[life] our love is kind of nerd love. I don't want nobody but you. (shoop shoop)

Where other couples have a special song, or a special place, perhaps the restaurant where they went on their first date, Shawn and I have a movie. Well, three movies really. The Lord of the Rings trilogy. We are truly, truly, nerdy.

And no doubt your estimate of how nerdy that is will only increase when I go on to say that I feel genuinely blessed to have been alive during the time in which these movies were released in the theatre, and doubly blessed to have been with Shawn during that time, so that I could share seeing them with him, and to have him share my excitement at seeing them.

When the camera came up on Hobbiton for the first time in that dark theatre in 2001, and I saw Bag End so perfectly realised, it was Shawn's hand that I squeezed, Shawn's face that I saw reflecting my astonishment and joy. I love Tolkien's books deeply - they shaped my childhood taste for fantasy, and my desire to write and become part of his ongoing legacy to literature. And I love Shawn deeply. And thanks to Peter Jackson, those loves are now inextricably linked.

I will always remember my room at 250 Colony fondly as the place where we first kissed. I have an attachment to the Star Grill, possibly our favorite restaurant. There was a song we danced to at our wedding. It was a good song, and it means a lot to me. But none of those things really makes me remember how much I love Shawn, and why, as that first shot of Hobbiton, and Gandalf's cart coming over the bridge.