By: Ken Boone On the day that this blog post is scheduled to publish, my wife Celia, is scheduled to undergo hip replacement surgery. In order to keep things simple, my plan is to publish this post one day early. For those so inclined, please breathe a prayer for a successful procedure and full recovery. The following Monday (07/15/2019), marks ten years since I moved to Huntersville, NC. I’ll devote a substantial portion of that blog post to my reflections on the move and the subsequent good fortune I found down here. Not necessarily financial good fortune, but a much happier, better quality of life. The internet has played a big part in my life these past ten years. Early January 2009 was a time when my unhappiness was at one of its highest levels in many years. Although I lived in the upscale town of Pittsford, NY, near Rochester, I had a job I didn’t want and apparently the feeling was mutual. My son hung up his spikes for the last time, meaning no more baseball games for him and no more social life for me. Of upmost importance was the fact that it had been well over twenty years since I last made music. Music is in my bone marrow. It flows inside of me, but it hadn’t flowed out of me for far too long. I needed to make a clean break from that life, so I turned to "House Hunters" on HGTV and the internet to find a new home. It only took a few weeks to decide on Charlotte, NC. It was through the internet that I found the suburb, neighborhood, and my perfect house, in which I’m sitting as I write this blog. After moving here, I relied on the internet to get directions to my favorite stores whose employees now know me. The internet is where I found my dog, who was supposed to be a birthday present for my son but ended up being a faithful companion to Celia and me. Speaking of Celia, it was on the internet where I found the love of my life! I’d heard that online dating was becoming a reliable way to find like-minded people. These apps are nothing short of amazing. You still must remember the acronym GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out) when using dating apps, but by the time I joined a site, many people had met their soul mates online and had married them. Celia and I like to tell people that we met at the Billy Graham Library here in Charlotte. It’s not true, but it sounds more socially acceptable than “we met online.” When I finished putting in the parameters of what I was looking for in a woman, pressed the enter key and her picture appeared immediately on my computer screen. What a beautiful woman! I figured she was totally out of my league. Her cover portrait was taken in front of a beautiful stained-glass window, making her look angelic. Her profile said that she was a musician. She didn’t include a link to SoundCloud on her profile, but I could tell that she was good. She looked the part. I think I looked at her profile for about a month, trying to work up the courage to send her a message or a wink. One Friday, I got a notice from the website that someone included me in their favorites. Ever the Curious George, but with low expectations, I clicked on the link to see who it was. I was blown away when it turned out to be that beautiful woman standing in front of the stained-glass window. What followed was a flurry of emails until we met two days later at a local Starbucks. Several hours into our first date, we got kicked out because it was well past closing time. Well before we left Starbucks, we realized that we would never be apart! We had so much in common it was kind of weird. Topping the list was the fact that we were both musicians masquerading as accountants. We like that line so much, we use it in our promotional materials. Getting married exactly one year to the day we met reinforced our love for, and commitment to each other! Now you’ve all heard the saying that opposites attract. So have we. While I never doubted that we would always stay together, I sometimes wondered if all of our similarities would eventually make things stale. So I set about trying to find some opposites to serve as some kind of matrimonial insurance policy. It wasn’t easy, but I found two. The first one is obvious. Celia is a life-long vegetarian and I’m a confirmed carnivore. Finding that out led our conversation down the path of discovering that we were raised in the same ultra-strict religion. We had the same internal conflicts with that denomination. We affirmed each other’s doubts and made it safe for each other to explore those issues and figure out what we believe and why. Better yet, we chose to go down that path together. Another opposite is this: We don’t perceive beaches and oceans the same way. Celia loves walking on the beach. She finds it peaceful and the ocean breezes blow the crud out of her spirit. The potential for tsunamis scares the shit of me. The sheer power and sound of the ocean is intimidating. And this is someone who not only got used to the sound of emergency vehicle sirens, I used them as a lullaby. I’m definitely New York City born and raised! After Celia recovers from her surgery, we will get another dog. Not as a replacement for our beloved Britney, who went to the Rainbow Bridge last fall, but another rescue dog who can bring the same love, loyalty, and protection that Britney gave to us. With so much in common, we’re doomed to fail according to the experts. After 8 ½ years of marital bliss, we say with confidence that the experts are wrong when it comes to us. But I still don’t want to jinx anything. So, I guess I’ll have to find more things that we don’t have in common. That sounds like another job for the internet! But wait... there's more!
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About the AuthorAs owner of the Descant Music & Media Group, Ken is a creator and producer of several podcast shows. He is also a music producer, as well as a writer and an accountant for small businesses and nonprofits. Archives
June 2020
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