Of Halloween and Hannibal

In a pleasant contrast from last week's blog about everything going wrong, this past week has actually been fairly pleasant.  I had a lovely Halloween working the fabulous costume wedding of Tina and Luc, where I got to introduce Fish Eye Fun to a room full of my friends, all people who love having their picture taken (except for Alexis).

 Plus, the bride and groom were an amazing Morticia and Gomez Addams.

It was lovely to get to combine my work with my play.  It's happened on a small scale before, with having Sandi and Alexis help me at events when needed.  But to turn my friends loose in a room with candy, alcohol, costumes, and Fish Eye Fun?  It was pretty epic.  I had a line most of the night, but still was able to hang out and enjoy the reception.  And be in my own share of pictures.

Meanwhile, I wore what is possibly my favorite costume to date, and definitely the most comfortable in years: Where's Waldo.  I now pretty much want to dress like Waldo all the time.  It might make up for the fact that, apparently, Waldo was an incredibly popular costume choice this year.  There was another Waldo at the wedding I was at, a friend of mine posted a picture of her and her husband dressed like Carmen Sandiego and Waldo, and they were apparently out en masse at a bar that Jake went to.  Hmph.  And I thought I was being original.

In other news, Mark and I went on our first "road trip" on Monday.  It's his week off, and I don't technically work Mondays, so we decided it was time to get out of town for the day.  For lack of any other ideas, we drove to Hannibal, where I was told to stand in front of some signs.

Somehow, we managed to not do a single "historic" thing while we were there, in spite of being in, well, Historic Hannibal.  We didn't go in any museums.  We didn't tour the historic mansion.  The closest we got was going on the hour-long riverboat cruise, which was probably our favorite part of the trip (outside of the food).

As Mark said when we drove into town, "We can do whatever we want.  It's our day."  And that turned out to be entirely the case.  We ended up not feeling like going in the museums, and so we didn't.  Instead, we just wandered around, had lunch at the Mark Twain Brewery, shopped in antique malls, and went in the less-than-impressive Train Museum.  Then we drove home and stopped for dinner at our absolute favorite Mexican restaurant, Espino's.

While we were both a little underwhelmed by what Hannibal had to offer and uncertain how to feel about the fact that we managed to avoid nearly every single museum in the place, we still had to admit that we had a good day.  The weather was perfect, we got away from our usual St. Louis haunts, splurged a little on eating out, and hardly ever stopped talking to each other.  So I, personally, consider it to be a successful day trip.

It's still slightly amazing that, after knowing someone for twelve years, I haven't run out of things to tell him.  And he hasn't run out of things to tell me.  Most days, we hardly ever shut up to each other.  There are, of course, mornings and nights where we are both working on our own thing, or lying together on the couch reading, but I don't think I've ever had someone know me so well and talk with me so much as Mark does.  And it is talking with me, not at me.  It's a small word, but a world of difference.  He listens to me.  He acknowledges my opinion, even if his differs.  We appreciate and value each other's input.  For someone who is usually only chatty at parties after a few drinks and never before shared so many of my honest thoughts and opinions, I still find that aspect of our relationship surprising and entirely enjoyable.  Much like most of my life.

And, as I type, my boyfriend is building me a bookshelf.  Relationship goals?  Accomplished.