We've had an interesting week of late. Last weekend being Memorial Day Weekend, my wife and I did our usual thing of celebrating our wedding anniversary in the usual way: in honor of the events around our wedding, we return to a couple of places that were a significant part of those days. Our Wedding Night dinner was at a local fast-food chain called Tommy's, (aka "Tommy Burgers"). This was because we had gone straight from the wedding reception to the hotel we'd gotten for the night (our actual honeymoon wasn't starting for a couple of days), and we didn't think ahead to things like dinner when we were getting ready that morning. So, we got to our hotel in our wedding clothes, with our sleepwear, and the shorts and T-shirts we were wearing when we drove to the church that morning. We weren't exactly decked out appropriately for dinner at anywhere nice. Yes, in hindsight, we could have gone anywhere in our tux-and-gown motif, but at the time we both felt self-conscious about that, and we worried about getting food on her dress. So, we knew we had to choose somewhere that our shorts and T-shirts wouldn't have been innappropriate. Luckily enough, next-door to the hotel was a Tommy's. So, for our Wedding Night dinner, we had chili cheeseburgers, chili-cheese dogs, and chili-cheese fries. Also, the next day, my family was still in town from Idaho, so we decided to take them somewhere fun and tourist-y. We settled on the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach. Across the street is the local outlet of the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co., so we shared someone's "After the Storm Bucket of Boat Trash" while we stood in line for tickets. In honor of all of this, every year we've gone back to Long Beach to have lunch at Bubba Gump's and go to the aquarium. On the way home, we stop off for some Tommy's to take home and scarf down in the privacy of our own home. We also but some cupcakes from the Albertsons bakery that made our wedding cake (which was actually just an arrangement of custom-frosted Albertsons cupcakes).
This year, we were headed for Tommy's and had gotten on the 405 to head to Fountain Valley. Just before the Euclid exit, I saw a piece of cardboard airborne about 15 feet up ahead sort of above the lane divider, but it started falling, rapidly (an instant flash of realization, too late to act, that it was falling too quickly for cardboard), listing toward our side. The next thing we knew, it had struck our windshield and shattered the entire driver's side. I maintained our speed, and kept driving until I was past the panic stage and knew it was safe to pull over on a wide shoulder. Since we'd been out being tourists all day, we had the camera with us, so we have some great pictures from right after the event.
After that, we knew we had to take surface streets home, but we still needed our Tommy's, and some comfort food. We stopped at Tommy's, and then wended our way homeward, making one other stop at Bev'Mo, and then home. We threw the Tommy's in the oven to reheat, and got comfy to try and relax. We had our dinner, and then crashed out on the couch for the rest of the evening. We fell asleep, but about 1 am, I became aware that the Tommy's had gone bad in the time it took us to get home. I threw up 3 more times during the course of the next morning, and Patti started feeling pretty rotten as well.
So, we've declared our anniversary celebrations a do-over this year. We'll be going back to the aquarium in a couple weeks when their new display is out, and we'll try again.
One of the positive things from the day, though, was that we found this awesome little hat shop in Long Beach. I found a great hat that I've been wearing as often as I can (I'm wearing it as I'm typing this, in fact). It's an old British Bobby's hat! They sold it to us for only $10, because the sizing band was almost completely unglued. I fixed that with almost no effort, and now it's good as new. I'm including a link to pictures from the windshield and of me in the hat for your enjoyment. And don't give me any of that nonsense about this being a blog. Just because I've now posted information about my personal life in a public forum and included pictures,
this is not a blog!
