I treat my parents' e-mail addresses as if they were separate but they actually both have access to both of them because it's just easier for them that way. Shrug. Mom is really embracing Facetime and Google Hangouts.

Jeez, my dad is 72 tomorrow and I didn't get him anything. Oops.

My parents share email (and don't Facebook) but I think it's ok if you hardly use email and its not how your friends contact you. They still make and get phone calls, not emails.

My dad used mom's FB account for a little while after she passed away. I finally had to say, "Dad, I get it, but I'm a goth and I find it a little unnerving to see mom leaving birthday wishes for Pete. Let me set you up your own account."

I think my computer just saved me. I got in the car earlier, and the rental car has satellite radio. The classical channel was playing the last couple of minutes of "On the Transmigration of Souls", John Adams' piece that was commissioned to commemorate 9/11. After I got done crying, I decided to listen to the rest of it once I got back to the hotel room.

My trusty little netbook, which is showing its age, got about five minutes into the YT video before it decided to stop. Or before it decided I should stop.

My dad was an early adopter of the internut (I think he might've been on D/ARPANET?) and both use their email for work/business and personal. My mother would've lost her mind if she had to share an email with my father. All his...stuff. And he would have cluelessly deleted stuff that was important to her because he does dumb shit like that.

There is a reason she doles out the cash and he only carries one of their credit cards. She's the one who balances the books; he's the one that forgets to tell anyone else that he moved money around. So his access is limited. It's partly her enabling, partly because starting 52 years ago, she learned that while he will keep meticulous records, his methods make her nuts, but he'd happily go along with anything if he just didn't have to do it at all. So she took over that aspect of their lives and everyone was happier.

Oh, hey, we are going to get our marriage license tomorrow morning!

WOO LICENSED TO MARRY!!!

Woo, official!

Make sure it is the right county! (My parents' marriage license is shifty. From county A, but signed by judge from county B and there's something iffy about the dates it was signed on. But it's been 45 years, I think they're legit by now.)

Let me know if they still make you swear you don't have syphilis. (I swear to god, mine did. Hamilton County, 1998.)

We did ours in the wrong colored ink. They have to be in black ink in Louisiana, we used the blue pen the clerk gave us, our rabbi traced over everything in black before he signed.

Hey, what's the blood test supposed to be for, anyway? They aren't checking for syphilis, are they? We didn't have to do one, my sister and her husband did.