My wife celebrated a milestone birthday this week.

Hmm.

Celebrated is perhaps the wrong word, since there was little to no frivolity or joy in the occasion.  Thursday was Parent-Teacher Conference night.  Angela is not a parent–I don’t think–but she is a teacher, while I–by the strictest definitions–am neither.  So Angie spent her birthday working late while I played Batman: Arkham City and read Aquaman comics.  So, really, Happy Birthday to me!

I like this picture because we're both wearing black.

In my experience, it’s untoward, borderline dangerous to ask or tell a woman’s age, so I’ll make something up, skew younger, and say my darling wife, Angela, just turned fifteen.

¡Happy Quinceanera!

I meant to write up a wonderful, romantic tribute to my engagement.  In honor of her [15th] birthday, the least I could do would be to devote a blog post to her (really, that’s the least I can do), but I was stymied by a disheartening Midas commercial and then by the aforementioned Arkham City, which has made me functionally useless for the last few days (unlike the other factors that make me functionally useless, such as my lack of goals or ambition, manual illiteracy, preoccupation with minutiae, and Arkham Asylum).

I promise I’ll get around to this sometime soon… as soon as I capture all of the Riddler trophies left around the Arkham City map.  In the mean time, if you see my wife, tell her the bread expired days ago, and also Happy 15th Birthday.  I love you, Angie, and, assuming I’m not still playing this video game then, I’ll do something really extra special next year for your 31st birthday!

Oh shit.