Monday, May 5, 2008 | by nathan

Four Days’ Wedded Bliss

Brian and I decided, for our third anniversary, that we would take a break from life entirely. The date was Wednesday, April 30, and we booked ourselves into a room at the Skirvin Hilton Hotel in downtown Oklahoma City. We had done this last year as well, but had forgotten to take the next day off work, and so we found ourselves, on a Tuesday morning, scrambling around in a posh hotel room at 7 a.m. trying to get to work on time.

This year, we were smarter. Anniversary was on a Wednesday; we took Thursday and Friday off work. We arranged for late check-out from the hotel, enabling us to sit around in complimentary bath robes and watch The Price is Right.

First, of course, was our anniversary dinner on Wednesday night. We started off the night with drinks in the Red Piano Bar in the Skirvin. Brian was Talisker on the rocks, I was Brittan martinis (Chopin, dry vermouth, bleu-cheese olives).

Afterward we went to the new Redprime Steak in downtown Oklahoma City, across the street from the apartment we lived in when we first got together. Dinner and the accompanying drinks were amazing, and afterward we went up on the roof of our old apartment building and reminisced. We took some time to be glad we no longer lived downtown, that I no longer worked 7 days a week at 3 jobs while also going to graduate school. We talked a lot about the future and where and how we see ourselves going forward.

The next morning, hung over, we ordered room service and watched gotzy morning television and generally just lazed around for quite some time. We perused an Oklahoma Travel Guide to give ourselves ideas for the Great Oklahoma Road Trip 2008, and checked ourselves out about noon. We spent a fair bit of the rest of the afternoon at home, working in the yard. A trip to Home Depot found me with four wonderful grape tomato plants - my favorite kind of tomato - and a whole bunch of sacks of cow manure and mushroom compost. Brian got some flowers to put down in our backyard bed.

I also decided, in a fit of gardening glee, to plant a blackberry bush:

It all sounds like the least-romantic thing that two people kicking off four days of marital bliss could be doing, but it was so great being out there with him, both of us getting sunburned, both of us working this tiny little plot of earth that we call home, together.

In our significant downtime we played a lot of Mario Kart Wii - I get frustrated when I lose, which is often - and had some friends over for a cookout on Friday night. Saturday we managed to get rid of almost all our extraneous junk in the neighborhood garage sale, and we even had a few offers on Sam, who got something new that you’ll see here on Friday.

The garage sale, unfortunately, took almost all day, and by the time it was over we were sunburnt and tired and we retired back to the Wii. Yesterday I dropped the rototiller on my foot - it wasn’t running, luckily - but overall I’m rested and ready for what’s next, which is summer on the short term, and on the long term, at least 50 more years with this awesome guy and this life I so, so love.

This morning, when I went out to my car to go to work, this was on the steering wheel: