Still fun to take my best girl to the movies

My wife Nicole and I had a fairly whirlwind courtship.

We met on Sept. 12, 1992, and on our first three dates we went to the movies. We saw "Bob Roberts," "Gas Food Lodging" and "Hero." The Geena Davis/Dustin Hoffman one, not the Jet Li one.

We went to the movies a lot back then, and at one point during a fight in our first year of marriage, my wife said to me, "I didn't want to get married. I just wanted someone to go to the movies with."

That's the kind of thing that happens when the wedding follows the meeting by only 51 days, but we have stayed together and are now in our 17th year of marriage. I don't have much doubt that we'll be together till death does that old parting thing. I love her, she loves me -- forever.

The only sad thing is that we don't go to the movie much anymore. In fact, I think we've been twice in the last year. We saw Meryl Streep in "Doubt" a couple of months ago and we finally got around to seeing "Slumdog Millionaire" Saturday.

We're sort of pushing to try and go a little more often, but it's tough. There are a lot of movies in which our tastes don't really coincide, which is mostly my fault. She likes intelligent movies that ask important questions, and I like movies with laughs, nudity or action, or sometimes all three.

"Slumdog" surprised us. We knew it was good, but I don't think we were expecting the level of violence and action in it. They also made a big deal out of 20 million rupees, but it was kind of a Lire situation, if you remember the old Italian currency; 20 million rupees is less than $400,000 American.

But nothing's perfect. We went, we had a good time and we'll go again soon if I can get motivated. It's not as big a deal as it once was anyway; our 37-inch HD television is pretty nice to watch movies on and I don't care where I am as long as I'm with her.

We'll see "Australia" tonight.