Five Years Ago (Yesterday)

I married my college sweetheart.  We'd dated for four years, on-and-off, give-or-take, and then went our separate "merry" ways.  For twenty years, give-or-take. So YESTERDAY was our five-year wedding anniversary, and our TWENTY-NINE year anniversary of having met, or started dating, or something, give-or-take. (Shout-out to @simonpegg over at Twitter for the #orsomething idea).

Year one, as we all know, is paper.  We may have actually exchanged cards that year, even though I'm not a big exchanger of cards.  Or we may have exchanged cash.  Who can remember?

Year two, we think, is cotton.  We bought matching purple Hanes t-shirts, because they were cheap, and we both love purple.  Stephen wore his to work and to dinner last night.  Mine is still "packed" with the rest of my t-shirts, because we have yet to acquire a chest of drawers, and we've both run out of shelf space on which to organize our shirts and shorts and whatnot.

I dunno what years three or four are.  For year three, we were planning our move to NC.  In year four, I had just lost my TJ's job and was apparently down in the dumps,  Stephen says he picked wildflowers and made dinner for me.  I only vaguely remember.  Apparently, I was down in the dumps after having lost my job.

Year five is wood.  We went to dinner at an Irish pub and were surrounded by beautiful dark wood.  I ordered corned beef and cabbage, since an Irish pub is about the only place I ever get to have it (he doesn't care for it enough for me to prepare any for Saint Paddy's Day or any other time).  There was WAY plenty on my plate, so I got to bring home my leftovers in a cardboard take-out box.  And we paid with some gift certificates we'd received in exchange for a little work he'd done shortly after our arrival back home in Burbank.  So, surrounded by wood and paying with wood pulp and carrying it home in wood pulp.  Yay for wood in year five!

Here are the few pics I managed to snap of our celebration.

First subway trip since our return - there's a sign above our
heads that says "North Hollywood" - end of the line!

They're always updating the rail maps

Stephen's thrilled to "model"
the drink menu

Meal menu & malt vinegar - mmm

me, TRYING to show you my wood-pulp encased meal. Fail.

this is the BETTER of the two pics of this ambience. ;)

See that lettering?  Stephen did that.

Upstairs, and outside the main entrance
(yes, the pub IS underground)