From the Salmon

Y’know, I was going to blather for a bit today about how this site is now one year, 305 posts and 121,585 words old. About how a year ago, some encouragement and maybe even a little taunting from other folks I was reading at the time led me to launch this puppy with a few ill-advised piscene puns.

Which is fun and all. But today marks another anniversary of sorts, one that blows my one-year-old Salmon out of the water.

Ten years ago today, a few friends and I converged on Nashville for a set of concerts by a half dozen or so bands that we all liked. Some of the friends I’d known for years. Many of them I’d only known through trading tapes of live shows.

I probably didn’t brief a few of my friends well enough (sorry guys), but the primary reason I made the trip was to meet one person in particular. We’d gotten to know each other a bit over email and ytalk (remember ytalk? or pine? or mosaic? damn, the interweb was young). She lived in the city I was fixin’ to move to after graduation, and she seemed like someone I would enjoy hanging out with at shows.

Truth be told, though, I was hoping for a bit more than that.

I had no idea.

Ten years later, she’s my best friend, my greatest joy, my biggest encouragement — my wife.

And that, my friends, is worth celebrating.