A couple weeks ago Claudia caught me off guard with the announcement that she had decided that she was in favor of the idea of marriage, specifically between us. At least she caught me off-guard because it was 11 p.m., it was raining, and we were up on the roof on our way home after an evening with a friend on the other side of the building. It didn't particularly catch me off-guard in the sentiment, because we'd talked about the concept of marriage off and on for quite a while -- whether, what, how, why -- and decided that we'd each need to give an all-clear, as it were, before anything more formal would happen.

Since marriage has only lately become a legal option for us, there's been a lot to consider. What parts would we want? The legal protection conferred by the state? The endorsement of some larger institution, be it government or religious? The public pronouncement in front of friends? A big party? A commitment to each other for a lifetime? The vague feeling of being conventional and heteronormative? Having looked at marriage from the outside for the better part of 40 years and having tried on some of those aspects previously, I don't take any of it for granted, and subsequent to Claudia's pronouncement we spent quite a few hours talking about all those things.

In the end I decided I was in favor of quite a few of those things. One of Claudia's tipping points was the legal protections: Even in this day and age, same-sex couples are still being denied access to each other in hospitals and other settings when they should rightly be at their partners' sides. It's a situation neither of us wants to face. And, after 3 years together, I can say confidently that we're a really good team. I would prefer not to relive the down-to-the-wire dash to return the rental car in Amsterdam's maze of canals and one-way streets on New Year's Eve (also: pouring rain and random fireworks), but there is no one else I would want to do that with. Our relationship had an early trial by fire when Claudia's mom died suddenly, but we made it through that period too. I know we have each other's back. When life flings crap, this is the person I want to help shovel it away. And, also, it'd be really fun to have an awesome party.

So Saturday morning we were lying in bed, watching the snow, and although she was barely awake, I handed her a sheet of paper. It was a copy of an early email I'd sent her on Match, before we ever met. She has always said she liked the tone, that it made her want to meet me. Only this time I updated the text a bit, from "if you want to have coffee sometime" to "if you want to get married sometime." It was fun to watch her pupils dilate as she read and digested it.

We spent the rest of the weekend in a happy engagement haze, at least when we weren't fulfilling prescheduled errands and appointments. There basically haven't been any further details sorted out in terms of where or when or how, although I am lobbying heavily for dinosaurs on the cake. Planning a wedding is a pretty good test for a relationship, I think. Although I suspect Claudia is generally classier than me and might balk at my burgeoning ideas for pinwheels, pinatas and so on, I think it will be fun. She's definitely the best person to do this with.

A fire gutted one of the main commercial buildings in Inwood last night. The fire department was still hosing it down this morning when I left for work. The building housed a Citibank branch and a Bank of America kiosk, but also a lot of businesses that help make up the neighborhood's fabric. There's the pet supply store where they keep a stash of Andy's preferred kibble in the bag size I like, and the owner quizzes me on my Arabic. The yoga studio that organized and hosted the holiday market where I sold my glass and met neighbors and made new friends. The hardware store that just opened.

These are among the places that make Inwood what it is -- that make Saturday errands a pleasant walk around the hood instead of a shlep downtown. In the time it would take to go to the Upper West Side, I can drop off dry cleaning, deposit a check, buy a box of flea and tick preventive and some new picture hangers AND hit the farmers' market, AND run into half a dozen neighbors in the process.

The neighborhood response has been strong and emotional and swift. A community meeting is in the works for Friday, and people are calling around to ask about alternate space rentals, fundraisers, and anything else that will help keep the businesses afloat and local. It's nice to see the neighborhood take care of its own.

My last post was probably a bit overambitious. What actually happened was I walked very slowly down to the Seine and along it for about half an hour, then we realized how far the tower still was, hopped in a cab, snapped a couple photos from the vicinity, and hopped a cab back to the hotel where I slept the rest of the day. Claudia explored Paris solo. I rallied enough for an upright dinner of nonthreatening French food that evening. Saturday morning I finally felt human again, so we spent the 90 minutes we had left in Paris tracking down a swank candy shop before driving back to Amsterdam. The GPS Erik lent us was, in fact, narrated by Ossy Osbourne, which explains why it kept complaining about the fucking roundabouts. The drive from Paris up through Belgium and into the Netherlands does explain everything you wanted to know about the old Dutch landscape painters. It's really about 70% sky in any direction you choose to look, and mostly it's covered in dramatic clouds.

The best part of the trip was New Year's Eve. Amsterdam doesn't allow fireworks except for the 5 days before New Year's, and then it has no regulations at all, so your average, drunken Dutch person can and does buy an assload of Macys-grade fireworks and set them off anywhere convenient. The noise and lights were nonstop when we got in at 7 and intensified all evening as we ate lasagna and listened to Dutch radio finish counting down the top 2000 songs of all time, according to Dutch listeners. (Spoiler alert: Bohemian Rhapsody wins ever single year.) We climbed up on Erik's roof to toast the new year as fireworks went off all around us and in some cases right over us. Eventually we wandered to the Nieuwmarkt square to see the excitment. The streets were covered in damp cardboard firework crates and broken bottles. Someone lit a bonfire that was lapping up all the spent casings and occasionally some non-spent ones that shot off into the crowd, which was too drunk to mind much. By 2, the noise had died down and we got a good night's sleep. Sunday we walked around for a while, had a farewell pancake supper with Erik and his girlfriend and kids, and took off for Heathrow. One brief overnight in a featureless airport hotel later, we were finally on our way home.

We are in Paris, about to leave for a whirlwind day of the Eiffel Tower, Place Georges Pompidou, Sacre Couer, Notre Dame and whatever else I'm misspelling. The trip has so far featured pretty much no sightseeing, so this is an interesting change. Amsterdam was marked by jetlagged fog, one temporarily delicious Surinamese meal, and then decisive and violent stomach flu. I spent Wednesday on my back asleep or pondering the ceiling beams of Erik's work studio in an old Amsterdam row house. The day's excitement was rolling over to sleep for a while on my right side and then, a couple hours later, trying out my left side. It ended badly and back in the bathroom. Miraculously, by Thursday morning I was stable enough to contemplate getting in the rental car, a Fiat Panda (cute car, cuter name!), that Claudia graciously drove the better part of the day to get here. Thanks to Erik's GPS, which for some reason sounds like a drunken Englishman, we made it through the central city, across the Seine and to a charming hotel in the Latin Quarter. My first meal in Paris was plain white rice and some unseasoned chicken breast, washed down with herbal tea. Hoping for better today.

At about 6:30 on the last day of the holiday craft market, the organizer brought around a tray of glasses of sparkling wine for all the vendors. I'd made my last sale probably an hour before and was starting to pack up. I hadn't been looking for closure on the whole thing, but it was unexpectedly a very nice moment.

Over the course of three Saturday afternoons I sold about 18 handblown ornaments and three bowls. Combined with some other sales to friends and workers, I covered the cost of making the ornaments, supplies and the fair itself, and made enough extra cash to fund my first glassblowing session of 2012. It wasn't a blockbuster retail experience, but it was a good experiment. I met people from the neighborhood, I bonded with other people selling their stuff, and I sold things to total strangers, which was validating. Up until this month, I'd only ever sold things to people I knew, which was wonderfully supportive but there's always that nagging "how much of it is them being nice to me, how much of it is them really wanting this thing" voice in the back of one's head.

I'm not sure if I'll do it next year, but I have some notes on how I would tweak my inventory. And enough ornaments left over to spruce up our tree a little more.

I blew ornaments on Saturday. Even at a pace of an ornament every 5 minutes, it was a relaxing way to spend half a day. There's constantly something immediately in need of one's attention, the stakes are never very high, the rhythm is soothing, and every few minutes you make something new and hopefully pretty. I booked four hours with the hopes of knocking out enough pieces to make the Off the Map holiday craft fair worthwhile. I'll be selling stuff there all three weekends (Dec. 3, 10 and 17, details to come) and will also try to sell a few bowls and vases. It's an experiment but not too costly, as they go. If they sell well, I can plan for the fair next year and stockpile some pieces during the year. If it's a bust... I'll have a pretty tree and can offload them as gifts at some point. I think I made some better color selections this year, using a bright, opaque white to contrast other colors. I ran out of green early, but otherwise they came out well.

What are you totemistic about?

Claudia's packed up her apartment and while she owns far less stuff than I do, we're looking ahead to a few weeks from now when more of her stuff will come to live with my stuff. The rest will go into storage or be otherwise redistributed. The has precipitated an ongoing need to edit down what I have in the apartment. A few months ago I rented a storage locker for us, and it's a handy place to keep season-specific decorations and clothes and so on. I packed up a bunch of books that I don't use often but kept my travel books and some favorite titles to have around the house. Mostly I read on the Kindle now because I'm tired of shlepping the paper versions on the subway.

With Claudia's impending further arrival, I'm reconsidering even what's still on the shelf. Why do I keep out books about Laos (which I visited four years ago) as well as Peru (maybe in another year or two)? I re-read the Hitchhiker's Guide series every 10 years or so... does it need to be here in the meantime? Do I need it at all?

This eventually brings me around to my current rant that we keep books or CDs and so on because they're totemic. Because we want them to tell people who we are, what we care about, what we know. If Don Quixote is on my shelf, you might variously think that I've read it, that I have it up there as something I aspire to read, or that I put it there to seem impressive. Regardless, it saves me from having to actually try to impress you in conversation by mentioning that I have, indeed, read it. (It took weeks.) Stuff on the shelves starts conversations; the only thing worse than a party where you don't know anyone is one where there also is nothing to point at to break the ice. Or what if I put all my stuff away and only Claudia's books on the Spanish civil war and health policy remained?

And yet, we live in New York. The quarters are snug. I've been trying to strip down the space-eating totems in favor of functionality, but so far I've only succeeded with music and, to a limited extent, books. I'm still clinging to photos from various trips, an ever-growing assortment of interesting but at least slightly lumpy glass projects, and kitchen equipment. Eventually I'm going to want room for a new vase, and then the Lonely Planet guides to Spain and Vietnam are going to be exiled to the laundry room trading shelf. At least the photos on the wall will still tell people I've been. Until we take down the wall decor and renegotiate that. That'll have to be another post.