• Happy anniversary to my darling wife, Emily!
  • Being the nerds we are, we spent the afternoon at the Carnegie Museums looking at dinosaurs and art.
  • It was almost as hot as our wedding day so once the museums closed we went across the street to Kiva Han and cooled off with some smoothies, then we sat in the Cathedral lawn for a while watching some tiny kids play tee ball and some somewhat larger kids play cricket. I still have no idea how cricket works.
  • Dinner was at the Gypsy Cafe in the South Side, which is where we ate the night we got engaged. We followed that up with a ride on the incline up Mt. Washington where we could take in a nice view of the city.
  • We stopped for ice cream at the little shop on Shiloh Street then rode back down and headed home.
  • We finally unwrapped our cake topper and realized just how much cake we had to deal with. It held up pretty well and was still tasty, but there’s far too much of it.
  • We exchanged anniversary gifts. The traditional first anniversary gift is paper, and we both took that to mean books. I got Emily two books by Dave Eggers, who she’d mentioned an interest in a few weeks ago and she got me the third and fourth volumes of Absolute Sandman, which means now I need to read the whole thing again.
Wedding Cake
Finally unwrapped after a year of waiting...

  • Up early; to church. Today’s “sermon” was about a new “behavioral covenant” proposed for adoption by the congregation (The quotes aren’t ironic. The Unitarian Universalists tend to use very specific terms). There were seven proposed rules which are inspired by the seven guiding principles of the congregation, essentially meaning (to me, anyway) that they are things that the congregation should be doing already. They were also very specific that these were not meant to be enforceable rules but guidelines for a self-governing congregation. I’m not sure what the point is, then. They’re basically saying that you should abide by the principles of the church or excuse yourself from it, but most members of the church were drawn to it by those principles, so they will have already made their choice. This sort of thing (rules designed by committee, which aren’t enforceable, and don’t really add anything to the discussion) is why I’m reluctant to become a full member of the church, and is an example of why I find organized religion in general unappealing.
  • After church we went to the Gypsy Cafe Geek Brunch. Today’s theme was “Joss Whedon”, which meant dishes inspired by and named after Whedon creations like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly. I had the “Serenity Scramble”, which is steak and eggs scrambled together with home fries, while Emily had the “Captain Hammer Crepes”, which were… crepes. Very tasty all around, especially with a little Frank’s Red Hot thrown in.
  • Stopped by Costco and signed ourselves up for a membership. Our first purchase will likely be a new set of tires for my car. Our second will likely be a pallet of peanut butter.
  • For dinner we made our way out to Wings, Suds, & Spuds in Moon and met up with Greg and Jim. The teryaki wings are still delicious, as are the fries. We ended up BSing for a couple of hours after eating, until the place started filling up and we finally freed up our table.
  • Home for some Mass Effect (really really almost done now!) and bed.