Happy Cohabiversary

What an AI imagines that Chilling Street Cottage might look like. It’s wrong, of course.

Bobbi and I started living together at Chilling Street Cottage in Sharpthorne, East Grinstead, Sussex, England, Earth, Milky Way, etc., on March 8, 1968. We celebrated our cohabiversary for two years, and then our anniversary and cohabiversary for the next 54. Tomorrow (as I write this) will be our 57th cohabiversary.

Bobbi and I told people we had imaginary lovers. Mine was Fifi; hers was Raul.

When I retired from Green Hills Software (for the first time), we drove cross country and changed our names twice. As we left Santa Barbara, I announced that my name was Santiago. I sent this email to the family:

To begin with, we've changed our names. We will henceforth be known as Santiago and Soledad La Joie. If you get emails signed with these names, you'll now know who they are from. The same old us.

It all started as we left Santa Barbara. We got up, in no hurry for a change, finished packing the car, and got ready to leave. I took a moment to memorialize the event with a picture, to be provided in a later update.

As we were pulling out of the Condo to start our new life I decided that I was going to change my name. There was a guy at the Honda dealership named Santiago, (first name) and I thought that was a really cool name to have, so I took it and explained to Mom (still Bobbi at this time) how to pronounce it: San-tee-AH-go. Strong accent on the AH.

We dropped some things off at Green Hills and headed out toward Ventura, Lancaster and the Pearblossom Highway on the way to St George UT, our destination for the night. On our way up to Lancaster we passed Soledad Canyon and Bobbi decided she would like to be Soledad. We'd been listening to CNN from time to time, and there's a reporter named Soledad O'Brien, so we had a precedent. So she became Soledad. Soledad means lonely in Spanish, by the way, but there's no connection or significance. Just a nice sounding name.

…

We continued driving and at some point passed a big shiny looking semi with an EGJ logo on the back. On the side, it said "Enterprise Guy La Joie"¹ and on the cab it said Quebec. I thought La Joie was a cool name and it went great with Santiago and Soledad, and Soli agreed, so we took Guy's name and our name change was complete.

John sent me this after our announcement:

I replied:

On our way through the Natchez Trace, at Milepost 180.7 we changed our names again. I was Greenwood Leflore, and she was Loblolly Leflore.

We got back to Maine and changed our names back.

And so they remain.

Love.

Mike/Michael/Mihaly/Mischka/Beau
Bobbi/Barbara/Bo/Babushka

1. I think I understood at the time that it meant something like “Guy Le Joie Enterprises,” but as I read this, years later, I thought it was an “Enterprise guy” named Le Joie.