Lawn Launch

As you know, we moved into a new place. My personal favorite thing about this property is the size of the yard. We share an acre with our duplex neighbors, which we split down the middle. When we moved in, the immediate yard had little patches of grass and weeds, probably about 30% grass, 40% weeds, and 30% dirt. The builder had "planted" grass seed in the spring, but didn't take care of it whatsoever, in fact, I'm sure he drove over it quite a few times.

The way our backyard looked the day we moved in. In the foreground, there is minimal grass with some weeds. In the background, there are much taller weeds, about 2 feet tall.

In the back, behind the first tree, there was no grass seed planted. Just tall weeds growing, and the land was very uneven, with big mounds here and there, and a few small trenches. The further back you go, the thicker the weeds get.

I've always wanted a nice, lush lawn that you can walk around in your bare feet on, and these types of lawns are generally absent in Mass. Not sure why, but most lawns here are pretty patchy and have lots of pebbles and rocks in them. Plus, not many people water their lawn, so in dry seasons they all turn brown. Anyway, I was determined to have a nice lawn.

But first, I will tell you about our apple tree, as that happened before we got started on the lawn. We bought a Grandma Smith apple tree from the local nursery and planted it on the north border of our yard. I picked the absolute hottest day of the summer, 96 degrees and very humid, too. I started digging, and about 2 feet down, right when I was about finished, I hit a rock. There were plenty of other rocks I'd gotten out, but this one was HUGE. I kept digging and digging, and eventually the hole was twice the size of the original hole, and I STILL hadn't gotten the rock out. Finally, we got it loose, but we didn't have the strength to lift it out of the hole. So I took my bike lock, wrapped it around the rock and used the shovel as a lever to get it out. Success! But that sapped my energy for the rest of the day. That was August 2nd.

Things were going pretty well about 2 feet down...

And then I hit the infernal rock. I dug and dug and pried and pried to try to get it loose...

Once I finally got it loose, I had to somehow get it out. Not exactly the easiest thing to get a freakin heavy and awkward rock out of a 2 foot hole. The stone might not look heavy, but afterward we put it on a scale and it turned out to weigh a million pounds. So there.

So I used a "pulley and lever" system to get it out. I took my bike lock and wrapped it around the rock, put the shovel through the hole, and lifted it out with Mel's help. About gave myself a hernia. Now you can all admire my hot bod.

3 weeks later, I spent the evening with my neighbor's weed wacker wacking weeds, piling them up pretty high.

After the weed-wacking. The green is not grass, just the stumps of weeds.

Saturday morning I woke up at 6 AM, got the rototiller from Home Depot, and then started tilling the yard. I figured it would be a one-day job, but we started digging up cables, fuse boxes, scooters, lead pipes, scrap metal, rugs, jackets, and just all sorts of junk the builder buried back there, which explained the big lumps in the yard. We ended up working until we had no more energy, around 6 pm, and only got 3/4 of the yard tilled. We pulled out 2 garbage cans' worth of junk, tons of rocks and wood. This was going to take a lot more than one day.

This about halfway through the day, the trash cans were getting full of trash and junk and you can see the chunks we'd tilled.

This is what we tilled by the end of the day. We got most of it done except the left side there.

I got off early the next Friday, got the tiller from Home Depot at 2 pm, and we worked until 9 pm, tilling and raking. The next morning we got up at 7 and finally finished tilling the yard at 1 pm, then spent the rest of the afternoon raking up debris. We laid down the seed at 8 pm, and I got the sprinklers going at 10 pm. All in all, we were completely pooped. I've never worked so hard in my life.

Mel scooping up debris (weeds, rocks). Melanie worked while I took pictures. I didn't do one gosh-darned thing.

I include this picture to illustrate the long metal pipe we found as well as the Razor scooter. Also note the quality of the lawn on which the car/trash can sit. You will notice this improving later in the post.

Our rock collection. Most of those rocks were already there, but we dug out about 5 of them also. Once again, not a fun task.

Another picture of our awesomely well-groomed dirt.

We laid down the seed and this white carpet stuff that had seed in it. The white carpet was about 45 bucks a package (100 ft by 3 ft), but we got them on clearance for 10 bucks each, so we bought all that Lowe's had to offer. They worked like gangbusters.

After 2 weeks, the lawn was progressing nicely. You can see puddles on the left where the low spots are, we'll probably need to bring in some more dirt to even that out. The grass in the foreground was cut very short and covered with the new dirt. You can also see our neighbor's hydroseed on the very left, it's the bluish-green crud.

We ended up putting the seed and the carpet stuff down the Saturday before Labor Day. Then, 2 weeks later, I had to work on the immediate yard. I call the "immediate" yard that because it's the yard right around the house, as opposed to the back section that we tilled. The builder threw down a bit of cheap grass seed, so it was littered with small patches of grass everywhere, but it mostly had weeds. We'd got quite a lot of rain this summer, so most of the dirt sections were heavily eroded, and now just had pebbles and hard-packed dirt that grass wouldn't root in.

I was tempted to rent some tillers and tear the whole thing up, but I figured a light smattering of dirt everywhere might be enough for the grass to take hold. I calculated that I'd need 3 cubic yards of dirt, so I called up the local nursery and had them deliver it. They came over in a big dump truck and dropped it right on the front lawn. Unfortch, I was not there to watch the dump truck in action (one of my childhood dreams) because I was at work. So instead I came home to a large pile of dirt in my front yard. I was too excited to take pictures of the pile, so just imagine a mound that came up 3 feet high in the middle and spread around a 15 foot diameter.

I mowed the lawn that wasn't covered with the mound of dirt the next morning as short as I could. Then I grabbed the wheelbarrow and filled it with dirt and spread it around the yard, about 1/4 of an inch everywhere. This took me about 5 hours. Then I rented the lawn roller again, put down the seed, rolled it out, and called it a day. The lady at the rentals counter at Home Depot always laughed when she saw me come in, I was there so often.

The immediate yard took a little longer to grow, I think because we started later and the weather was colder. But it started filling in nicely and my neighbors all complimented us, telling us "Your hard work has really paid off!" I can't think of a nicer thing to hear about my lawn.

After the first mow

I mowed the back part for the first time when my parents were here, about 5 weeks after a planted. It looked really nice, although I noticed a lot of bare patches and could definitely tell where the terrain wasn't even. Oh well, it was a marked improvement.

Meanwhile, our neighbors decided to bring in some landscapers to do their side of the yard, as they are pretty busy working overnight and double shifts as cops. They brought in like 3 truckloads of dirt to cover their yard with 6 inches of loam. They made it nice and even with huge bulldozers and other such machinery. They also put in a sprinkler system, which is nice to have, but not so necessary in Massachusetts as it would be in Utah or especially in Arizona. Then they had someone put down hydroseed. Their lawn grew just as fast as ours, but definitely a lot more even. It looks really nice. The price tag? A cool 10,000 bucks. All done in one day. Ours took 5 days of hard work, but I added up our materials and rentals and it was about 700 bucks.

I finally mowed the entire lawn on October 18th, 5 weeks after planting the immediate yard. It's really starting to look like a full lawn, although it's not really that thick yet. Supposedly grass grows up through the roots and it gets thicker that way, so that should fill up my lawn a good amount. It's only a matter of time before I'm frolicking around in my bare feet.

Before:

After:It helps that the fall colors are out and this picture isn't so washed out by the sun. It's like one of those weight loss before/after pictures where the fat lady is wearing ugly fat-person clothes, and then in the after picture they're wearing a stylish business suit. I should've raked the yard first, but I had barely enough time to mow before we took off for the weekend.

Our neighbor (the nice green, raked section to the left) took the time to rake the leaves before he mowed his 10,000 dollar lawn. You can see how nice it looks. And it does look nice, although ours isn't too shabby for 9,300 dollars less.

This is our "immediate yard" which we didn't till, but just raked dirt around. It's considerably fuller than it was before.

From the very back of the lawn.

We threw down some mulch and planted some cheap perennials we bought at Lowe's in the front yard.

Not Another Political Post!

Lately, everywhere you turn you hear about the election. Obama this, McCain that, Palin this, Biden that. Everybody's up in arms supporting their candidate and tip-toeing around the real issue that affects our everyday lives: Which fruit is the best?

I have been flip-flopping over my favorite fruit for as long as I can remember. At the beginning it was strawberries. For a while it was watermelon. I even went to the pomegranete for a while, we'd get them annually from my grandparents' tree in California. But which one is the BEST? I decided that the fruit needs to be tasty and versatile, able to be good in salads or by itself. Also a factor: How consistent is the quality of this fruit? Too often I buy a peach that turns out to be void of juice and taste. Or I'll peel a tangerine and find it littered with seeds. I want a fruit that doesn't leave me surprised, at least not too often.

Let's keep in mind that I love fruit. I eat a LOT of fruit, it is my favorite snack. Everything on the list is something that I enjoy eating, and the difference between number 17 and number 1 is not much.

17. Lemon/Lime: While these 2 both add delicious citrus flavor to drinks, fish, and mexican food, they are not very good by themselves. So that's why they're last.

16. Pear: Pears can be delicious, but I feel like they're perfectly ripe for like 2 minutes. I always end up eating one that's hard as a rock or melts in my hands, and I end up holding it over the sink while I eat it like a donut on a string. And how can you tell when you're at the core? The core of the pear is too vague.

15. Grapefruit: This was a breakfast staple at the Hansen household growing up, and I loved them. However, when I moved out, I realized that there was no Mom around to cut up my grapefruit for easy consumption! Now it's just too much work, plus I don't have a special knife. I saw one guy peel one like an orange and eat it that way, so I gave it a try. But grapefruits don't peel as easily as oranges, and it was just a big mess.

14. Cherry: Cherrys are delish, but you can't really put them in a lot of foods, unless you do all the work of pitting them and sich. We had to go over to our neighbors the Goodwins and pick all of their pie cherries every year, as they didn't use them. Or worse, we had to go pick at the Church welfare farm. Nothing worse than picking pie cherries. You can't eat them, and you pick for like 2 hours and you don't even have a full bucket. And your hands are all sticky.

13. Apricot: We had an apricot tree that rarely produced. Usually we'd have a late freeze and all the buds would die. That was too bad, because apricots are so good straight off the tree. I even like them a little green, that way they're nice and tart. We'd usually make apricot jam with all of the extra apricots if we had a good year. Magically, these same delicious apers turned into a jam that makes ordinary toast disgusting. Whenever Mom would open up a jar of Apricot jam, we'd count the days until the jar would be finished. Which was never.

12. Grape: Grapes are very consistent, and are easy to pick out. But I get tired of them rather quickly. And they're boring. Let's move on.

11. Peach: Peaches are like pears in the sense that it's hard to get a perfect one. But when you do, My Lands!, it's succulent and juicy and all your wildest dreams contained in one sphere of fuzzy skin. But it's impossible to eat without juice running down your arms and into your armpit. Canned peaches are pretty good, too, probably the best canned fruit.

10. Plum: The other midsummer fruit, plums are more consistent than peaches, although I prefer a great peach to a great plum. I like the red ones with the red meat inside.

9. Banana: Bananas are decent to eat by themselves, but easy to get tired of. Why are they ranked this high? I'm glad you asked. Well, I'll tell you: because they are good in everything. You can put them in your shake, your cereal, your oatmeal, your birkermusli, your hamburger, your spaghetti--you get the picture.

8. Pineapple: This actually might be a better canned fruit than peaches. Fresh pineapple is a dessert by itself, and canned pineapple isn't that much worse than fresh.

7. Watermelon: What summer gathering is complete without watermelon? Well, I'll tell you: NO summer gathering. I can't decide if I like chilled watermelon more than room temperature melon.

6. Orange: Orange you glad I didn't say banana? My winter comfort fruit. Mom would buy a huge box of oranges from the store and keep them in the newspaper cupboard (a chilled area connected to the garage), and I would eat at least 2 a day. Most of the time I would grab an orange or 2 on my way up to bed. One winter, I kept on tossing the peels down the crack of the bed, between the wall and my bed. When we finally cleaned it up, there was about 3 rainforests' worth of orange peels under my bed. Honest to goodness!

5. Strawberry: Strawberries are always a good choice, and are good with most things. But there's something about strawberries that keep me from putting it at number one. Maybe I get sick of them pretty quickly, maybe because I don't like strawberry flavored candy, and maybe because everybody else likes them so much.

4. Apple: The classic American fruit. I have my favorite varieties: Jonathan, Golden, Pink Lady, Grandma Smith. You can turn them into delicious pies, eat them by themselves, or chuck them at your neighbors. I remember the epic apple battle we had with the neighbors. There were apple remains all over the garage, the brick walls, and the driveway. We were cleaning that up for days. If you were there, leave a comment. I want to say Allan and Kurt were there.

3. Tangerine/Clementine: I can eat tangerines by the truckload if they are seedless and easy to peel. It's easy to tell which ones are easy to peel, just like with oranges. If the skin is loose at the stem, it should come off in one peel. If you can't do it in one peel, you should consider giving up life altogether. The one problem with tangerines is that you don't know if you're going to get a billion seeds and no one likes to spend all their time getting seeds out.

2. Pomegranete: Speaking of getting seeds out, Pomegranetes are all about the seeds. Unlike tangerines, getting the seeds out is half the fun! I consider myself OGPE: Original Gangsta Pomegrate Eater. I was eating pomegranetes before you even learned how to say pomegranete! I was eating pomegranetes before Whole Foods told you to buy them and put them into your cloth bag that you overpaid for just so you could kid yourself and think that saving a few plastic bags will stop global warming! Sorry, did I just bring politics back in? I could eat pomegranetes for every meal if they were more affordable. Just give me a knife and a dropcloth, and I'll sit at the counter for hours digging each nugget of juicy goodness out.

1. Raspberry: (David Putty voice) Yeah, that's right. Pick yourself off the floor. Are you really that stunned that I chose raspberry as number 1? Raspberries are delicious! They're always consistently tasty and juicy, they can be eaten like popcorn to no end, and only a small amount will go a long way. Have you ever eaten a bite of fruit salad and not tasted the tiny piece of raspberry? No, you haven't! And the best part is that you're picking the seeds out of your teeth for hours, reminding yourself how delicious that salad/smoothy/raspberry ambrosia was. Also, raspberries are a year-round fruit. Now I've gone too far, you say? Go to your local Macey's or Piggly Wiggly or Kruger's or Publix or Safeway or Stop N' Shop (have I covered all the regions of the US yet?) and get yourself some frozen raspberries. Let them thaw, and they're almost as good as the day you picked them. Now you're sitting there craving raspberries. Calm down, get your wits about you, diaper your child and get yourself over to the store for some delicious produce.

But not yet. The post isn't over. Did you notice that I may have left off your favorite fruit? Well, I did it intentionally, because your favorite fruit, let's be honest, royally sucks. Here are a few fruits I find to be overrated:

Mango: Mangoes leave an unpleasant aftertaste in my mouth, so I don't really like them. Every time I refuse a mango, the person offering will insist that I just haven't had a good one yet. Well, how many do I need to try before I can declare that mangoes are just not that good? It's the same way I feel about sushi. How many different kinds of sushi do I need to gag on before I can declare that it's totally disgusting?

Kiwi: First, you have to peel them. With a KNIFE. Second, they look like a giant booger. Third, they're not that good, and you can't eat the thing in the middle. Way too much work for not that much reward.

Cantalope: For the most part, cantalope is pretty bland and tasteless. The ripe ones can be pretty good, but I think I was fed too much cantalope in my younger days to really care for them again. Until further notice, I have broken up with Cantalope. We're still friends (I'll eat them when they're available, like everyday at work), but I'm not ready to commit to it by actually buying one at the grocery store.

I know that last list will have a few misled individuals up in arms. To you I say: make your own durned list. And then I will be up in arms because you said that raspberries are overrated. And then we will realize that arguing about fruits is almost as useless as arguing about politics: nobody's going to change their minds.

Go to Hull!

Fort Revere at night

Hull is a little town on the edge of the peninsula that juts out into Boston Harbor. Go look it up on Google Maps. See it? Okay, there you go. That's where the scouts went camping last weekend. We were supposed to go to one of the actual harbor islands, but the boat was too early, so instead we camped betwixt the main road and the harbor on the tiny peninsula between Fort Revere and Allerton Point.

Looking east from Fort Revere towards Allerton Point, and beyond that is the Atlantic. We camped on the isthmus, there in the middle

The scenery was awesome. To the west was downtown Boston, you could even see my place of employment. To the east was the limitless expanse of the Atlantic Ocean, the waves disappearing into the horizon. To the north was a few harbor islands, one tiny house inhabited with only a small house and a working light house. To the south was an inlet from the harbor, where all the sailboats and yachts were sleeping.

To the south

This camping was not exactly your typical camping in the woods. More like camping in somebody's backyard, if that person's house abutted the harbor. But we took advantage of the urban environment by taking a hike to Fort Revere at night and checking out the lights of Boston.

To the west

The next morning I woke up at 6 am and went outside for a walk. My bones were aching from a rough night on the ground, so I had to get out and stretch. The sun was starting to come up and the sky had a slight tinge of red to it, and I walked up to Allerton Point to see if I could get a good view of the sun coming up over the Atlantic. Unfortch, there was no good lookout points in a neighborhood dominated by large houses, but I could still see the lighthouse to the north pretty well. It was perfectly quiet and still, except for the occasional airplane overhead making it's redeye landing at Logan, across the harbor from us.

To the north

We spent Saturday back up at Fort Revere, this time playing Capture the Flag in the abandoned warehouses. The boys were pretty excited that I was willing to play with them, but my legs do not move as fast as they used to, and I got winded pretty darn fast. It was an awesome course for Capture the Flag, in the fort and all. Would've been 10 times cooler in the dark.

To the east

After that, we took a 3-mile hike down the beach. I'm not sure why the scoutmaster had us do that, maybe he wanted a nap or something. It was a nice walk, but we'd been running around all morning, and we were pretty tired. Oh well. We finally made it and I figured I'd walked around 8 miles that day, not counting Capture the Flag, and that's a lot for someone like me who only walks 2 blocks to work from the train station every day.

All in all, good times were had by all. It wore me out though, and I had to spend the rest of the day on the couch watching football.

West Bridgewater YM on the walls o' the fort

Rise and Shine

Last Sunday as I was getting out of the shower Kent told me that the "kids" were still in bed and sleeping. He thought I would want to know so I could wake them up and get them ready. I'm sure he thought he was SO hilarious tucking Gary and Gibby into the extra bed like he did. He just didn't count on me actually "waking" them up and getting them ready for church...


Apparently he had a pretty good laugh when he checked in on them after his shower. Personally, I don't know that Gary and Gibby have ever looked better. And yes, I'm fishing for compliments on my tie tying skills.

Tiny Little Parents

My parents were nice enough to spend the time and money to make the trek us out here to Mass. Obviously, we don't get many visits as most of our loved ones live west o' the Mississip, so we're naturally begging everybody and anybody to come visit. This means you!

The waves crashing on the wood-like rocks on Cape Elizabeth, Maine

Ma and Pa arrived on Wednesday afternoon. I (over) grilled some chicken and we spent the evening visiting. Mom had brought a shoebox of fresh fruit all the way from Utah with plums, nectarines, and apples. Of course, Dad ate most of them that weekend as snacks, even though he has thousands of them hanging from his trees in his VERY OWN BACKYARD.

Tiny reading some covered bridge history on the way to Moosehead, Maine

Thursday we left for Maine, stopping along the coast in Ogunquit and driving along the ocean until Portland. Ogunquit's beach was very scenic and surprisingly sandy, as we thought all Maine beaches were rocky. We were WRONG!

The lighthouse off of Cape Elizabeth

Cold water running over our bare toes! I love Tiny's face here

Any trip for the sole purpose of leaf peeping requires a TON of driving, especially early in the season. We ended up staying in Bangor, Maine, which is a good 5 hours north of us. Bangor did not have as much color as we would've liked, so on Friday we drove north towards Canadia, up to Moosehead Lake, for those of you following along on Google Earth. The colors were simply radiant there, so we got our fill and turned around before spending too much time in the car.

The Hansen crew looking over Moosehead Lake. We all have the same smile

On Saturday, we drove through the White Mountains of New Hampshire, up through the Kancamangus Pass where the colors were equally as good. By the time we got home, I estimated we spent 19 hours in the car from Thursday to Sunday. I felt sorry for my parents, cooped up in the back like I used to be back in the day during our cross-country trips in the blue and brown stationwagons.


Now that we have BYU-TV, we can watch conference like Utahns: from the comf of our own home. We even DVR-ed the Saturday sessions so Mother could catch up on them in her free time.

"Orono" is a VERY common crossword clue for "Maine college town", so as a crossword enthusiast, Mom was very excited to be there

On Sunday, we went to see Robert get baptized. Robert and I have become good friends, as they have assigned me as his home teach. It was a great little baptism with a few close friends and various leaders from the ward. Mom was beaming the whole time, no doubt thrilled at the sight of so many black people in our ward. I definitely feel less white now that our ward is about 40% black. Robert is black, and my home teaching companion is black, so I think I was in the minority for the very first time in my life at a church meeting when I went home-teaching this week. For a second, I know how my sister feels when she's in Alabama.

The lovely Mellificent graced us with her presence. It is rare to catch a Mellificent on film in her natural habitat.

Mel and I had to go back to work on Monday and Tuesday, so my parents took our car and gallavanted around Plymouth and the Cape, to which they reported that good times were had by all. Tuesday I drove them to the airport and said goodbye, sad to see them go, but glad that I could show them around this place I call home, and will call home for the next bunch of years, if not for the rest of my life.

Thanks for coming, Mom and Dad!

My greatest moment

In the summer of 2004, I was living in the crappiest apartment ever off of North Harvard Street in Allston, Mass., which is right to the west of Boston. I sublet a room for June through August from a dude who was at Tufts medical school and was gone for the summer. As I walked through the door at my new place, I saw my old grade-school buddy and rear-fence neighbor, Dustin Robert. He was there doing an internship somewhere in the medical field. He'd been there since the beginning of May.

The first day I was there, I went with Dustin to Institute, hoping to meet some girls. Maybe I would learn something about the gospel, but that was secondary. There were quite a few people there, and I met a few girls, but that wasn't important. What happened to Dustin, however, was. Probably the cutest girl there walked straight up to him and started chatting with him. I was admiring Dustin's grace and prowess while he stood there and fielding her questions with the ease of Dr. Love.

"What's your name? Where are you from? When did you move in? Are you working or going to school? What are you doing tomorrow? And the next day? And the day after that?"

She was effectively putting on the Full Court Press, or the FCP for short. But Dustin didn't mind. I couldn't blame him, she was pretty durned cute. As it turned out, they made a date for the next night. I was excited for him, and he was too.

The date turned out to be pretty fun. Dustin and FCP went out a couple of days later, again, and it had all the makings of a successful relationship. I had to leave for training on Monday for 2 weeks, so I knew I would miss out on the drama of his budding relationship.

I asked him to pick me up from the airport when I got back. I was expecting him to drive my 4Runner there, but instead I was met by FCP's red Ford sedan. They both greeted me and we went back to our place. Once there, FCP continued to FCP Dustin to the extent that I just didn't want to bother the lovebirds so I went to my room.

The next morning I found Dustin and tried to get the lowdown. I figured things were going great, picking me up from the airport together and all. Instead:

"She's driving me nuts! I have no air! She's suffocating me! Everywhere I go, there she is! She wants to hang out everyday and that's just way too much. Plus, she's pretty irritating."

"So why don't you just dump her?"

"I don't know. Kissing is pretty fun."

Ahhhhh. We've all been down that road. Spent a few weeks with an intolerable but cute girl only for the kissing.

The next few weeks were pretty entertaining. To get away from FCP, Dustin painted me as a needy friend who was having emotional problems, so he had to spend a lot of time with me alone. We even went up to Maine one weekend, sleeping in my car, just to avoid her invitation to spend a few nights with a bunch of friends in a cabin in NH. Of course, all of this could've been avoided if Dustin found the stones to drop her like the hot rock that she was.

Once I knew that Dustin didn't care much for FCP, I knew I could get away with teasing FCP a lot more than usual, maybe antagonizing her enough to break up with him. One particular night, we were watching TV when FCP showed up pretty late. I went to my room and read a book or something. I turned out the light and was just about asleep when I heard some voices down on the street. It was pretty late, about 2 AM, so I looked out the window and saw Dustin and FCP chit-chatting next to her car. I watched them for a couple of minutes as they said their goodbyes. It quieted down and it was apparent that there was to be some goodbye kissing. Dustin leaned in, closed his eyes, and puckered his lips. FCP followed suit, and right when their lips touched I yelled:

"SCOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!"

My voice echoed down the empty and silent street. I couldn't have timed it better. They both were completely startled and stopped kissing immediately. Dustin looked down at the street and laughed. FCP's feelings for me at this point could be classified as "Murderous Hatred", so she was not amused as she looked up at me in disgust. I was thoroughly pleased with myself, so much so that my laughing almost caused me to fall off my bed.

They broke up a little while later. Dustin and I fondly remembered and recounted that moment many times later. And that was my greatest moment.

Oh yeah, my wedding was pretty good, too.