Talkin' About My Girl

Today's continuation of my week long salute to great women, my own International Women's Week, must begin with a disclosure of potential bias. Tomorrow will mark one year that I've been married to today's subject.

My wife, Lisa, is one of the most amazing women in the world. For starters, she's a physician. If it ended there, well, then I've already married above myself. But it doesn't. Her specialty, nutrition, might just be the most important medical specialty in the new century, with the obesity epidemic working its way up the list of top causes of death. She even has another specialty in endocrinology, doing a combined fellowship after completing a residency in internal medicine. Oh, and she's doing it at the top medical nutrition program in the country, where they only accept one fellow a year. And they asked her to be the editor of the magazine they put out. I'm convinced she's going to be one of the experts that the media calls on all the time for their reports about nutrition. ("Coming up next on Anderson Cooper 360, we'll ask Dr. Neff why we shouldn't eat a whole roll of raw cookie dough") She is one of the smartest and hardest working people I've ever known. I mean, while I was majoring in Theatre and partying (redundant?), she was doing Biology and German. Oh yeah, she's fluent in German. Which, besides being impressive, is damn sexy too. She plays the flute (though not enough I tell her), has a great eye for taking great photographs, and loves the opera. But also loves to go see rock bands and singer-songwriters and jazz.

And she loves animals. Boy does she love animals. When animals get hurt or killed in movies, she will burst out crying, like when the mouse got stomped on in the Green Mile. We were at a bullfight in Madrid once (really the wrong place for her top be) and after a huge cheer of "Ole!", we heard my wife shout to the bull "Run Sweetie!" So cute. It's the same thing that I'm sure makes her a great doctor. And such a great person to be around. And also gives her the patience to listen to Wilco over and over and over, or put up with my weird fascination with public transit.

Yet somehow she fell for me. Smart, independent, successful, beautiful, animal loving doctor for some reason likes to hang out with me. She can diagnose diseases and talk to Germans, I can quote the Simpsons and tell you everything you never wanted to know about Chicago's "L" system. Hopefully more will rub off onto me than onto her over the years. A few years ago she did start saying "D'oh" when the situation called for it, like I do and Homer before me. But that one I'm glad rubbed off.