The Champ and Me

I'm on vacation with my husband. This makes me happy.

Have you ever watched The Office? We're kind of like Jim and Pam.

He's tall and slightly awkward while, at the same time, pulling off adorably charming. He's good looking. Kind. Easygoing. Likable. And so in love with me. :)

I'm sort of like Pam. I tend to be kind of dorky, but a little bit precious at the same time. I'm funniest when I don't mean to be, and I come up with crazy ideas and then expect those around me to support them without question. They usually fail. Also, my hair is kind of frizzy. Just like Pam, it took me several seasons to discover frizz cream and a flat iron.

Together, we're adorable. We have an easy relationship 99% of the time. We're friends before anything else. We pick on each other, but know the other always has our back. It's good. If we had our own sitcom, people would have tivo'd our wedding. Since we don't, we got married in our living room and then went and ate fried rice.

But every now and then, we turn into these two: Leonard and Penny from Big Bang Theory.

My husband is brilliant. He has a masters degree in something that is related to biology, but I couldn't even begin to describe it. He spent a lot of time writing research papers and collecting specimens to support that research. (I spent the first 3 years of college learning how to teach kids to make stained glass windows out of construction paper.) He's honestly one of the smartest people I know. But the thing I love about him is that, while he has all of this brain power, he blends in nicely with us normal people. He makes people feel comfortable. He can have regular conversations. He's able to dumb it down for the rest of us without it being obvious that that is what he is doing.

But every now and then he's a total Leonard.

While driving through the mountains today, we found ourselves beside a flowing stream. It was beautiful. Then, this happened.

The Champ: (looking at the stream and making an inquisitive face) "I bet there are a ton of nutrients in that stream! It would make an interesting research project to study the effects of variable allochthonous detritus inputs on benthic invertebrate community composition in preserved versus urbanized stream reaches in this region."

Me: (eyes wide, obviously) "That's great, babe. Did you know there is an entire tutorial available on Pinterest on how to make a lamp out of nothing but mason jars?!"

See? Adorable.