Happy Anniversary!

It was seven years ago this very evening that Lisa and I went to dinner for the first time.

We went to Rulloff's on College Avenue. It was a another grey and cold day in Ithaca, NY - but there was enough sun for a weary sunset. We decided that we'd meet en route - on the corner of College Avenue and Ho Plaza. I was playing with my new gps device because I was getting ready to go to the National Training Center in Fort Irwin, CA for a deployment to Iraq later in the year.

Lisa was chatty. In fact, we talked a lot, left the restaurant and kept on talking as we walked. We walked back up Ho Plaza, around the McGraw clock tower, past the Johnson Art Museum, down and over the Fall Creek gorge, back up the street and back across the gorge until I left Lisa exactly where we met earlier in the evening. No walk to the car, no kiss good night. Nothing. I tried nothing.

The truth is that I had no idea that we were on a date. As in d-a-t-e. I just thought she was a really neat person and colleague and someone to have dinner with. Okay, that's not true either. Someone had told me that Lisa was "interested" in me although I had a hard time believing it.

That was seven years ago.

In that time I have been to Iraq twice for a total of eighteen months. Both my parents have passed. We have two beautiful boys. We lost a daughter. We had two significant career changes and two promotions. We moved from New York (me a life long resident) to North Carolina. We have taken four trips with the Walt Disney company. We count more blessings than we do misfortunes because when misfortune does strike we have one another to count on.

That's it. Time for snuggling and spoonin'.