Stan’s Obligatory Blog

10/29/2005

Our Anniversary

Filed under: — stan @ 11:08 pm

Today is our 17th anniversary. It’s the actual day and everything. So after we dropped Lucinda off at Aunt Maggi’s house, we went up to Long Beach.

On the way, we stopped off at Westminster Mall. Cathy used to work at the Republic Federal Savings branch there, so we wanted to see what had moved in to that space. We were surprised to see that the space looked almost unchanged, even though it is now the ‘City Hall at the Mall’ for the city of Westminster. The vault was even still there. It was a fun little trip down Memory Lane.

After the stop at the mall, we went to the old McDonnell Douglas plant down the street so I could recreate the picture from my going-away party there, back in 1984.

When we got to Long Beach, our plan was to have dinner at Hamburger Henry. While this may seem an odd choice, it has great sentimental value for us. Our wedding was in Long Beach, and Cathy spent most of the evening visiting with relatives and friends there. So she never had a chance to eat her dinner. And when it was all over, she was hungry. So we headed out at 1:00AM looking for something to eat. We ended up at Hamburger Henry.

While we were there, we noticed that a lot of the people there were dressed in costumes. Then we realized that it was the Saturday night before Halloween. In all the wedding planning, that had never occurred to us. And we said that maybe we shouldn’t have changed before going there. We would have fit right in, dressed as a bride and groom.

So we got there, but there was something else there. We asked at some of the neighboring stores, and they told us that Hamburger Henry had been gone for something like eight years. The land was just too valuable to use for just selling hamburgers, so the owner had leased it to a developer and the old place was gone.

We ended up having our burgers at another place nearby. It was still a fun evening. And we got to meet a hot-pink dog while we were there.

10/23/2005

Our 17th Anniversary

Filed under: — stan @ 9:50 pm

It’s our 17th anniversary. Wait – no, it’s not. That’s not until next Saturday. But Lucinda is going to her aunt’s house for the weekend, so we decided to do our official big night out tonight so she could come along. She wanted to go to “the restaurant with the moving floor” – L.A. Prime at the Bonaventure Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. Doesn’t everyone let their six-year-old choose how they are going to celebrate their anniversary?

So we made a reservation and headed down there. We’ve gone there for New Year’s Eve before, but I think this was the first time we’d gotten there before dark. Just outside on the street we saw the remnants of a day of filming. There was a rack of odd-looking mopeds and lots of strange-looking potted plants on the sidewalk. The hotel people told us that it was for “Mission: Impossible III”. Since I doubt we’ll see that, we will probably never know if they were right or not.

Once we got inside, we headed for the restaurant. As always, the food and service were superb. The view was only so-so this time, since it was a foggy evening in L.A. But Lucinda still had a fun time going around looking out the windows. And after dinner we all headed to the revolving lounge to look at the moving floor.

Overall, it was a fun evening

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