Happy Groundhog Day

What I'm reading: My last RITA entry.

Thanks to Doranna for yesterday's post. Setting is a big part of books. You can still leave a comment in her post to be entered in her contest.

And if you didn't check out the Daily Cheap Reads feature, you can do that here.

With just a few updates, this is a re-run of a post I ran two years ago. For me, it's still timely.

Groundhog Day isn't a major holiday for most folks. When I lived in Florida, I always thought six more weeks of winter (our kind of winter) would be nice. Very nice. Our first winter in Colorado has been very mild, so if we're getting six more weeks of the same, I can deal with it. But, significant or not, it's a special holiday for me and the Hubster.

Forty-two years ago, in the parking lot behind the Biology building at UCLA, he proposed. Now, I'm not sure if the one-knee thing was because I was sitting in my car and that was the only way he could make decent eye contact, but he asked. I said, "Yes." We even went to my parents' house and he did the formal, "I'd like to marry your daughter," thing. Survived the third degree -- "How will you support her?" (Remember, 42 years ago things were different--women were just beginning to be 'liberated.) He explained he had $2000 in a savings account, tied up as collateral for the loan on his truck, but he could pay off the truck at any time and untie the funds. And that was good enough for my dad. Then again, the dollar wasn't the same then, either.

I hadn't known him long--we'd met the first day of class when he was the lab TA for a course I had to take for part of my teaching certification. There were 2 other females in the lab section. One was engaged, and the other had a steady boyfriend. Then there was me. Our first "date" was a threesome. He was going to have to lead a field trip to the tidal flats and he wanted to scope it out first (being a non-California guy, he wasn't familiar with the inhabitants of the shore). He invited me and the girl with the steady boyfriend to tag along. I'm still not sure he knew about the guy at this point, but it was anything but a formal date. He dropped her off first. And there it began.

So, met in October, engaged in February, and married in August. Forty-two years ago. Happy Groundhog Day, Hubster. Wanna try for eighty-two?