It's the Anniversary of Our Second Date

Our Carna-verssary, as el V

It was my first semester of grad school; I was a TA. A mutual friend introduced us.
Our first date was a week before. This one took up all of the long Labor Day weekend. It began with driving from Albuquerque to Santa Fe, where we had dinner at a very nice restaurant (didn't know it yet, but that's el V for you -- always eating as well as he can). Then on to Carmen, at the Santa Fe Opera -- which I'd attended the weekend previously with a different suitor -- older, well-off, tenured professor in the UNM English Dept.

As you can tell from the first sentence of this paragraph, Professor Tenure went right out of the running because of how this Night After the Opera turned out.

Tonight el V took me to dinner at the Fish Whistle, the C'Town restaurant on the Chester River. Local ingredientys, wine and so on, nice jazz playing, and the up close view of the river running in full tide spate.

Here it is again, Labor Day. I'm not a grad student (though I became one again, more than once, after we married, which didn't happen for several years). I have published books. I have traveled to and lived in strange places. I know wonderful, talented, brilliant people. I spent the day working on a book I'm enthralled by, and getting compensated to do so, right here in C'Town. Who knew it would turn out like this? I, at least, have not a thing to complain about.
 
Damn, I wish I could the software for my Canon to download so I could show you some photos.

OTOH, this romantic album of Nat King Cole at the height of his powers is playing, and we can curl up and listen together in the candle light, and a glass or two of wine.  Did you know that Nat can purr????