6 Years and The Happy Gnome

We've been married for 6 years today. Cara secretly made reservations at a restaurant called The Happy Gnome! This place had a huge menu of beer and very good food. I ordered a dark beer mixed with coffee which was very good. And for dinner Cara had bison steak and I had lamb ribs. Fantastic. Comfortable place.

After dinner we lazily walked around Harriet Island which neither of us had ever visited before, made our way all the way to the end of the mighty pier, watched a couple of red-necks catch a pretty big catfish, watched a tugboat push 9 barges upstream and finally went to retrieve our kids from the Browns. A very nice evening.

4 Year Anniversary & NCC 1701

Cara and I have been married for four years. Each year has been better than the last.

To celebrate we took Jack to our friend's house and went to an early showing of STAR TREK:

Cara and I saw it finally for our 4th anniversary yesterday. It was fantastic. I agree with Jesse that it cleaned out every bit of its arse with the Star Wars movies. Kirk was great. Pine made the character his own without falling into a Shatner impersonation. Quinto, however, channeled Nemoy with his performance. Spot on. I thought Nemoy, himself, was a bit off character, actually. They succeeded in re-imaging an old and great franchise while keeping with the original continuity in a way. The one criticism I have is there are a few HUGE plot holes requiring a great deal of suspension of disbelief. More than usual for Star Trek. The action and thrill makes it easy to forgive these plot shortcomings. It was beautiful and has made me really like Star Trek more than ever in my life (like, I actually want to own this movie!). But I think Firefly/Serenity and Battlestar Galactica are still superior sci-fi products. [link to discussion]

We left the theater and went directly to Red Lobster. When all was said and done, we were home again with Jack around 5PM. It was a great and relaxing anniversary.

3 Years

Married for three years today.

It stormed a lot today. It also stormed a lot three years ago.

For our anniversary, Cara painted a picture of us dancing from a photo taken at our reception. She did a wonderful job.

I got her three red roses and wrote her a love letter.

Leesha made a very nice card for both of us from her and Jack.

We bus drivers had our St. Paul route picks today. Starting at something like 6AM the most senior drivers choose first. Mine came at 7:56 or sometime around then. I think that means I'm moving up, or older drivers are quitting. Yay for me.

I chose a route that winds to and fro all around this side of St. Paul (this being closer to where I live). The first school is Highwood Hills, which is the school I was driving for on my noon route over the regular school season. The second school is Wellstone. I have a good history with Wellstone, but this route will be a departure from what I usually drove for them. This route guarantees around 6:30 hours a day. Not too bad for a summer school route. I plan on helping out the Monarch Bus Service staff with training to maybe pick up even more hours.

Comics!
I was hoping to pick up Clandestine #5 (of 5) today because its by Alan Davis and its great. But either the Source didn't get any or it sold out already. There was supposedly a new Indiana Jones comic out today that didn't get shipped. So the only comic I was expecting was Captain Britain and the MI-13 #2. This series started off in the middle of the Marvel Secret Invasion. Its been great so far. For me, Marvel + the UK = goodnes (ala Excalibur). Since I only had one comic in my hand I check out a couple of back issues. I picked up the IDW Doctor Who #1 and White Tiger #1. Haven't read either one yet.