Previous posts have sparked an interest in “foo-aversaries” of all kinds - anniversaries of particular events, perhaps counted in particular ways, that have been given special names. Here’s some interesting ones I’ve been able to dig up, with links to examples of use or explanations.

1. Meetaversary: an anniversary of a first meeting.
2. Dateaversary: an anniversary of a first date.
3. Kissaversary: an anniversary of a first kiss. A suggested alternative name is annikissary.
4. Electroversary: an anniversary celebrated a year before the event (because electrons have a charge of “-1″). For example, one year before a planned wedding during a long engagement.
5. Postaversary: hitting a significant number (such as 100) of blog posts.
6. Blogaversary: an anniversary of starting a blog.
7. Post-liver-transplant-aversary: exactly what it says. A cause for celebration indeed.
8. Binaversary: an anniversary or birthday celebrated at 0, 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, … years.
9. Cataversary: an anniversary of getting a cat.
10. Fooaversary: an anniversary of some random thing.

The traditional gifts associated with various wedding anniversaries are arbitrary and inconsistent. For example, in Britain the 4th anniversary is celebrated with fruit and flowers, while in the US it is silk or linen. And that’s just the tradition; according to Wikipedia, the modern gift for the 4th is “appliances.” Reading the full list, the modern gifts look like they’ve been nobbled by commercial interests. Clocks? Desk sets? Fashion jewelry? Pfff.

Mrs. Bell and I follow a different system. Dmitri Mendeleev to the rescue! Since he went to all that work to organize all the elements in a nice ordered Periodic Table, why reinvent the wheel for weddings? Our first anniversary was our Hydoversary (element 1: H, hydrogen), then came our Heliaversary (element 2: He, helium), and so on.

In this system, a big landmark comes when you reach iron (element 26: Fe, iron). This is the first element at which fusion ceases to be energetically advantageous. In other words, after this point, you’d better have gotten the hang of this marriage thing, you won’t be able to rely on physics alone to help you stick together.

Mrs. Bell and I had a rather long engagement, which in fact allowed us to celebrate our Electroversary (-1: a free electron) one year before our wedding.

You can’t say that we didn’t start as we meant to go on.

If you want a challenge, try writing a romantic message in hobo sign. Or even just a non-homicidal one. I recently tried making a little romantic note for Mrs. Bell. If I’d wanted to say: “be ready to defend yourself, there’s no point going this way, owner will give to get rid of you” I’d have been all set. But that isn’t exactly what I was going for. In the end, I settled on this:

In other words, “you can camp here, a kind lady lives here, the sky’s the limit.”

Although I was sorely tempted by “free telephone.” Next on the list to try: semaphore and/or DNA.

Brownie and Bozo just posted a set of tips for long-distance lovers on MakeSweet. They pick out some of the best things to do online if you want to sweep your beloved off their feet. I’m not sure I’m convinced by them all, but I like the idea of personalized lolcats. I’ll have to try that out on Mrs. Bell. Apparently you can also make comics online, although I hope you can come up with better dialog than Brownie and Bozo did.

Also, I could have done without seeing you guys photoshopped into a “Tarzan and his Mate” photo…