was a fantastic time.

There will actually be two more celebrations of Heidi's birthday, one with just her and me, and one with the family. I'll post more on those later.

Happy Valentines Day!

Indeed it is a happy one for me. This weekend (I'm not exactly sure when), Heidi hid a mess of valentines around my apartment. Most of them were little ones the size of a business card folded over, of a Star Wars theme. They have a headshot of a character, with an endearing Valentine's quote that that person would say: my favorite is the Emporer, saying "Together, we can rule the galaxy." Tonight we're heading out somewhere that will be a surprise to Heidi, and might be a surprise to me, too, as the place I chose doesn't accept reservations today.

But anyway, hope yours is happy, whether it's celebrated as Valentines' Day or it's just another Tuesday.

Happy New Year!

We stayed at Heidi's parents' last night, having spent most of the evening watching the first season of Lost (there had been different plans; they fell through). We got up ealry because I had to work at chuch this morning, and, as we were driving east at 7:00 am, we saw a gorgeous sunrise. This is how to start the New Year: watching a beautiful sunrise, with my finacee by my side, heading to serve God.

Anyway, I hate New Years resoultions, because they're meausred by how quickly you break them. I prefer goals, so you can look back at the year and see how successful you were. Here are some goals for the upcoming year:

1. Get Married (a no-brainer)
2. Move to a new place (also pretty much a no-brainer)
3. Get a different job
4. Get back in the gym, and establish a regular routine
5. Get at least one Voice-over gig
6. Brew at least three batches of beer
   
7. Travel at least four times (two of those are in the works now)
8. Write a script (doesn't have to be long, just has to be finished)
9. Read the Bible from beginning to end (pretty easy to do, just need to re-establish the routine).

Hopefully, having things online will establish some level of accountability. Here's looking forward to what promises to be a year of quite significant change. And in this case, change is good.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas, everyone! It's not a white Christmas here in Chicagoland, because we've had three, count 'em, three days above freezing. It would be, because it rained all yesterday, but that's just fine with me. Given the choice between a white Christmas and comparitively pleasant temperatures, I'll take the pleasant temperatures.

I've actually had all the Christmas celebrations I'm going to have already. My brother was up from Chattanooga last week, and my sister was going on vacation early on Friday, so we had our family gathering on Thursday. Heidi's family celebrates on Christmas Eve. After church today, we'll be heading up and spending some time with my mom, just so she's not alone on Christmas, but it's more a get-together than a Christmas celebration. Among the festivities today will include doing laundry and assembling a lego X-Wing for my nephew.

However, on Friday, Heidi and I got to enjoy the 45-degree temperatures and go downtown and bum around for a while. We saw this fascinating show at the planetarium on the Bethlehem Star, and their theories surrounding what the whole thing probably was (which coincide with my theories). Supposedly, the Magi was a common term for the Zoroastrian Astronomers of the time, and they were big into the astrological importance of things, which explains why foreigners had to come to Jerusalem to talk about the wonders in the sky; the Hebrews were frbidden to practice astrology. Please note that I'm going to delve into astrology here; I DO NOT believe in astrology, but the Zoroastrians did, and they came from Persia to Israel, and Matthew wrote about it. Anyway, Leo was supposed to be an important constellation in the Hebrew context, referring to the Lion of Judah. Regulus is a star in that constellation, a star commonly associated with kingship. Juipter was also associated with kingship, and Venus was associated with birth. A convergence of planets was when two planets came close together, and was considered important. Anyway, Jesus was probably born between 3BC and 2BC, and about a year prior to that, there was a convergence of Jupiter and Venus right near Regulus. Since Venus is a fast-moving planet, it moved away from Jupiter as Juipter slowly passed Regulus, but, because of the Earth's movement, Jupiter appears to double back for a little bit. The Zoroastrians knew this, but where it doubled back was interesting. It passed Regulus, backed up across Regulus again, and then passed back again, so crossing Regulus three times over the course of it's trek across the sky, and by the time it got to the western end (Israel is west of Persia), Venus came back in conjunction with Jupiter, but not just nearby, Venus came so close it sat right on top of Jupiter making one dot. Now, the zoroastrians had some prophecy about a king being born that would save the world around this time, but the prophecy was evidently a little vague about the location of the king, so this was pretty big news to these guys. Matthew never says the star guided them to Jerusalem, whch would make sense, because they headed out to Jerusalem to figure out some details, and the whole shebang moved under the western horizon. At this point, the story estimates actual months that the Magi moved out from various locations, because they had to go to Jerusalem to find out who the king is supposed to be, and Herod had to search the scriptures. If they left Jerusalem in Septebmber of 3BC (I think), the "star" would have "gone ahead of them;" the Regulus/Jupiter/Venus combo rose up in the east about that time, and if you're heading south and looking at a star/planet combo to the east, it looks like it's moving along with you. Kinda clever stuff. Still a theory, but a well-thought-out one.

The celebratory events

So the doctor found nothing. Hitting the neurologist next (well, after the dentist, but that's unrelated to the tired thing).

Anyway, Heidi's surprise was this romantic little hole-in-the-wall French place called Red Rooster, which I'd link to if I wasn't so damn lazy. It was arguably the best restaurant I'd ever been to in my life. I had pheasant for the first time in my life. I had a hard time actually speaking for a while, it was so good. I just bounced and hummed and sang to myself as I consumed gamey fowl and a little bite of Heidi's Salmon in Cabernet sauce. Yesterday, I had leftover duck liver pate for lunch. At my computer. While working. How messed up is that?

Anyway, last night was just as cool, but for different reasons. A whole mess of people that I knew from a whole mess of different avenues came round to Cleary's and we all had $3 Guinness or Boddington's and most of us had $4 burgers (and these were monstrously huge burgers). Too many people here to list, and it wouldn't make a great deal of sense to most of my readers anyway (even the people that were there, as a lot of the people don't know each other). One thing that bugs me though, the Pattersons are expecting, so they had to leave early. Schmutzy had to come in on the Eisenhower, so he came a bit late. Those guys would get along really well, because they both are really weird, but they keep missing each other. Meh, one of these days, they'll get to talking, if they have to wait until September 2nd.

Got a feeling 36 is gonna be a good year...

Yes, it's true, 36 years ago today, I made my squalling entrance into this world. It was about quarter to four Eastern time, but at that time today, I'll probably be too distracted to be posting here. Immediate plans: go to the doctor to determine what's up with me being so tired; do something with Heidi today (I'm not sure what, it's a surprise). Tomorrow, everybody is invited down to Cleary's on Clark in Wrigleyville for a few drinks and some cheap but decent food. We might hit a comic store nearby beforehand, might not. Normally, I'd say yes, just because since it's my birthday celebration, I can put some extra geek on, but it's beeen SO damn cold lately, I'm thinking staying as inside as possible is probably my best bet.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! A little recap on what's been happening the past couple days: I had a friend in town recently, my friend Chris who was my first roommate in film school, and just finished a stint doing assistant edition on Curb Your Enthusiasm. One of the great things about that man is that we don't talk for a year or so, and when we do, we just pick up right where we left off. And that guy can talk! We talked about a lot of stuff, more-or-less focused around women and films. Unfortunately, I had spent most of the night before in the bathroom with stuff coming out from both ends. The initial theory was that I had food poisoning, but I felt feverish most of the day, and barely ate anything (I think all day I ate a kudos bar, a slice of Chicago-style pizza, and half a slice of pie). He and Heidi, both being extremely social, chatted away while I slept a good deal. But the kicker that it wasn't food poisoning came today. I just got up from 13 1/2 hours of sleep. Now, those who know my sleep patterns know that it's difficult for me to get a full 8 hours, and that I hardly ever sleep past 6am, even on days off. I just got out of bed at 10am, and that's from going to bed at 8:30. I'm still a little zonked, but that may have something to do with spending more than half a day in bed. The Kudos bar I had for breakfast isn't really sitting all that well, but I feel a little better than I did yesterday. So, I guess this is good proof against overeating during the holidays. I have a little bit of work that needs to happen over the next couple days, but damn if I feel like doing it.

Holidays

OK, for some reason I haven't been able to post correctly for a couple days. Anyway...

Every two months, the leaders in the church get together for what's called the "Big Picture," where our pastor explains what he'd going to be preaching on over the following few months, so we get his perspective, and can plan accordingly. Normally everybody brings a few bucks and we get bad pizza. This time around, it was a Thanksgiving meal with everybody bringing something, and they had just finished working on their kitchen, so we came to their home. That was freakin' awesome. It was family, getting together to eat and laugh and have fun, and just talk about crap. I've been thinking about this for a while now, but I'm really understanding this in a big way now: I'm digging the fact that it's the holidays.

Perhaps it's the contrast: Last year, the holidays were not so good. My dad had recently died, and I was in a job that I hated so much, but felt so trapped in that it regularly had me thinking about suicide. Since my family all reminded me of my dad, all I really wanted to do was avoid them. Not particularly good source material for a pleasant holiday season.

Now, I'm past the worst of my grief, I'm in a job that's "OK," and I'm in love. I'll have a good holiday time at the Fisher/Austin-plex, but I'll also be celebrating with the Chen household, so my effective family time (and size) has doubled.

I don't much care for the Christmas materialism thing, but I'm also excited about giving out heaps of gifts to friends and family, and getting cool things (I can almost see that Xbox 360 set up in the Altar of Entertainment).

There's also the holiday parties that are beginning to happen. Since my birthday falls betwixt Thanksgiving and Christmas, I can consider that a holiday as well (as there will be at least two celebrations of it). But really, I'm just looking forward to sitting back, drinking some red wine, eating some chocolate, and laughing with some of my best friends.

Yay!

International Talk Like a Pirate Day

Avast me hearties! It be International Talk Like a Pirate day today! So lift a cup o' grog, or at the very least, answer the phone with an Arr!

The Musings of Fish would like to state that it or anybody associated with it does not support murder, rape, looting, pillaging, theft, kidnapping, or any other activities associated with piracy that do not include swaggering, drinking, sailing, make-believe swordplay, or talking like a 300-year old version of a white-trash Irishman with a nautical background.