I put "marriage" in as one of my Technorati tags for this blog.  (Yes, David, I do tag once in awhile, hehehe.)  So I figure I'd better write about it here and there.  It's anthropologically fascinating, after all.

One can only assume that marriage is supremely different from one person to the next.  I know loads of married and even formerly married people around my age, and people in committed relationships who have chosen for various reasons not to marry, and I can only imagine what goes on in their hearts and minds.

But for us - this is fun.

I won't speak too much for Joey, that would be silly.  But even though we got married in part so we could live in the same place, we did it mainly because we belong together.  It was obvious right off the bat - it smacked us in the face and said, "Duh!  What have you been doing with all those other people for a combined dating years total of over yikes 30!?"  And we listened.

I'm lonely sometimes.  I work from home right now, which can be hard, and I did leave my job, friends and family, not to mention my country.  But at the end of the day Joey comes home and I'm always excited to see him.  I have some weird story to tell him, or I need a hug, or I just missed him in general.

The wedding was almost six months ago now, but though all the time we've spent with family over the last few weeks, people kept making fun of us for being attached at the hip.  He's my hubby.  In times of crisis, where would I be but by his side?  Even in regular ordinary times I intend to be near him more often than not, long after we're no longer newlyweds.

Plus, when you tickle him, he giggles.  Now that's some good fun.

I tore the pad of my thumb a bit with a staple a week or so ago - does that change my fingerprint permanently?  It sure looks like it will.

One requirement in the application process for Canadian immigration is a criminal background check.  For Americans, this not only includes a national check through the FBI, but also a check by each state you've lived in for more than I believe six months (I could be wrong on that - this was awhile ago) since you were 18.  Lucky for me, that's only two states in my case - Massachusetts and Ohio.

I was able to find out what I needed to do for this online, and send for the forms I needed either online or by phone.  Massachusetts, for some reason, does not require fingerprints for a background check - just some personal information.  I had it notarized by my extremely conveniently located boss, wrote a check, done.  Ohio, however, requires fingerprints, as does, of course, the FBI - each on a different specific form.

I was living in Watertown, MA at the time, which is a small, fairly quiet town just west of Cambridge.  I just called the local police station and asked when to come in.  The guy they connected me to gave me a time and day, and said, "Of course, if we have any prisoners at that time you'll have to leave and come back another day."

Um, sure.

There were no prisoners.

I, however, was taken back to the holding area, where the prisoners would have been.  The officer - sergeant, maybe? - grumbled a bit about how he hadn't done fingerprints with ink in ages - they do it electronically these days - but he'd manage.

This was actually pretty fun.  He had to do the whole thing twice of course, and he joked about how much more relaxed my hands were than your everyday fingerprinting subject.  He would just grab a finger, roll it in the ink, and then carefully rollllllllll it into the correct space on the paper.  Can't just be a dab like on TV - has to be a roll from one side to the other in order to get the entire print.

Now, in this case, I had to wait for the results before I could do anything with them (the medical results are sent directly to the processing office).  Massachusetts came back first - no criminal record.  Then the FBI - no criminal record.  I thought I'd croak waiting for Ohio, where I only lived for 8 months, where I probably broke some minor laws (jaywalking?) but was certainly never arrested.  At last it came, and I could finish the paper application...which is a whole other story.

I guess the Secret Service never mentioned anything to the FBI about that one time...kidding, kidding, I've never been arrested...