Happy 18th Wedding Anniversary, MrB!

MrB and I are celebrating our 18th wedding anniversary today — not to be confused with a date-a-versary. In February 2018, I wrote a 20th date-a-versary post and a few people have been befuddled by the number of years ever since. Sorry, y’all!

July 22, 2001, with our special cake from baker Ron Ben-Israel.

Anyway, although I haven’t been able to find the rejection letter that I sent MrB as he was attempting to woo me in 1998, I recently found this 1996 response to a Christmas card I sent him.

At the time, MrB was the managing editor at the Wall Street Journal. I had left my far lower-level job at the WSJ in the summer of 1995 for a job at CNN where I wound up working for the deplorable Lou Dobbs. For reasons that I got into in a Twitter thread today, MrB was the only WSJ executive who I felt could be a good future job reference for me, and I dutifully sent him a holiday card each year. I would deliberately time the card so he’d get it on the last possible business day before Christmas, so that he — being a nice guy — would have to respond during the holiday week (look at the date on the note). What can I say? I left the Journal with bad feelings and I enjoyed this teeny-weeny passive-aggressive act. I didn’t expect him to notice; it was like an in-joke with myself.

I certainly didn’t predict that those cards would lead to dating in 1998 and a wedding in 2001.

A lot of WSJ people attended the wedding, including the guy who gave me one of the worst performance reviews of all time — OF ALL TIME! He wished us well, of course. To think I was entertained by the petty holiday-card timing thing! If the Oracle of Delphi had sworn that the guy who wrote this about me would someday be congratulating me on my marriage to his boss, I would have been like, “Damn, oracles aren’t what they used to be!”

Anyway, I guess my relationship advice is that holiday cards are better sent late-ish than never. Nah, actually, my best advice is to give extra consideration to people who are kind to pets, like MrB is.

My parents’ rescue Peke Molly is the black dog. My dog, Mr. Chubbs, is on the right.

Animal guests always add a lot of cuteness to a wedding.

UPDATED TO ADD: A part of my six-page rebuttal to the worst performance review OF ALL TIME is here.