“Marry your best friend”
“Someone you like at the end of the day”
“Things in common”
“Agree about money”
“Show courtesy and respect even when you don’t feel like it”
“Let the small stuff slide”
“Yes, Dear”
“Have a good work ethic”
“Don’t give up”

After months of asking this question, I came to the startling realization that no one, not in 8 months of asking this question, had once said love was the reason. So one night, three ladies are sitting at my table and I brought this up to them. They were on a group vacation, and their husbands were off gambling somewhere else. All had been married over 20 years. When posed with my “why not love?” question, they all hemmed and hawed quite a bit. “Well….I guess it’s love, but…the real reason people stay together is because they get along.”

How interesting.

Whenever I press a longtime married person about love, attraction, and sex, the answer is always the same. No one stays married because they have this urge to have sex, because they’re still attractive or even because the other person loves them. Do you know anyone married 20 years or more who can’t contain themselves around each other? Even if you do, you have to admit they are in the minority.

I can understand if you’re getting married with the intent to have children. I don’t care if it’s two dads, two moms, or the traditional setup, but two people doing life together seems to work better with kids. Even if it’s just so one person can stay with the sleeping kid on a road trip while the other person runs into the bathroom. So what if you’re not planning to have kids? If no kids are involved, why does it matter who you marry?

Let me tell you what women do to my brain. An attractive woman walks by, the hair stands up on the back of my neck. We have a beer, get to talking. We go out again. And again. We start to fall in love, begin a relationship. She’s wonderful, and I am feeling happy.

This whole time, my body is creating chemicals that go to my brain and make me INSANE. Literally, insane. I do not make rational decisions when I am in love. Why then would I attach all my property and legal business to someone who is making me insane? It doesn’t make sense. Instead, I’d like to marry my best friend, someone who I love and makes me a better person.

But…but…Washington has gay marriage! Yeah, it’s legal right up to the border of Idaho. Then you’re just a couple of queers in Idaho. That’s never good.

But WAIT! What about the sanctity of marriage? Oh yes, sanctity. I was hoping you’d bring that up. Turns out the sanctity of marriage is only $64. You know what’s more expensive than that? Every single thing you do as a couple after that. Dildos. This lamp. Running shoes. Guns. Dogs. Michele Bachmann’s divorce. Pet urns from Costco. Almost all tattoos and hookers. Passports. You get the idea, no? After you pay the fee, you just need to find a sea captain or someone who is qualified by the internet to stand up in a Star Trek uniform and “solemnize” your marriage. Not “sodomize”, everyone. “Solemnize”.

This is what straight people are defending? Seems sorta silly to me.

A number of people have come to me and asked me if I realize how expensive divorce is. I’ll be honest, I didn’t do any divorce research before my wedding. I can tell who’s gone through an awful divorce, because they look horrified at the idea of getting married. And I’m really happy they feel so comfortable telling me I’ll fail at my marriage simply because it doesn’t fit their preconceived notion of why you should be getting married. Look around, people. Whatever ideas you’re going into marriage with as a society, it isn’t working. Maybe it’s time we sat down and took a good look at marriage-for gays, for straights, for everyone.

And really, it’s none of your business. The law allows me to marry any man I want. You can defend the sanctity of marriage, but you’re not going to stop people who love each other from cohabiting with each other. All you do is block a legal protection for people who deserve it as much as I do. Maybe if you stopped worrying about who’s getting married, and focused on your own marriage, this world would be doing a lot better.

So….if you’ll excuse me, I have to go find my suspenders. I’m getting married today.

There is so much snow here. It’s everywhere.  All the time.  And I don’t just mean everywhere.  It’s in great, heaping piles blocking every single intersection everywhere in the entire city.  People have all tunneled through the snow to clear the sidewalks and it’s built this big wall of snow between the houses and streets.  Kids can play on top of these walls.  When I take the dogs for a walk, they have no where to poop because the snow is over their heads in every direction we go.  My roommate and I built a snow track in the yard so they could run around.  Turns out this is the 5th largest one day snow fall in MINNESOTA history.  Minnesota gets large one day snowfalls ALL THE TIME, compared to everywhere else, except Canada.  It’s been a week, for goodness’ sake, and it’s not melting.  NOT MELTING.  They have snow removal teams.  The largest snowblower you have ever seen is dumping snow into dump trucks and carting it away to a snow dump.  A SNOW DUMP.  When I was in the military, I used to think, “man, someday I want a job where I don’t have to pass cows on my way to work.”  But that was only because I didn’t know how low things could get.  I didn’t even fathom living in a place with a snow dump at that time.   I had to stop listening to the news, because every day they predict more snow, followed by the phrase, “where are we going to put it? haha.” I don’t know.  One of the 10,000 lakes?  You know that’s the number only in the spring when all the snow melts.  And I’m pretty sure they’re including ponds as lakes.  Some of these “lakes” seem a bit sketch.    I hate the rain with a passion, but I’m looking forward to going to Seattle for Christmas just because I know I’ll be able to see the ground.

Which brings me to the point of this particular message, and that is a great way to get in shape for free, and reduce the murderous feelings I have toward stupid annoying people.  Corepower Yoga has a fantastic program for anyone that has more time than money.  I started Work For Trade (WFT) at the Uptown Location here in Minneapolis.  This great program lets you get on the cleaning staff with one 2 hour shift per week.  In return you get unlimited free yoga.  OMG that’s such a great deal.  Because two hours of cleaning at my current day job rate is only worth $14.50 (but plus tips!), and I’m pretty sure a month of free unlimited yoga is more than that.

Yoga has been really fantastic at helping me stay in shape.  Here are some other benefits:

- Reduces Murderous Feelings

- Reduces Fat

- It’s mostly women

Come on, who doesn't want to do this?

If you are interested in getting in great shape for free, contact:

Bryna Fahrner
Management Team Uptown
2930 Emerson Ave So
Mpls, MN 55408

Studio: 612-822-9642

E-Mail: bryna.fahrner@corepoweryoga.com

Let me explain.  Today, a woman who works at a certain tanning salon 2 doors down tried to order a large soda for delivery.  I’ll give you a second to let that sink in, then I’ll expand on this to drive the point home.

Tanning Salon <——-Approximately 20 feet——–> My workplace

She wanted a delivery.

For one large soda.

20 feet, you guys.

The manager explains to the lady that we don’t offer delivery service for less than one sandwich.  She then walks the twenty feet to our door in a perfect demonstration of what one of us would have done, but in reverse.  She then proceeds to berate all of the in shop employees (who have nothing to do with this, I might add), and wouldn’t speak to the manager.  The General Manager of the store.  No sir, not high enough leadership to solve this issue of why we can’t deliver a large soda the 20 feet to her doorstep.  She wants to speak to the owner.  The owner of the store. Yes, let’s call the owner of this 20-something store chain and chat about one large soda, shall we?

Ring, Ring.  (Or whatever.)

“I want to speak to the owner of the store, I have received terrible service from your company!”

“Oh my (he doesn’t swear in front of customers, I bet), that sounds terrible!  What can I do to remedy this situation?  Please, tell me what’s happened.”

“They wouldn’t bring me a large soda 20 feet for no tip.”

(I always imagine a long pause here, followed by some throat clearing.)

“Did they explain that company policy is a minimum one sandwich delivery?”

“Yes.  I still want them to bring it to me.”

“Did they explain we don’t even deliver large sodas?”

“Yes.  They should still bring it to me.”

At this point several employees have snuck in and begin to beat this annoying woman with large loaves of bread.  Unfortunately, she’s too tan to bruise.

This is the same woman who made me go make exact change for one sandwich out of a 100 dollar bill, then didn’t tip me.

What's this sandwich doing here? Is anyone going to eat this?

My first one was last year, when I dressed as zombie Princess Leia.  It was fun, but after awhile it got kind of exhausting having everyone want to take your picture every 5 seconds.  This year I dressed as a zombie missileer, but since no one knows what that is, and you look like a pilot, I just nodded along.  Sure buddy, whatever you think is probably right.

Patti's arm looks like it hurts.

The route is quite long, and I haven’t heard of anyone making it from one end to the other and enjoying it.  We started on the 501 side of the route, and it was fun to see all the great costumes.  Sorry if I got drunk and grabbed anyone’s boob.  That happens once in a great while.  I started with my roommate and her girlfriend, then I met up with Max and Vicky and some people they knew.  Then some other stuff happened, and I ended up in front of Sgt. Preston’s around midnight with Jessie and a gazillion other people.  Then I went home.  Go back and read this paragraph again, but this time with a dirty mind.

That's Max there in the middle.

It really was a very fun night.  If you’d like to see all the pictures, just clicky click right here to see my Facebook album with all of them.  My advice for next year is to get some friends who are fun and start at noon.  You’d be done before the obnoxious college kids come out, and we can have some zombie chill time at someone’s house or something.  Won’t that be fun?

In front of Sgt. Preston's around midnight.

We have some tap water too.  I can get you that.