Six years ago yesterday the Flick and Tinkler merger was made official, giving birth to the now world-famous tinkleflick brand. Now, according to the professionals in this area, the traditional 6th anniversary gift is supposed to be candy while the modern gift is supposed to be made of iron. These so-called experts haven’t spent any time over here at the tinkleflick world headquarters where part of the sixth anniversary was spent cleaning up the garage!
As you may or may not already know, the sixth year of our marriage was consumed by two major events: the arrival of little Natalie and the construction and remodeling of the house. One side effect of the construction was the loss of the use of the garage for the better part of the last year while it was filled with construction equipmnent and furniture in transition. With the recent upgrade of one of our cars and the construction nearing its end, it was time to put the garage back together so we could park at least one car in it. Surprisingly, it didn’t take that long but we were in a race against time as the temperatures climbed to over 100 degrees (and, in a terrifying but related story, the Los Angeles times is reporting that these ridiculous temperatures are expected to continue until freakin’ October!).
Thankfully, the garage reorganization did not take up the whole day. There was time to make a trip back to where it all began, The Bowers Museum of Cultural Art in Santa Ana. The place looks pretty much the same as it did six years ago and Natalie was the belle of the ball at the on-site restaraunt, Tangata (one of the restaraunts owned by Joachim Splichal, of Patina fame) where we had lunch. For those of you keeping score at home, Noah was busy learning the fine art of cannon ball jumping at the pool in Palm Springs where he spent the weekend with his grandma.
Oh, one other thing. We have had Sirius satellite radio now for all of a week and we have already been to the record store a few times picking up CDs from bands that we have either newly discovered or, and this is the scary part, rediscovered from the past. The latter category apparently includes REO Speedwagon (for Wendy) and, despite our prior agreement to to buy each other any anniversary presents this year, I just couldn’t help myself but to buy her a copy of The Hits, a greatest hits compilation for our anniversary. OK, in all fairness, I have an unnecessary Bryan Adams habit, but I had to counterbalance the purchase of the REO Speedwagon CD with one from Jack Johnson so as not to be too embarassed when the kid with way too many body piercings rang me up at Borders. And, for the record, I did not attempt to sing “Keep on Loving You” to Wendy on our anniversary in order to have some chance of making it to our 7th anniversary.