Three years ago from today, on a hot August Saturday, Patrick and I were married at the Mill Hill Unitarian Chapel in Leeds. We wrote the ceremony ourselves, and in the middle, after the pronouncement that we were husband & wife and after we'd signed the old church registers, two of our brothers carried out glasses of champagne, and everyone got to take a break from the ceremony to celebrate with us.

The very best of our wedding photos are all printed ones that we haven't scanned, but here's one I really like, taken at our reception afterwards (which was catered by Justina with the most delicious Indian buffet - my mouth still waters when I look back on it!), as well as another photo taken almost 3 years later:

Patrick and me cutting the astonishingly delicious, vegan wedding cake:


And the two of us together, again wearing our wedding outfits, outside the Dessert Salon at Wiscon this year:

(Thanks so much for the picture, Jenn!)

Tonight we're going to go out to a Thai restaurant in town and celebrate 3 years of marriage. I am so, so glad to be married to my best friend.

***

This morning, it was time for more writing exercises for me. I was flailing about without any luck, so Patrick set me a new exercise: "You have to write a 15-sentence story," he said. "The first sentence will have 15 words, the second will have 14, and so on, until the last sentence is just one word. And the first sentence has to include goats!"

"That's ridiculous!" I said. "I can't do that!"

And then I opened up a new Word file and started thinking about it, and a moment later I was giggling as I typed. So here it is, my 15-sentence story:

All Ban could think about, as he sat there cursing on his rock, was goats.
Goats, goats, goats, with their stupid little horns and braying laughter, laughing at him.
You’d think they would be grateful for all the work he did, but no.
They just stood up there on their rocks and sneered at him.
Goat sneers were the worst; their wispy little beards wagged horribly.
Ban would punch them if he could only catch one.
But they were horribly fast little buggers, clopping away.
Well, not for much longer, he thought vengefully.
Now he had a potion to use.
That strange old woman guaranteed it.
And she was obviously magic.
He remembered her beard.
Ban smiled, drank.
Then screamed.
“Baa-aaaa-aaaa!”

THE END