Happy Birthday, Love of My Life

Twenty nine things about the birthday boy:

He gets green beer on his birthday. He has a great Irish first name, but won't tell you his middle. He is incredibly strong, but you'd never know it by looking at him. He's also incredibly good at packing, especially when it comes to moving vans, which makes things a bit easier on those miserable moving days. He's a GIS analyst, which means he's involved with map-making and computers, and if you asked me anything more about it, I'd probably stare at you blankly. Which is essentially what he'd do when you asked him anything about poetry. But he's incredibly good at what he does, his bosses tend to adore him, and he enjoys it, so sometimes I forgive him for being such a workaholic. He homebrews his own beer, but we haven't made a batch since our summer mead. His favorite beer tends to be HoneyWeiss, and he's recently started to enjoy red wine. But his favorite drink is Pepsi, and I think if he had to quit caffeine, he'd be a bit more feisty than when he had to quit smoking. He quit just a month or two after I did (what? six years ago?) and in that in between time, he'd tease me and taunt me "just to make sure you really wanted to quit." Which means, essentially, that he can be a real brat, and I'd attest to that six years after quitting--he still likes to push buttons. I would say he's a dog person, but it's not just that--he's an animal person. Other people's dogs are overjoyed to see him--my parents' dogs, his college friend's dog, his parents' dogs. Sometimes that play Sylvia hits a little too close to home. When I first met him, I was initially attracted to his talent on the guitar. When we bought our house, we really wanted to have two additional rooms to be "ours"--mine is a poetry / writing / guest room, and his is a little den that contains most of his computers and guitars. Before we went on our first date, we used to write each other letters, even though we lived fifteen minutes apart, but he worked the night shift at a gas station--among the gifts we gave each other were an Ani Difranco mix tape, a copy of The Bell Jar, and a CD of his own guitar music. He doesn't like to play covers. Our first date was an overnight trip, which may have seemed strange, but it seems typical of us now--dinner, a walk down by the river, then from Green Bay to Milwaukee where we watched Othello and fell asleep on a friend's sofa. He actually slept in the reclining chair, letting me have the better spot, and he woke up with a little drool. The next morning, he looked at an apartment for the following school year, and the real estate agent asked if we were a couple; we blushed and she said we'd make a cute pair. The next day, I left for Hawaii with my family and missed him furiously. We love to travel together and have been to: Oregon, Lake Tahoe, New Jersey, NYC, Colorado, and Alaska together. I hope our map eventually extends to other countries--he'd most like to go to New Zealand, Ireland, or Iceland. What I love the most about him is his generosity and humble nature. When we have guests over, he tends to overdo his host duties, which means we rarely see him in the evening, as he's always cutting cheeses or doling out drinks. I love his laugh. I love how he makes me laugh. I love how he's always supported me emotionally and encouraged me on my journeys. I love that I get to spend the rest of my life with him, and every day I feel as if I am the absolute most lucky person, as if the fates made a mistake, an accident pairing me up with him, but I'm not going to tell if you don't.