Would you like to write my wife and I a song to commemorate the 10th
anniversary of our first "real date"? I would like the song to be
tender, but not TOO sappy, nor over-earnest. Leavened w/ humor is
fine. We think the Future Bible Heroes tune "Crows," counts as sweet,
if that helps. Would love a full-band style arrangement, but trust
your judgement. Here's some background info, use any details you want
and ignore the rest, feel free to ask for more if this somehow isn't
enough.

My wife, Amy, and I shared our first kiss early in the morning
of April 6 2002. We'd gotten back from seeing a loud rock show at the
Velvet Lounge on U St in Washington DC. The headline artist was
Skywave (who have since sorta mutated into critic's darlings A Place
to Bury Strangers) but we were mostly there to see my pals in Field
Machine and a short-lived band with my friend Mike D on drums and an
unmemorable name. (But they played a Neutral Milk Hotel cover.)

Amy and I had met virtually years before on a mailing list devoted to
obscure indie/college rock bands Game Theory and Loud Family. The list was trading all-time top 10's; Amy's had 9 records I loved and one I'd never heard of, so I asked her about it. That led to a lot of email
exchanges and letters and mixtapes over the years, she in Boston
(technically Cambridge) and me in Washington DC. In addition to music,
we bonded over/shared book and film favorites too -- She introduced me to Lorrie Moore and I introduced her to Kelly Link. Ours was for sure
a media intensive penpalship. We got a little flirty at times but one
of us was always involved with someone else.

But in February 2002 we both found ourselves unattached, and Merrie
Amsterburg -- the artist who recorded that 10th record & who I'd
become a fan of in the meantime -- was playing an anti-Valentine's-Day
show at Cambridge's Lizard Lounge. I came up for the show, to hang out for a few days, and to see if there were sparks in person.

There were sparks, but we were both a bit gunshy, so it wasn't til
April that I reciprocated and invited Amy to one of our household
movie marathons. After that visit we both racked up a lot of frequent
flier miles - BOS via Airtran to BWI or via Delta to DCA (we never
ever called it Reagan airport). We spent weekends together in our
alternate cities for a year and a half -- we only missed 2 -- before I
moved up to Boston (technically Somerville, then Arlington, when we
bought a condo together).

We both loved Amy's Maine Coon cat Theo (Theophilus), but he had heart problems and passed away very shortly after our wedding in October 16. Now we live with two sibling kittens with some Maine Coon in them, Claudia and Merritt (as in The Magnetic Fields).

Amy's job and my job keep getting closer together, now we're both
involved with design for making web applications more usable. She
started as an editor, I started as a programmer.

In addition to our shared love of music, literature, film (and other
art) Amy's a talented knitter and I'm an avid cyclist. I sang and
played guitar or bass in a long succession of no-account bands; Amy
had to break a no-more-musicians!-ever!! rule in order to start dating
me.