Can I compete with this?

So I have to write stories about lame business events as a part of my job. This week, it was the annual chamber dinner, which actually turned out to be very entertaining because an old firebrand liberal returned to Rockford to tell the town's stodgy business set to stop resisting the future and start trying to make this city a place where young professionals want to live instead of escape. Yeah, that'll happen.
But as I've said before in this blog, being a reporter in your hometown affords you many opportunities to run into people you went to school with, or got into trouble with, or in the case of this dinner, dated off and on for years.
So the first person I recognize at this banquet (besides the photographer) is an old girlfriend. Quick background: There was a brief window of time when I would have considered marrying her if we'd stayed together. But we didn't, which was undoubtedly better for everyone concerned. Instead, she went on to become a teacher at our old high school and then married the father of one of her students. Yeah, I know. He must be 17 years older than her. And they just had a baby, too.
Anyway, I had heard all this through the grapevine, but the chamber dinner was my first chance to finally meet the guy. I'll let you decide whether she made the right choice. And I'll remind you that I am a 30-year-old journalist who took seven years to finish a degree at a compass-point state university. That, and I make a little bit more than a carpet installer. But maybe I should just emphasize the 30-year-old part.
Not that I'm so shallow as to compare myself...