Anniversary
We'd been married 15 years yesterday. Time really does fly, and most of the time we've been flying along with it, adding layers to our life together. And there have been quite a few of those, having lived in four countries on three continents together. There clearly weren't going to be too many layers added yesterday, though. Having had time off for Christmas, I couldn't really take more time off right now, in particular considering that I was the duty boy. A pity, since this is probably only the fourth time in 15 years that we managed to remember it. In the end, we did go out to get a bite to eat and share a beer after work, at what we thought to be an upscale Japanese restaurant but what turned out to be an upscale Japanese beer house. No matter how classy the decor was or how good the grilled mackerel turned out to be -- I had two -- the late Thursday evening shouts and hand claps from the beer-guzzling crowd of Taiwanese behind me and the Japanese guy staggering a bit when getting up off his chair at the table next to us made it painfully clear that this was a beer house. I was thinking that the Japanese guy was hitting on the girl next to him, and the two on the other side of the table were trying to set them up. The guy seemed to be the only one who had had a bit too much to drink, probably so he could charm the girl. Or so he thought. He tried hard enough, but I couldn't see if he succeeded. Anyway, D was happy, she's been wanting to go there for a while, and so was I, because it really was quite a nice place, and I always find it quite relaxing, or maybe enjoyable, to see people get a couple of beers together and raise their voices a bit. As we say here, it's "lively," which is crucial -- it really is more important than actually doing something fun, because the atmosphere in itself makes the evening a success. And it seems to work.
But if we're still here at 25, and remember the day, we should probably get a bottle of vintage champagne.