OK, this may be the last post for while. Early tomorrow morning, I leave on a train down the coast. Thursday all of our parents are meeting up, Friday is the rehearsal, rehearsal dinner and the low-key bachelor party, and then Saturday is the big day. I can't believe that I'm really getting married. I know I don't talk much about my relationship with Anne here on the blog. Neither of us really wants to have all of our private stuff floating around on a blog that routinely gets hits from searches for things like "breast implants gone bad," or "Metallica Chains of Pain Lyrics." But this morning I realy feel the need to write about Anne, and how happy I am that we're finally really getting married in just under a week. Anne responded to an online personal ad that I had posted and long forgotten about. She was living in NY at the time and I was in DC, but she wanted to write to me because our ads were so similar. An email correspondence led to a telephone correspondence and after many months she came to visit for a weekend. I think up until that point, I still thought it was possible that it could just be a cool long distance friendship since I was a little wary of starting a long distance relationship, but we clicked so well in person that by the time we had our first kiss, kissing goodbye as she left, there was no doubt in either of our minds that this was the real deal. After that I was coming up to NY a lot. My folks both lived there at the time (my dad has since retired to Florida), and I came up to visit them about a week after her visit, and she only lived about 90 minutes from them, so she came down and met my entire family on what basically was our second date. After that it was a lot of me coming to NY, her coming to DC, or us meeting someplace in between like Philly or New Hope. We tried to see each other at least once a month, but sometimes it was longer, and we ran up some insane phone bills! After close to a year of that, she moved in with me in Washington, where we shared the smallest, dumpiest, dustiest studio apartment ever. Sometime toward the beginning, the site where she found my personal ad stopped running personals (though it appears that they've started them back up again). This was one of many signs that it was meant to be. That winter, as we were on our way from her parents' house to the San Jose airport to fly back east, we stopped at the outlet stores in Gilroy to kill some time. We'd been talking about getting engaged for a while, but I wanted to do it right with the perfect ring and a romantic surprise. We decided to look at a jewelry outlet and there it was, the perfect ring. In a total whirlwind, I bought it and proposed to her in the store. We were beyond happy, just trembling and shaking, calling our families from the parking lot. I can only imagine how we're going to be while we're up in front of our families and friends on Saturday. I still get that feeling whenever I think about that day and I get a smile that nothing can break. It's been a year and a half since our engagement, and since then we've made a feature length film, planned a wedding and moved across the country. It's been quite an adventure and I could never have asked for a better partner to go through it all with. Anne is the sweetest, kindest, most sensitive, intuitive, creative and wonderful person I've ever met in my life. She's one of those people who just glow with goodness. You can tell just by looking at the way she smiles or looks at things. Words on this blog can't come close to describing how much I love her, or how much it means to me that a woman as wonderful as her not only loves a misfit like me, but makes me a better person in the process just by being with me. For all the things in life that go wrong, Anne is the one constant reminder of how things can go so perfectly right, and that's been obvious to me since we met 3 years ago. And the next time I post here, she'll be my wife, and that makes me feel like the luckiest, happiest man in the world. I'd also like to take this opporunity to thank everyone. Thanks to Anne's parents for throwing what will be an incredible wedding. Thanks to my parents for throwing the rehearsal dinner. Thanks to both of our families and friends for coming out to see us get married and for the wonderful gifts and sweet emails you've been sending. Thanks to our bridal party for being there for us and being part of our most special day. Thanks to swoon.com for enabling us to meet. And mostly, thanks to Anne for finding me, loving me, and sharing your life with me.