A year of achievements

1) Learning to cook for real, to experiment with cooking, to cook traditional dishes and coming to really enjoy the activity.
2) Learning to keep house and coming to enjoy that too!
3) Understanding a particular -- and very peculiar -- kind of mental make up which is most of the time enraptured with numbers and displays special feelings for engines.
4) Coping with quizzical looks in return for looks that say "I need attention because I am sad."
5) Swallowing a sleepy (make that 'sleeping') grunt in reply to "Bye, I'll miss you."
6) Accepting that "haan" or "hmm" can be a logical reply to an intense expression of affection.

In short, learning to live with a member of the male species who needs to be fed regularly in large quantities and who on the whole has the personality type of an algorithm.  Congratulations to me.