The wife.

Some small blogging notes off the top. I've enabled the mature content warning. This frees me up to talk about things like sex, but also offers me the use of "blue" language. I don't plan to use it a lot, but it will be used. Take it or leave it. I'll also be asking more questions of my readers in my blogs and making use of the poll gadget, both starting next week. Please comment and vote often.

On to the topic at hand. My better half.

I actually met Alicia over an Internet dating site specifically for anime fans in '01. The site was small and doesn't exist anymore, but a former friend and I were trying it out. My friend got lucky and it turned out his girl had a very shy friend who they could hook up with me as a laugh. Their relationship crashed hard but ours went pretty well from the get-go.

I was living in Toronto with my parents and she was living with hers about 6 hours north in a Town called Astorville, near North Bay. Really a disgusting place filled with French inbreds, so I really managed to find a diamond in the rough. Communication was very difficult at first due to her shyness and the fact that her parents rarely allowed her to make long-distance call or use their dial-up Internet. We went 14 horrible months without hearing each other's voices.

Eventually she moved down to Toronto just as her family was coming apart at the seams. More on her family later. We got a place with the same friend from earlier, who's relationship had already ended so it was the three of us. I'd known my friend for about 8 years and treated him like a brother, but eventually he lost his sense of honour and started to secretively hit on Alicia while pushing me away and making me look foolish at every opportunity. I found out about it after the stress of secretly turning him down daily got the better of her. When I found out he got sick of the whole thing and put us on the street. Can you imagine? A friend of 8 years doing that.

We found a better place in a rougher part of town and have been trying to build an adult life ever since. We're both 25 and we share a lot of hobbies and interests. She is intrigued by EVE but is intimidated by the UI. She often changes my skills when I'm not home so that a minimum of training time is lost, and for that she's earned an honourary member with COGNet SpaceSystems Ltd. and the Ushra'Khan. Teaching her how to play games like first-person shooters has become a duty of mine. I'll talk about her dream of qualifying the moniker "gamer" another day.

I proposed a little over 2 years ago during FanExpo. We were out with friends and they were all in on the plan. I made a reservation with the Hard Rock Cafe and let them in on my intentions, and they went completely out of their way to help out, which was great considering a lot of upper-scale places like the Baton Rouge turned my reservation down for no reason. The plan was I would drop a phrase, everyone would quietly excuse themselves so that Alicia and I would have some time for me to pop the question. They missed the sign and when one of them remembered and got up, they all did at once, including Alicia. I stopped her and said my peace. It was a really bad all-day rainstorm outside, but when I proposed and her tears started flowing, the rain suddenly stopped. I'll take a sign like that any day.

We may not have a lot of money, but we have fun with what little we have. She's trying to increase her gaming time and I'm trying to decrease her time on Gaia. She's currently looking for a new job, as the one she's at now has all kinds of problems. In this current economic climate however, it's been difficult.

I cook, she cleans, we have fun and a lot of (great) sex. We watch some porn and my not-so-modest hentai collection together at times, but it's not like we're looking for any ideas, and often it's just for a giggle. Hentai is usually better for the laughs. We have a black cat approaching 2 years old named Sayaka. She's whiny and bitchy most often but also a suck for attention and cuddles. Alicia's hopeless with most decisions, including what to order at restaurants and what movies to watch. In most cases I choose for her, and I've never been wrong because I know what she wants and needs often before she does.

We both have a good amount of growing up to do, but we're doing it together and with the support of my family. Her family (such as it is), not so much. Her mother is a wreck of a woman. She got scammed by some guy in the states who fed her a load about whisking her off to a life of luxury, but instead was asking for money. He said he was a successful contractor but had no cellphone, no computer and bouts of anxiety that put him in the hospital. My dad is in construction, and all three of these things are antithetic to being in that industry. She sold her house and quit her job and sent him thousands (when she couldn't be bothered to send us money to pay for the tuition mess she dumped on us), and spent the holiday season on my couch waiting for him. Obviously he never came, but she's still waiting for him in while being supported by her parents. The stress this all put on my and Alicia was so much that she actually took ill and I was sworn to keep my mouth shut in front of the woman. Needless to say we're not letting all that happen again.

So that's about it. We're looking to take our first vacation together and her first plane ride (my first since I was 11) to PAX next year. Hopefully our funds materialize properly. After that we look to San Diego Comic-Con, EVE Fanfest and a trip to Cuba with me folks. She's still technically my fiance since we haven't had a formal wedding (she's been eye-balling a Wicca ceremony, while we're sort of Buddhist and I'm officially Roman Catholic like the rest of my family and most Italians), but living together for so many years it's pretty much the same thing to us, and sort of to the law. We've even already chosen the names of our children (One boy and one girl. The boy will be Leonardo Mario Vincenzo Paniccia, and the girl will be Lunamaria Patrizia Cristina Paniccia).

Most importantly, even though she pisses me off often enough and life is a real struggle at times, I love her with every fibre of my being. Whatever happens, we'll do what's needed to make it work. That's marriage, that's our life.

See, hon? That wasn't so bad... was it? (BTW babe, you have a google account so you can post a comment. I'd really like that.)

Ja.