I posted about this on Twitter as well and my lovely wife saw the Tweet and found out where the tag came from and got it for me as a surprise :).

(the one that Jennifer got me)

Turns out that it actually is in fact marketed as a luggage tag by OfTheFountain on Etsy who makes all sorts of hand stamped leather tags.

In person the tag looks a little more durable than in the original picture I saw so I guess it could be used as a luggage tag and be okay. Though I’d recommend switching out the leather strap for something more durable first if you want to be sure that your tag won’t break off during transit and end up doing it’s own sort of wandering.

That said I definitely like this a lot, it’s a really cool item for someone who loves stories like I do. Thanks Honey!

Today is a very special day, it’s Jennifer’s and my thirteenth anniversary :). It’s been an amazing thirteen years and what I love the most about it is something that you might not expect.

Even after all these years what I love above all else is just talking with Jennifer, casually and about any old thing. At home over tea or on a long road trip or as we’re falling asleep at night it doesn’t matter.

It all started when we first met, we’d spend hours driving around Fairbanks and North Pole wandering aimlessly and talking under the midnight sun. I had never met anybody as amazing as her and with every word I fell deeper in love.

Sometimes on a Friday afternoon at work we’d both have the same idea and say practically at the same time ‘Let’s go to Anchorage!’ Being teenagers still but living on our own we’d only have something like fifty dollars to last for the whole weekend but that would (amazingly) be enough to finance the entire 600 mile round trip.

The destination was Anchorage and that was fun and all but the best part was always the drive because we could talk to our hearts content without any interruptions.

What did we talk about? Anything from the sweet love song that was playing on the radio to how much fun it would be to start a detective agency all of a sudden. There was just an ease to the conversation that made us feel so happy and content with the world and free to talk about anything.

Thirteen years later with gas prices being so high there’s quite a bit less driving happening and fifty bucks doesn’t stretch nearly as far lol. However, driving or not Jennifer and I still have long conversations all the time and I have to say that I love talking with her even more now than I did back then.

One would think that we’d have run out of things to talk about by now or gotten bored but actually the opposite is the case …and that’s what’s made these years so incredible.

Darling, it’s been an amazing thirteen years and I look forward to a lifetime more of awesome conversations as The Wirawans ;). I love you so much!!

To my horror, I suddenly seen the grandfather I never met being carried away from the accident in a stretcher.

 

What is a hint memoir?

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As Jennifer and I walked through the concrete levels of the downtown parking garage I felt a sense of nervousness, a knot in my stomach that was part anticipation part worry.

On the one hand this was so exciting, I couldn’t believe it was finally happening. But on the other hand…what if something went wrong? What if the judge turned out to be a crazy right wing nutjob and said ‘No way in hell, now get out of my courtroom!’??

Part of me knew that nervousness was playing tricks and making my fears play out scary cartoonish scenarios in my mind. But knowing this didn’t do anything stop it from happening. We had waited years for this to happen and now this hugely important event affecting the rest of our lives would hinge on the decision of a single person, a stranger.


THE HALLWAY CLOCK

In a hallway a small ways from the courtroom Jennifer and I hung out in front a set of tall windows that showcased a panoramic view of downtown Anchorage.

Our lawyer waited with us. He leaned against a heater casually, joking and telling stories of what he’d been doing in the last couple months.

We smiled back and laughed a little but there was really only one thing on our minds at that point: what was going to happen in the courtroom in about twenty minutes.

The clock ticked along slowly. Sloooooowly. Each click of the second hand was moving through molasses and there was nothing that could be done about it.


THE COURTROOM

When the time came around to go into the courtroom I saw that it actually wasn’t really a conventional courtroom but just a normal sized room with the judge and her assistant on one end behind a couple of regular office desks and on the other end rows of waiting room type chairs were lined up, almost all empty.

There was one other case ahead of us that needed to be taken care of. We sat and waited while the judge talked to the woman about…well who the heck knows…it was all bla bla bla to me…super important to the woman no doubt but I had so much on my mind that I couldn’t really concentrate on what they were saying.

Finally the judge moved on to our case. For our lawyer this whole name change procedure was apparently old hat and he stood up and easily stated in legal language that Jennifer wanted to change her last name. No she wasn’t trying to avoid debts. No she wasn’t trying to avoid legal troubles. Yes it had been posted in the paper for the required number of days. Etc etc etc….


THE REASON WHY

Then the judge asked Jennifer why she wanted to change her name.

Jennifer stood up and said that she wanted to change her last name to Wirawan because she wanted to have the same last name as me, the love of her life and wife of a decades. It was a simple statement but at the same time was so incredibly powerful because of all the love it represented.

There was a pause (and was that a slight smile from the judge?) and the proceedings went on a bit longer with the judge and the lawyer going through the legal motions.

The judge typed away on her computer in silence for a while and then…suddenly announced in so many words that the name change was approved. It was very anti-climactic after all the worrying I’d been experiencing leading up to it but that didn’t matter. Jennifer and I were so happy we immediately stood up and hugged each other with big smiles on our faces. We were now after all these years officially The Wirawans.


JENNIFER WIRAWAN

We found out a while later that the judge thought we were an adorable couple and had considered asking us if we wanted to take a picture with her to commemorate the occasion. But she decided against it because she thought we might think it was weird.

I wouldn’t have thought it was weird though, that day was one of the most meaningful days in my life. Jennifer changing her last name to match mine meant the world to me. I felt so happy the day the judge approved the name change that I’m not even sure how to describe it.

But as happy as I felt that day it doesn’t even compare to how I feel every time I hear or see the name: Jennifer Wirawan. It’s so awesome it can even transform the most commonplace of events into something wonderful. Do you ever get excited about looking at some random piece of mail like the electric bill? I do, because it has my favorite name in the world printed right on the front :).

She invented new songs with casual ease and happily gave them out to all in the house.

 

Jennifer Hint Memoir Month

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Feel free to post your own hint memoirs in the comments too if you want I’d love to read em :).
 

 

When Jennifer and I visited Jakarta, Indonesia in 2008 we got to sample lots of different kind of delicious Indonesian food courtesy of our family there.

But as eager as they were for us to try new foods they also periodically took us to McDonald’s as a way to let us eat something more Western and familiar.

One morning on the way out of McDonald’s Jennifer spotted something strange in the parking lot as we were driving by. It was a motorcycle with an insulated red delivery bag on the back of it, kind of like what pizza delivery drivers carry. But the logo on the back of the bag said McDonald’s.

‘Is that a delivery bag??’ we said practically at the same time. Yes it was. Apparently the restaurant business is so highly competitive in Jakarta that even fast food places offer a delivery service.

Make a quick phone call to McDonald’s and soon afterward someone will be off on a motorcycle weaving trhough traffic with your Big Mac, drink, and side of rice.

Thank goodness they don’t have that here in the U.S. or our obesity problem would be even worse than it already is, can you imagine?

While the navy sky rose against the surrounding mountains, she counted the aliens whizzing by us on the bridge.

 

Jennifer Hint Memoir Month

What is a hint memoir?

More hint memoirs.

Feel free to post your own hint memoirs in the comments too if you want I’d love to read em :).
 

 

Today is Jody’s birthday, he would have been twenty-five years old. Jennifer and I thought for a long time about what to do in honor of his birthday this year, and she came up with something very unusual that Jody would have really loved.


JAKARTA

Traveling was really important to Jody. As he reached adulthood he was thrilled to have the opportunity to freely travel the U.S. and even see different countries as part of his work.

He planned on doing a lot more travelling after he got out of the Army and ultimately wanted to go to Jakarta, Indonesia to visit the city where he was born.

Jakarta was a completely foreign concept to Jody and he often wondered about it when he was growing up. It was an interesting part of his story that stood out, so people always asked him, ‘What’s it like in Jakarta? or ‘Can you say something in Indonesian for us?’ But he had no memories of his life there.

Because he was still in the Army at the time he wasn’t able to take the big trip to Jakarta with Jennifer and I in 2008. But during his first phone call to me afterwards he was full of questions and happy but tentative excitement about this part of his history finally being within reach.


THE TRAVEL BUG

In honor of Jody’s love for travel Jennifer came up with the (really awesome) idea of putting something that’s called a ‘travel bug’ out in his honor.

A travel bug is a fun thing in geocaching that’s basically an object that you put out that travels all over the country or the world via other people that play geocaching.

You put the travel bug in a cache and someone takes it to another cache, and in this way travel bugs go all over the world step by step. You can track it’s progress online and also see any stories people have left about their adventures of moving it to a new cache. And you can even set specific goals of different places you’d like the travel bug to visit.

When Jennifer first told me about her idea I knew it was perfect and something that Jody would have totally loved.

But now that Jennifer and I had the travel bug we needed to come up with a cache to put it in. No cache seemed just right so we decided to create a brand new cache in memory of Jody and have his travel bug start out it’s journey there.

Though we’d both done a lot of geocaching neither of us had ever started or hid a cache before, so we asked our friend Elijah to help us since he knows all about that kind of thing.

It was hard to tell if it was spam or a life changing event.

 

What is a hint memoir?

More hint memoirs.

Feel free to post your own hint memoirs in the comments too if you want I’d love to read em :).
 

 

The vitamins are what saved me on that plane flight back.

 

What is a hint memoir?

More hint memoirs.

Feel free to post your own hint memoirs in the comments too if you want I’d love to read em :).