Eight years!

Today marks my eight year wedding anniversary!  By no coincidence, it's also the eight year wedding anniversary of my wife.  So really both of us.  Cuz we got married.  Eight years ago.  Yep.

It's been a crazy awesome eight years, too, and I can't even begin to think of all of the stuff that we've been through.  It's had its ups and downs, but I gotta say with absolute certainty that these have been the very best eight years of my life, because I've had my wife to share them with.  OK, that's not totally accurate of course.  I knew my wife before I married her.  So technically I've been with her for like a decade.  But the life that we created with each other as husband and wife is pretty darn awesome, if you ask me.

Other than the rocket-fast eight years thing, life is now plodding along fairly slowly.  No one wants to buy my house, still.  That's just the way it's gonna go, I guess.  Still, I have faith that everything will come together.  It will.  I've got all the time in the world.  My future job isn't going anywhere.  All will be well.

People continue throwing houses at us for after we move.  That's a rather hilarious side effect of moving to a small town.  Everyone knows that you're the only one that's planning on moving there, and suddenly everyone that wants to sell their house has your home phone number, and will stop at nothing.  Hey Lars -- you should buy a house in Benson.  People throw them at you.

One final interesting side note: this week is the first full week of classes at William Mitchell.  SUCKERS.

What a headache

So when I was about 14 or 15, I used to get migraine headaches. Really nasty migraine headaches with auras that would knock me out of commission for a long time. I hadn't had one in about 17 years...until this Tuesday evening. Sheesh.

I'm sure that there was some sort of perfect storm of stress, fatigue, and other factors that combined together to smack me in the face. Or forehead, actuall. I was alone with Gwen that night, and she was being a difficult toddler for a while but an angel for the most part. I sat down on the couch and started reading a novel in kind of low light without my glasses on, and my mom called me and told me that my 90-year-old grandfather had had another mini-stroke.

Almost instantly after getting off the phone with her, my vision started to blur in my right eye. The blurring became a strobe-like flicker as Kerry came in, and pretty soon I lost the ability to form words correctly. I would say something, and something different would come out of my mouth.

The speech disturbance lasted about 10 minutes, and then the headache started in earnest. It's pretty much gone now (two days later) but I'm still feeling kind of wonky. So I went to the doctor yesterday. They confirmed that it was indeed a migraine headache, and that nothing further needs to be done at this time. So that's good. It's kind of a scary situation when migraine symptoms mirror those of a stroke.

Speaking of headaches, the second annual Jabbergathering took place this past weekend, and was awesome. Because of this awesomeness, I had a much differenty type of headache all day Saturday.

Another huge headache is this effing house. It's nice to hear all of the optimism from everyone everywhere, telling me, "Chin up, buckaroo! It will sell!" The only problem with the optimism is that the @#$%^ thing still hasn't sold. I can't convey how frustrating it is to spend four years of your life preparing for a large life change, only to have all of your hopes and plans completely fouled up by a stupid house that won't sell. I'm not supposed to be here anymore.

Lotta catching up to do

Holy carp. (Yes, carp). It's been a horridly long time since I've posted anything whatsoever. Time to get back in the swing of verbally vomiting my random thoughts into the ethers of the internet.

First off, there was the bar exam. It happened. That's all I know so far, of course, because they don't give out results until October. For now, I'll just stick with talking and thinking about it as little as possible.

I'm totally done with school now, and it's a totally surreal feeling. I just can't get used to not having any studying to do, and having my evenings open. It's really bizarre and wonderful and crazy. It's really nice to be able to see my girls in the evenings, and to see friends, and to actually get out and do things.

For example, CLUTCH. I went to another Clutch show (my sixth I think) last night with Kerry, Ryan, Corey, T-Rav, and CJ. It was awesome. We all met for a brew at the Hard Rock before the show, then headed over to First Ave.

We found a little secluded table while Lionize (the guitarist from Clutch's reggae-rock band) played their set. They were good -- I'd totally give their CD a listen and would possibly entertain notions of purchasing it.

Clutch came on around 10:00 and played a solid show until about 11:45 or so. I'm sure T-Rav and Ryan have the setlist for the show, because they're huge dorks.

The show was a ton of fun. Did I say that already? They didn't really have too many OMG moments in their set. They played some of the stuff off of the new album, and a bunch of other songs that I've seen them play before. I didn't really have the OH HAYELL YEAH moment in the show until the encore, which was Big News I with a Big News II tease that segued into Elephant Riders. That ruled.

They played super tight, though. Kerry mentioned that they all looked tired, which is to be expected because they've been touring for a long time now. I didn't notice the tired look, I was too stoked by the rock that was happening. Fun times.