Danielle and Michael's 13th Wedding Anniversary Today

Yes, somebody actually married Your Humble Narrator, for which I am, of course, eternally grateful and, well, humbled.  That was thirteen years ago today, in the sprawling, twenty acre backyard of Deniece and Edward McArthur, in the town of Springville, California (an hour north of Bakersfield or, if you like, 80 miles (give or take) south of Fresno (but, either way, slightly east and getting up into the Sierra foothills)).  Robert Winant and Geoffrey Bankowski drove down with me from San Francisco the prior Thursday on a 100 degree Central Valley day (Danielle had taken the train earlier in the week; also along on our drive was Le Chat Gibson, lost to us at just shy of age 19 in January, 2007).

The four of us stopped fifteen minutes from our final destination in downtown Porterville for a beer and, I think, Geoff may have made a quick visit to and purchase in a thrift shoppe (Porterville, CA - home to, among other things, Elizabeth Hiatt's parents AND the Mecca Club (a sign outside the Mecca read "air cooled by refrigeration", but we discovered only three electric fans inside (the beer, Olympia, cold))).  The next day, Friday, the temperature hit the mid 90s but, when Saturday the 29th rolled around, the thermometer topped out at 85 and with a breeze (aka it was an absolutely perfect day).

One year ago today we celebrated number twelve in San Francisco, just two and a half weeks prior to packing up the dogs and the car and leaving that fabulous city, which had been my home for eighteen years, and Danielle's for fifteen or so.  And so it goes that tonight my Lady Love and I will be enjoying dinner in our new fabulous city of Seattle, at Tulio, a fine Italian restaurant downtown and kitty-corner to the (somewhat) new public library.

 And here's the pretty girl now...
















IBL:mm