Halloween joy on Friday night!
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: each Halloween night my wife Anne and I are among the few holiday observers still handing out candy to trick-or-treaters in our suburban neighborhood. However, this year marks the first time since 2006 that we shirked the tradition, but it was for a very special, one-time reason: we were invited to a Halloween wedding.
DISCLAIMER: No surgeries or hair dyes were used in the making of this amazing lovely woman.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: we’re getting old! And it happened again!
Last weekend Anne turned the big 5-5. At least it’s our understanding that 55 is “big”. She’ll now be eligible for discounts at select businesses even though she looks half my age under most lighting conditions. I’m a mere babe at 53 but sometimes have to tell cashiers that, no, I am not retired yet. Most days we don’t feel this old and have to remind each other that we are indeed this old and the actuarial math works out against us.
Welcome to the Finer Things Club! If it helps, there won’t be a pop quiz about Angela’s Ashes.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: sometimes my wife Anne and I find excuses to leave the house for fun besides comic-cons, road trips, movies or extra groceries! It isn’t often, but we’re open to the concept. It beats doomscrolling in our comfy chairs. We’d venture out more often if we were invited, but we aren’t into sports or alcohol, which tend to be the only incentives that 98% of Americans offer or respond to in laboratory tests. Sure, we could invite other folks out on our own terms, which Anne has been known to do on selective occasions, but as a lifelong introvert, I’m not one for taking the initiative, not even if you pass me some on a serving tray and insist, “Here, please enjoy some initiative, on the house.” It doesn’t help that our offline friends here in Indianapolis tend to lead busier lives than we do, and our internet friends don’t cross state lines too often and don’t consider Indiana a tempting vacation destination, despite all our sports and alcohol.
Once upon a time four months ago, two of our friends were preparing to move far away from here to another country — one with its own storied forms of sports and alcohol, often combined with disastrous results — and our li’l circle wanted to get together one last time before we never see them again in person and come to appreciate their future social media posts all the more. After extensive text negotiations our circle’s female half informed the male half our occasion would be something called “high tea”. I thought this was just one of their frequent Anglophile in-jokes, like when they used to bring up Harry Potter a lot. But no, “high tea” is a thing that Americans can do, even when it isn’t “tea time” on the grandfather clocks in any of the British Empire’s few remaining time zones.
So we agreed to try a new thing, even though Anne has hated tea ever since she was traumatized by a childhood prank. But we understand compromise is a thing friends do, even though compromises are against the 2025 Terminally Online Code of Conduct.
Just the seafood we were looking for: lunch at Fleet Landing — crispy whole fried Southern flounder with pasta salad and Charleston red rice.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:
Every year since 1999 Anne and I have taken one road trip to a different part of the United States and seen attractions, wonders, and events we didn’t have back home. From 1999 to 2003 we did so as best friends; from 2004 to the present, as husband and wife. After years of contenting ourselves with everyday life in Indianapolis and any nearby places that also had comics and toy shops, we overcame some of our self-imposed limitations and resolved as a team to leave the comforts of home for annual chances to see creative, exciting, breathtaking, outlandish, historical, and/or bewildering new sights in states beyond our own. We’re the Goldens. This is who we are and what we do.
For 2023 it was time at last to venture to the Carolinas, the only southern states we hadn’t yet visited, with a focus on the city of Charleston, South Carolina. Considering how many battlefields we’d toured over the preceding years, the home of Fort Sumter was an inevitable addition to our experiential collection…
Historical sites and summertime scenery notwithstanding, one of my favorite parts of the Charleston experience was the food. We’d made sure to budget accordingly in case of impeccable restaurants. Our first full day in town was a feast of delights.
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!
The pinnacle of our home’s 2024 Christmas diorama, which is something Anne does every year with our various pop culture Christmas ornaments and figurines.
Hey, kids! It’s that beloved holiday tradition where we just post a few recent Christmas-themed photos with some short yet sincere seasons’ greetings, and we give readers a break from my usual self-indulgent verbosity. It’s the most wonderful time of the MCC year! Click, scroll, ooh, ahh, and keep on frolicking down the internet superhighway!
Old friends Milo, Opus, and Portnoy from back in the day.
New generations aren’t learning about Berke Breathed’s Bloom County from their schools, peers, or influencers. Comic strips in general seem a forgotten artform among The Kids These Days. Recently a young coworker looked at the Linus Van Pelt standing in the li’l Funko Pop collection on my desk and called him “Lionel”. I wept more than a little inside. But some of us olds will never forget the wisdom we picked up from the newspaper funnies.
Nearly 40 years since its original publication a couple weekends before I turned 13, I’ve never forgotten that simple quote from P. Opus, the world’s largest-nosed penguin. I’ve thought about it a lot ever since — offline and here. The voices in my head have found no reason to retire it yet, not when society keeps proving him true.
A giant top hat welcomes road-trippers to the Illinois State Capitol Complex Visitors Center. We do love being seen.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:
In addition to our annual road trips, my wife Anne and I have a twice-yearly tradition of spending our birthdays together on some new experience. On past trips we’d visited the graves, tombs, mausoleums and virtual posthumous palaces of 24 American Presidents in varying accommodations and budgets. One of the biggest names ever to grace the White House kept eluding us: Abraham Lincoln, planted a mere three hours away in Springfield, Illinois. In May 2023 I figured: let’s make his tomb a trip headliner of its very own, not a warm-up act on the road to Branson or whatever. History is technically more Anne’s fervent interest than mine, but we found plenty to do beyond reading wordy educational placards…
After our scenic tour inside the Illinois State Capitol, we returned to the car, drove over to the Capitol Complex behind the building, and drove a few laps around their visitor parking lots until a space finally opened up closer to our next attraction. Some spaces were cordoned off for a construction project; others were taken up by a few buses whose passengers we never encountered. The complex was apparently a popular place on Friday mornings.
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.
Welcome to animatronic Africa with mood lighting!
I ask you, what better time than right now for a shiny happy feel-good gallery of an alternate Earth in which everyone sets aside their differences, concedes they were all cranked out by the same animatronic manufacturer, celebrates mutual captivity on the same indoor canal, welcomes outsiders without fear of mass shootings or assassinations, and drowns out any concerns by singing the same catchy jingle over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN?
…sorry, what were we talking about?
Midlife Crisis Crossover! 