2013

It's been a big year.

• January: T and I started the new year as an engaged couple, having just come off our engagement photo session.  The country continued to reel from the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, CT.  I became a member of the NRA in response to the government's attempt to infringe on the rights of law-abiding gun owners in a shameless display of exploitation of a tragedy.  The Disaster Twins turned 4.
• February:  Valentine's Day with my fiancee.  A meteor explodes over Chelyabinsk, Russia.  Pope Benedict XVI becomes the first pope to resign since 1415.
• March:  My bachelor party with my future brothers-in-law-- BBQ, beer, and bowling.  Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez dies from cancer.  Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio becomes Pope Francis.  I complete the Catholic sacrament of Confirmation.  Because of a records snafu,  I undergo a Conditional Baptism.  I witness what I think is my first Easter Vigil mass.  I start to feel a closer relationship with God.  I wonder how many other young people stray from their beliefs, only to find their way back.  One of those signs of the maturity that comes with age.  Also, I suppose, as the illusion of invincibility commonly held by youth is dispelled, and certain things become more important.  One becomes more aware of one's mortality and beginning preparations for eventual journey from one life to the next.  I being to understand how important it is to believe in my faith as I make one covenant with God.  Confirmation ceases to be just a checkbox that must be ticked before I am to receive the sacrament of marriage.
• April:  Roger Ebert passes away.  The big day arrives.  T and I are married in a small ceremony in a small church.  I get to see friends I haven't seen in 12 years, and family I haven't seen in 25 years.  The Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher, passes away.  My new wife and I relax on a beach in Belize.  My wife and I begin to combine finances and households, with plans to hold at least one or two garage sales to rid of us the extra items in our lives.  But organizing both our lives takes more time than we realize.  The Boston Marathon is bombed by two Chechen Islamist dirtbags.
• May:  Wacky weather brings snow in early May.  It comes to light that the IRS just so happens to investigate conservative political organizations more than liberal ones.  Couldn't have anything to do with radical leftists in the White House and Senate, could it?
•  June:  Edward Snowden commits treason.  Whether the government's actions are right or wrong, he most definitely acted improperly.  There's no other word for it. 
  
  Meanwhile, I join my new in-laws on a regular family outing to the Great Lakes region of Iowa.  While there, my mother-in-law is stricken with pneumonia.  She is airlifted to the nearest big hospital and my wife and her siblings join my father-in-law in keeping a vigil at her bedside.  The rest of the family bands together to support my mother-in-law in time of crisis.
  
  James Gandolfini passes away at only 51 years of age. 
• July:   The A/C breaks down on our house at the start of the summer, and I learn how shrewd my wife is in negotiating a good deal on the replacement.  Egypt is the site once again of mass protests as the people decide they're not happy with an al-Qaeda-aligned president.  A road trip adventure to Chicago with my wife, her best friend, and her best friend's husband to attend the wedding of one of their college friends.  Dennis Farina passes away.  My tenant moves out of my house in Minnesota and I start the process of getting it ready to sell. 
• August:  My wife and I make a couple of trips to Minnesota to get the house ready to sell.
• September:  Engagement anniversary.  A straight-line wind storm downs lots of tree limbs in our neighborhood, but does no apparent damage to our house.  Plenty of firewood now!
• October:  The Democrats have their little temper-tantrum in the form of a shutdown.  The PR doesn't look good, what with the Obama Administration closing an open-air WWII memorial or kicking people out of their homes on Lake Mead.  RIP Tom Clancy.  Happy Birthday to my wife.  One final trip to my house before closing on the sale.  It feels good to no longer have to drive up there so often to take care of things.  The ACA's website demonstrates how the government, despite spending over half a billion dollars, can still fuck up something so simple.  And with the millions now losing their health insurance plans, the ACA continues to vindicate the people who pointed out attempting to add more governmental control would be disastrous.
• November:  Thanksgiving with the in-laws.
• December:   RIP Nelson Mandela.  Christmas with the in-laws and with my family.  Temperature extremes.  The Left tries and fails to destroy Phil Robertson, resorting to lies when nobody buys that he's a bigot.

I look forward to the new year.