Fake Elvis Wanted Too Much Money

Guess what today is? Well, yes, it is Thursday. Yes, it may be your birthday or whatever. Look, I don't care about you and your feelings ok? Today is my wedding anniversary. Yep. The Wiff and I have been married for 14 years as of today. 'Course we've actually been "together" for over 18 years but that date is harder to narrow down. Do you count from the day when we first met? Do you count from the day when we started hanging out? Do you count from the day that we moved in together? Who frickin' knows? So the wedding anniversary is just an easier date to acknowledge.

"Why, dear Mark", you ask quite boldly and slightly rudely. "Why is your anniversary on November 3rd of all dates?" Are you a crazy person or perhaps thick? Our anniversary is on November 3rd because we got engaged on Halloween night, at Logan airport, more specifically in the "Cheers" bar in the airport, with Silence of the Lambs playing on the TV behind Amy's head, while we were on our way to vacation in Vegas. We then got married 3 days later which would make that day what? November 3rd, that's what. I TOLD you I was classy. Side note: I hated Vegas a lot. Like, a WHOLE lot. It was just a shithole. We did go see George Carlin perform at the MGM Grand though. That was pretty cool. And I got my first speeding ticket on this trip. That wasn't as cool.

Getting married in Vegas was our best option because it allowed us to avoid the whole wedding planning nonsense. The whole she-bang from the flights to Vegas, a week in the time-share condo the company I worked for owned, rental car, wedding silliness, day trips to Death Valley, the Grand Canyon and Zion National Park cost us under $4000. Yep. Them's 1997 dollars too. Totally the way to go. We then were able to save up enough cash to put a down payment on our house (which we still live in). No, we didn't get the "Elvis" package. Motherfucker wanted an extra $300 just to walk Amy down the aisle. And he may have been a hero to most, but he never meant shit to me.

So, yea. This whole thing is has other stories that splinter off from the main theme but I'm too lazy to get into those right now. Plus, I wanted to keep this light. After all, this is about me and The Wiff. See, I like love her and stuff and I'm proud to be her hubby. She's kinda awesome. So there.

Hey! Get Offa My Porch!

Halloween is this weekend (tomorrow as a matter of fact) and I'm not looking forward to it. When we first moved in together, the Wiff (then the GF) and I had zero trick or treaters come to the apartment. Granted, they would have had to have access to the building first so that's probably the reason. The next apartment didn't offer much in the way of Halloween festivities either and it wasn't until the 3rd apartment that we finally had a few kids come to our door. I usually would spend the night worrying that some shithead kid would egg my car or something. Nothing ever happened like that luckily. And now that most of our friends have kids themselves, the possibility of being invited to a Halloween party are lessening too. That's not something I'm missing at all, I just thought I'd mention it.

When we bought the house we were excited that we would probably have a few kids come and do the trick or treat thing. It was going to be fun! We'll get to meet our neighbors! We'll be able to establish our place as the cool house in the neighborhood! We even went the extra mile and bought a bunch of goofy stuff from this catalog and filled up little bags with toys and candy. We spent a couple nights sitting at the dining room table filling up the bags and trying to evenly distribute the chotchkies so that everyone got a fair share. It was a big hit and we got (if memory serves) 80-something kids that year. "Holy crap", we thought. "That's a lot of kids!" We were mistaken. That's nothing. The next year we got over a hundred and it has been steadily climbing ever since. The cats hate it as they associate the doorbell ringing with a terrifying attack or something because whenever it rings they bolt upstairs instantly. Oliver actually growls too. He's wicked intimidating.

We have since scaled back on the extra gift things and have gone with straight candy for the last 5 years or so. But that doesn't seem to matter as last year we got 135 kids. This year, who knows? Maybe we should start giving out Smarties or some other crappy candy or maybe pennies to make our numbers go down (by the way, when did the regular Halloween candies get so small? I remember the "Fun Size" bars being the disappointing standard but now they're all like "mini bars" or some bullshit. Whatta gyp). However, when we were cleaning out the basement during The Great Purge of 2009 we did come across a bag of leftover Halloween toys. We won't do the little gift bags but The Wiff will be handing out those toys on a first come/first serve basis. Hopefully no one will get stabbed on our porch during the mad scramble to get a shitty rubber skeleton and a pumpkin pencil. I don't actually interact with the little buggers because I find them annoying but the Wiff loves it. She does the whole sing-song voice thing and Oooohs and Aaaahs over all the kid's costumes. She's insane.

But Halloween also reminds me that our wedding anniversary is rapidly approaching. It was 12 years ago tomorrow that I proposed to Amy in a bar at Logan Airport. Classy. We were planning a vacation in Vegas and I thought that this would be perfect. Luckily for me she thought so too and we were married 3 days later on November 3, 1997. Happy anniversary Amy (a.k.a. The Wiff)!