Mr. & Mrs. Golden, 21 Years and Counting

Selfie! Anne wears a blue T-shirt with a Superman S-shield. I'm wearing an orange Superman Celebration 2017 shirt with art by Jon Bogdanove.

Strange visitors from another planet.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:

Two geeks met in 1987 in high school German class, somewhat out of sync with the ordinary folks around us. Divine timing would keep our unplanned parallel paths intertwining over the years. Everything led up to our determinedly simple wedding in 2004, by which time we best friends had already started traveling together after growing up in families and lifestyles that didn’t lend themselves to much of it. All these years later, our story continues together through ups and downs, highs and lows, chuckles and tears, aches and pains, and mountains and valleys both figurative and literal.

We’re the Goldens. It’s who we are and what we do.

When I posted about our 20th anniversary last year — a milestone, mind you! — almost no one cared. Despite the apathy of You, The Viewers at Home, it’s an MCC tradition, so here we go again anyway! Briefly, even! By my standards, I mean!

Continue reading

On the Unthinkable Occasion of Our 20th Wedding Anniversary

Us doing jazz hands in front of an enlarged photo of George Washington's mansion.

Fun times at George Washington’s Mount Vernon on our 2024 road trip.

It’s that time again! Another year of blessed bliss married to the amazing Anne, another “Happy Anniversary to Us!” entry, another dinner to celebrate, and another nearly unrelated lead image. This year’s milestone is also a multiple of 5, so society says it’s worth extra skill points!

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: two geeks met in 1987 in high school German class, somewhat out of sync with the ordinary folks around us. Divine timing would keep our unplanned parallel paths intertwining over the years. Everything led up to our determinedly simple wedding in 2004, by which time we best friends had already started traveling together after growing up in families and lifestyles that didn’t lend themselves to much of it. All these years later, our story continues together through ups and downs, highs and lows, chuckles and tears, aches and pains, and mountains and valleys both figurative and literal.

We’re the Goldens. It’s who we are and what we do.

Continue reading

Not Put Asunder, 19 Years and Counting

me and Anne standing inside a concrete tower overlooking misty mountains.

Teaser image from our 2023 road trip miniseries. Photo by a slightly younger traveler/stranger.

It’s that time again! Another year of blessed bliss married to the amazing Anne, another “Happy Anniversary to Us!” entry, another dinner to celebrate, and another completely unrelated lead image.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: two geeks met in 1987 in high school German class, somewhat out of sync with the ordinary folks around us. Divine timing would keep our unplanned parallel paths intertwining over the years. Everything led up to our determinedly simple wedding in 2004, by which time we best friends had already started traveling together after growing up in families and lifestyles that didn’t lend themselves to much of it. All these years later, our story continues together through ups and downs, highs and lows, chuckles and tears, aches and pains, and mountains and valleys both figurative and literal.

We’re the Goldens. It’s who we are and what we do.

Continue reading

Not Put Asunder, 18 Years and Counting

Thanos and Us!

Anne and me and an intergalactic madman makes three.

It’s that time again! Another year of shockingly blissful marriage to the amazing Anne, another anniversary dinner to celebrate, and another completely unrelated lead image.

Continue reading

Not Put Asunder, 17 Years and Counting

Mitchell Corn Palace!

JAZZ-HANDS PHOTOS WILL RETURN IN 2021.

It’s that time again! Another year of shockingly blissful marriage to the amazing Anne. This year I can even tell people we survived a pandemic together.

Continue reading

2020 Makes 20 Years

Chocolate Cupcake!

What better way to celebrate a special occasion in 2020 than a cupcake topped with the emoji that best describes 2020.

2020 took casualties on every level, literally as well as metaphorically. Lives have been lost. Survivors have had their lives changed for the worse by lingering coronavirus side effects. Jobs have been suspended or eliminated. Businesses have closed. Families have suffered. Special events were canceled….or worse, continued on schedule but infected and killed their attendees. Plans great and small were waylaid. Happy times were postponed for safety’s sake and downgraded to a form of delayed gratification to be fulfilled in what will hopefully not be an even worse year to come.

Milestones on the calendar came and went — some without fanfare, others with drastically reduced celebrations. My own example at hand: 2020 marked my twentieth anniversary at my day job.

Continue reading

Not Put Asunder, 16 Years and Counting

Chicago 2012!

I already used up the one photo we’ve taken together so far in 2020, so please enjoy this previously unshared file photo from our April 2012 trip to Chicago and C2E2, a souvenir from a bygone era when we were allowed to travel out of state and be near other humans.

It’s that time again! Another year of shockingly blissful marriage to the amazing Anne, another anniversary dinner to celebrate.

Continue reading

Not Put Asunder, 15 Years and Counting

Heart Walk 2010!

File photo of us from 2010, when we participated in the occasional miles-long charity walk.

It’s that time again! Another year of shockingly blissful marriage to the amazing Anne, another anniversary dinner to celebrate.

Sometimes on these annual entries I’ll use a photo from our recent road trip, but this year’s edition of that much-needed break from the rat race won’t be till the end of August. The wait is killing us, as is Father Time, which is another reason I went retro and dug into our personal archives for a younger photo of the two of us. This week some 150 million FaceApp users are out there having all their selfies converted to elderly “Have You Seen This Nursing Home Escapee?” mug shots and letting overseas marketers data-mine them into so much digital chattel, while I’m here swimming upstream toward youthful times. But, y’know, for love.

Continue reading

Not Put Asunder, 14 Years and Counting

Us and Rocky!

From our return to Philadelphia last week. We were one of three couples taking turns taking each other’s photos with Rocky Balboa.

It’s that time again! Another year of shockingly blissful marriage to the amazing Anne, another anniversary dinner to celebrate. We just got back from our 2018 road trip a few days ago and have yet to recover fully, but we refuse to let fatigue and battle damage hamper our personal festivities. As I’ve mentioned before, maybe it’s best not to brag too proudly, but fourteen years is no easy feat in a world of increasingly disposable relationships that’s maybe two or three steps away from inventing drive-thru divorces and frequent-philanderer reward programs.

Dinner this year was at a relatively new place down the street called Kaza Maza, quite possibly the first Moroccan/Mediterranean cuisine ever to grace our side of town. Other than some issues with the Coke Zero, we wouldn’t change a thing about the evening. ‘Twas a fine place to celebrate love and marriage and to forget about the part where we had to return to our day jobs this week.

Continue reading

Not Put Asunder, 13 Years and Counting

Aquarium Us!

Ho ho ho, the flimsy Photoshop dolphins think it’s hilarious that we’re miming being trapped in a giant glass tank. THAT’S NOT MIME. WE ARE DROWNING. PLEASE SAVE US, YOU HEARTLESS FLOATING HOT DOGS WITH MUDFLAPS.

Above is a teaser image from our 2017 road trip, courtesy of the National Aquarium in Baltimore, where my lovely wife Anne and I had the pleasure of spending a few days and not getting murdered despite what you hear on TV.

We’ve known each other for nearly thirty years next month. We’ve been married for thirteen years as of this very Monday. Vacation photos and jazz hands are just two of the many cornerstones of our relationship — not the most important ones, mind you, and certainly not the hardest ones to achieve. But when your never-ending process of maintaining and streamlining the critical factors is kept on track, it frees up your mental space to indulge in the happier shared whims. If the process yields fun tangible souvenirs like this one, so much the better and the merrier.

Continue reading

Not Put Asunder, 12 Years and Counting

Midlife Crisis Crossover!

The writer with his primary collaborator, his #1 fan, and his most vocal fact-checker.

Usually we’re out of town on one of our road trips when our anniversary passes, but today was the first time in years that we were in-state for the occasion. We appreciate the inventors of the calendar finally working out the timing in our favor. It was nice to mark the occasion with a nice meal and greeting cards exchanged on our own turf for a change.

Continue reading

2015 Road Trip Photos #44: A Very Special “Chopped” Anniversary

Kashmiri Spiced Braised Lamb Shank!

Our feature for the entree round: Kashmiri Spiced Braised Lamb Shank.

Our eleventh wedding anniversary fell on Day Seven, but scheduling needs and fannish impatience dictated that we celebrate on Day Six. Longtime MCC readers know Anne and I are big fans of the Food Network’s fun, addictive cooking competition series Chopped. Most of its judges are restaurateurs and chefs who call NYC their home, but we were surprised during our vacation research to discover one judge owns a restaurant within 500 miles of our house and right along our path. We agreed it was a mandatory dinner stop.

Right this way for a look at the house that Maneet built!

MCC 2015 Food Photo Marathon #7: The French Confection

Cropichon et Bidibule Eiffel Tower!

While my lovely dinner companion and I await our charcuterie, a tiny Eiffel Tower twinkles merrily at passersby.

Our very special MCC extended interlude concludes!

Once again we return to Massachusetts Avenue, the part of downtown Indianapolis where trendy eateries cheerfully serve those of us who don’t live in any of the upscale north-side neighborhoods. For my birthday last May, my wife and I tried a relatively new place that specializes in unpronounceable French cuisine. Anne and I met in high school German class, but we did our best to fake our way through dinner from one of Germany’s notable European colleagues.

Continue reading

2014 Road Trip Photos #19: Twin City II: Minneapolis

Mary Tyler Moore!

Mary Tyler Moore takes a nothing day and suddenly makes it all seem worthwhile in front of the still-open Macy’s at 7th and Nicollet.

After spending the first several hours of Day Four walking around downtown St. Paul, we crashed at the hotel for a while. As someone who hates naps, that’s hard for me to admit, but it had to be done. We needed to recharge for the sake of our evening plans, for which we’d be driving into downtown Minneapolis to create a fun bookend effect for our day in the Twin Cities.

That evening we tried something we’ve never done before on vacation: a formal anniversary dinner.

Continue reading

Your August 2014 Anniversary-Party-a-Day Guide!

Princess Diaries 2!

The Princess Diaries 2 turns 10 this August! But you already knew that, right? The stars, left to right: Callum Blue, a.k.a. Zod from Smallville; Academy Award Winner Anne Hathaway; and Starfleet Captain Chris Pine.

Forty-five years since the moon landing! Twenty-five years since Ghostbusters II! Fifty years since this battle! Ten years since that album! Eighty years since this one comic! Thirty-five years since that one thing happened that we wouldn’t mention if this weren’t a slow news day!

Now more than ever, you can count on your favorite sites to devote bandwidth every week to someone’s memories of events that occurred exactly on This Day in History multiples-of-five years ago. If it happened nine, thirteen, or twenty-two years ago, don’t waste our time. But fifteen years ago? Those precious moments need to be documented. Interviews need to be conducted. Reviews and opinions from that year need to be revisited and recontextualized. The important thing is that we need to be writing about stuff everyone loved way back when, instead of wasting a lot of time searching for new stuff in the world of today. Nostalgia rules! Discovery drools!

For once, I’m getting a few steps ahead of their game. Instead of waiting for them to tell me what to celebrate, like some kind of chump who doesn’t own a calendar or know how to Google, I’m planning my own social schedule in advance so I can be first in line to define “the Good Ol’ Days” for everyone else with a big, boiling bowl of Remember When bouillabaisse. And you can join me!

Continue reading

Not Put Asunder, Ten Years and Counting

Us in Fargo!

This is how everyone spends their tenth wedding anniversary, right? Because my wife and I sure wouldn’t want to look out of place or anything.

Right this way for a post-vacation update!

Not Put Asunder, Nine Years and Counting

geek couple, Midlife Crisis Crossover

Taken out of context, this photo of a happily armed woman and some dork with a bowling ball could be misconstrued as a future submission to awkwardfamilyphotos.com with a caption questioning the decision to don summer wear in December.

At left in the 2012 Metropolis Superman Celebration T-shirt, my wife is holding a Red Ryder carbine-action 200-shot Range Model Air Rifle with a compass in the stock and this thing that tells time. At right in the hard-to-see shirt sporting the periodic-table block for adamantium, that’s me toting the bowling ball given to Ralphie’s old man for Christmas. The backdrop is the living room from the original A Christmas Story House in Cleveland, open year-round for visitors like us.

Some vacationers might spend their time off getting drunk and sunburned on an exotic beach. That’s not who we are.

We’ve known each other for nearly twenty-six years, but Wednesday marks our ninth wedding anniversary. When the one you love is willing to pose with you without a whit of hesitation, surrounded by this much pop-culture ephemera, confident in the knowledge that we agree on the most important things in life while sharing a variety of commonalities in the Department of Ultimately Unimportant Things, you realize you’re ridiculously blessed beyond what you deserve. You also thank the Lord that He’s in charge and not Joss Whedon, or else something tragic would’ve happened five minutes after the photo was taken.

Happy Anniversary, m’lady. Can’t wait to see our vacation photos at age 70. 🙂