CLIF'S NOTES

A Personal Journal

There is a picture of the two of us together here (or on the next sheet for those who don't live on the Internet). It was love, as Margaret says, at second sight. We had known each other in our 20's through mutual interest in science fiction and space exploration. Whenever we repeatedly met across the years, we were involved with other people. Although we were definitely friends, we never knew each other well enough to be good friends. We each married other people and completely lost track.

Time passed.

Actually a lot of time passed.

Our marriages both broke up, and we were divorced within a month or so of each other. We didn't know it of course. Our lives careened onwards in independent directions. Except that I had a friend who owned his own science fiction bookstore (Hi Brad). Occasionally conversation around the bookstore would turn to the store's mail order program, and I would hear the name Margaret Fincannon mentioned as the store's best mail-order customer. Of course I had no reason to recognize Margaret Fincannon as the same person as Margaret Adamson. But the store had a newsletter that reviewed new science fiction books. Writing reviews of the new books meant you got to read them, and seemed a pretty good deal. I didn't know just how good a deal it was. Brad credited the reviews. When Margaret read them, she had a fair idea just who Clif Davis was. When she called the bookstore about an order and I answered the phone she identified herself as Margaret Adamson Fincannon and I filtered out the last name. The conversation was delightful, and was shortly followed up with a visit to the bookstore where she took me out for burgers. (Now we celebrate the anniversary of those burgers every year with, um, Chinese food (go figure)). And the rest was, as they say, history.

I had always remembered her as being charming, but what I quickly realized was that a great deal of that charm came from a lively broad intelligence. She is a reference librarian, which means she knows a little bit about everything, while I am eclectic, which means I think I know a little bit about everything. I believe that the only other person I have ever been able to easily discuss such a broad range of topics with, without tailoring the conversation to the person, was an ex-roommate even more eclectic than myself (Hi Stanley). Which isn't to say we can discuss anything. By mutual consent we stay away from politics and tread lightly around religion. (I'm Conservative with strong Libertarian leanings, she's Liberal with strong Feminist leanings. (This means that I think Rush Limbaugh is hilarious while she thinks he is a bad joke). She's Unitarian Agnostic, I'm Mutant Baptist. (Her religious beliefs are fairly private. I believe that strong evidence of literal demonic possession is no further away than today's newspaper)). Oddly enough, we are a good team. Our skills are complementary enough that working together we can accomplish things that neither could do alone. That shows in our small web publishing empire, in our non-profit activities, and in dozens of small ways. Furthermore working together is fun. One project we enjoyed was working out a marriage ceremony compatible with both our religious sensibilities but similar enough to traditional marriage ceremonies generally as to be unlikely to offend anyone important (family). Although the result is IMHO rather special, we probably won't be posting it to the web until after the event.

She is patient. Not everyone would wait around for eight years plus for me to go through my graduate student phase. I've alway thought she was kind of cute. While we have yet to see if either of us annoys the other excessively on a day to day basis, our engagement has lasted longer than a lot of marriages. I'm really loking forward to it.

But first I have to graduate. Back to work. - Clif Davis

IMHO = In My Humble Opinion

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