Year of the Palindrome

Date: 2002-01-01 00:05:17

I'm sitting at Yukon on the dining room table of my aunt Sherrie's house on the north shore of Lake Tahoe. To my left we're watching experts from 2001, currently "Blue Danube Waltz", on Dad's notebook. (Willy wanted to watch it before it became completely obsolete.) My Christmas vacation has been pretty wild. I flew to Portland on Thursday night 20 December, wandered around Longview with Gem on Friday, and had Christmas part II (part I was with my family on the 18th) with Gem's family at her grandparents house in Portland. Sunday Gem and I drove to College Place so she could work as tech support for $MAJOR_COMPUTER_MANUFACTURER. I asked her to marry me on the way. (That should be pretty wide-spread knowledge by this point. Although I keep telling anyone I run into.) Thursday we headed back to Portland and went wedding-dress shopping with Gem and her mother. I managed to provide constructive information, which Gem was rather impressed about. (She instructed me beforehand in the ways of dress shopping.) I feel fulfilled to have gone shopping. We now have two front-runners, although she's still thinking about further shopping.

Gem and I flew from Portland to Sacramento Thursday night 27 December. Bumpy ride the whole way. Thought about wedding stuff. (Kind of wierd; I keep getting "I did what?" moments. But they're passing much quicker now than they did last week.) Announced to my grandparents and an uncle Thursday night; the rest of my family barely managed to keep it (as Bethany would say) on the down-low until I arrived. News spread, and Gem made it into the slide show of Grandma and Grandpa's life. (I'm the first grandchild on my father's side to get married, out of twelve (the youngest of which is four), and the second on my mother's side, out of five.) This slide show was shown at the huge shindig on Sunday for Grandma and Grandpa's fiftieth wedding anniversary.

I'm being forced to depart so I can get set up to sleep since Mom wants to regenerate. Dad, you're invited to point this out to Mom, especially if I don't make it to write again anytime terribly soon.

This is the year of three very exciting things in my life. (At least that's the plan.) I graduate from college, get married, and start graduate school all in one short summer. Should be great fun.