Well, the big day was here at last. What? You didn't know there was a big day? Well, there was, but it was a secret. Two and a half years ago I met this wonderful woman who introduced herself as Sparkle Bottom. I said "I bet you are" I learned quickly that her name was also Justine Smith and she is that too. I was wearing an electric orange fun fur coat, a Fox eared hat, bright orange glasses and ice skates. She was wearing a hot pink psychedelic spandex jumpsuit and was lacing up thigh high white pvc boots. I was also on a date with someone else. We shared a few compliments and realized that we had exchanged emails on tribe.net a few weeks before about an event that I was helping organize. I excused myself as I didn't want to be rude to my date and she found that charming.
A few days later we were chatting online and soon she was on her way down to San Francisco on a regular basis to visit with me. She was just getting out of a long term relationship, graduating from UC Davis and looking forward to moving to San Francisco having reinvented herself as a responsibly hedonistic landscape architect. I helped her move into her apartment, though she wound up staying there rarely and instead slept at my apartment in Oakland, would drive with me into the city every morning and gal around town until it was time for me to drive home.
She eventually moved to Oakland, though not to my apartment and she saw very little of her Oakland apartment as well. She and I officially moved in together in October of last year and have been living an idyllic life ever since.

Justine and I share a passion for passions. She's a geek about plants and living things. I'm a geek about a rotating list of too many things to list here. We feed off of each other's fascinations on a daily basis. She laughs at my jokes no matter how old they get and I love it when she gets crafty.

I am madly in love with this woman. How is it that I have had the great fortune to have had two great loves in my life and that they loved me back with the same force and vigor? My relationship with Justine benefits from having learned valuable lessons from my relationship with Heather. I no longer need someone else to validate me(though it is nice). I no longer need to fix someone else(though I love her). She and I can walk through life as partners, side by side, sharing in each other's passions and sorrows.

About a month and a half ago I got word that my divorce was final. I picked up the phone, called my mother and got the ball rolling on asking Justine to marry me. I then called her parents to ask for their daughter's hand in marriage. They were giddy and excited. The plan that eventually developed was to have my mother and sister fly out to Albuquerque (where her parents live) under the guise that they were there for the International Balloon Fiesta, one of Justine's favorite events. While I was in New York, Sandy Mionis, a very dear friend of my mothers, somewhat of an aunt to me and a jeweler selected a handful of antique engagement rings for me to look at. It was a tough process as I wanted something simple and antique looking, but kept coming back to this deco star burst ring which was so radiant that I couldn't pass it up. Sandy had my grandmother's engagement diamond set in it 24 hours later and my mother wore it on her hand on the plane ride to New Mexico.

This morning we all got up around 5 am and dragged ourselves to a parking lot where we boarded a school bus that took us to the fairgrounds where 700 hot air balloons were rolling out and beginning to inflate with air. There is nothing quite like standing in a field with 100,000 other people all weaving their way through miles of multi colored fabric with the sun rising, teams of balloonists preparing their hundred foot tall envelopes of propane fueled air. There were balloons in various stages of ascent all morning long. Long rows of them, 30 or more side by side- some rows beginning life as flapping fabric filling up with cold air from large industrial sized fans, their baskets laying on their side, other rows billowing mounds of ever expanding kaleidoscopes of color. They crowd each other as they grow a hundred feet tall, breathing to life as plumes of fire are shot up deep inside of them until they reach that balance point of air pressure. They float off the ground slightly as the team makes final preparations and then in a cheer each one goes up and up and up, filling the sky with rainbows, castles, stars, Darth Vader helmets, advertising slogans, and cartoon characters. It's intense. For three hours they continue to fill up, lift off and then join in the grand march of hundreds of others down the canyon, getting smaller as they get further away only to be replaced with dozens of other balloons seconds later.

At the peak of the fiesta, at its most intense, I turned to Justine and said "Isn't this Amazing?" looking away at some new balloon getting ready to lift off, she replied "Yeah!" I said "I have something that will make it even more amazing" and pulled out the ring box. She looked at me somewhat puzzled, caught a glimpse of the ring as I said "Will you marry me?" Completely overwhelmed (which is her favorite thing to be,) tears welling up, she mouthed yes. We laughed and cried, our families cried and laughed all crowding into each other creating a moment of intimacy amongst a throng of sensory overload.

The rest of the Balloon fiesta was a blur, but it didn't matter. We were in love and excited for our future. I don't remember much of the rest of the day. We went for breakfast, went home, passed out, woke up later that afternoon, shared a champagne toast, eat some steak, tried to go see the night balloon event, though it was canceled due to rain, watched All of Me, and fell asleep, all giddy and ebullient.

Here, look at these pictures.