In Which We Celebrate Our Anniversary
Aug. 19th, 2018 10:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aLast Sunday was Kimberly and my 18th anniversary. Our marriage can now vote, get a tattoo, and smoke. This is apparently the porcelain anniversary or the feather(?) anniversary. We exchanged neither pots nor birds. (I note that our upcoming 20th anniversary, which should see us living in Hawaii, is the China anniversary; maybe we should visit.)
However, Kimberly had a show that she wanted to see in Seattle last Saturday, an all-but-unknown extravagance. She flew out there last Friday and got back extremely early last Sunday for our anniversary, but it was obvious there wouldn't be much energy for exciting traveling about. So we had a very nice dinner at Millennium, which has been our anniversary restaurant of choice since they moved to the Oakland/Berkeley border.
This Sunday was supposed to be our more full-fledged wedding anniversary celebration, but when we made that plan many months ago, in support of Kimberly's Seattle trip, it was under the assumption that Kimberly would be fully mobile ... and she still has a broken foot. It seems to have gotten a bit better since she accidentally abused it last month, so she can walk a few miles again in her boot, but that's only very recently been the case, so we weren't going to test it. too much.
Instead we settled on dinner and a movie. (And what would turn out to be a very reasonable 2-3 miles of walking.)
The movie was Mamma Mia 2, which we've been wanting to see since before it came out. This is the pre/sequel to Mamma Mia, another musical built around the songs of Abba. It was very enjoyable, and a worthy successor to the original, but I think we all knew that it was never going to hold up to that standard. I mean, one of the problems was that they'd already used all of Abba's best-known songs except "Fernando". They reprised those in interesting and surprising ways, and included "Fernando", but they also went deeper into Abba's lesser-known pieces. But the prequel bit, which filled in the ellipses in the original movie, was wonderful, with the terrific Lily James rocking it (ha!) as a young Donna. And the sequel bit, which revisited our characters in the modern day, was touching. A few times early on I thought the show was a little too careful in aping the successes of the original (such as rendition of "When I Kissed The Teacher", which has them biking through town just like they ran through a town in the original), but pretty soon I got lost in the music. Lots of awesome choreography, especially with the flotilla of ships in "Dancing Queen", and lots of songs that did a great job of touching upon the themes of the movie. Definitely fun. A good diptych with the original.
One of my problems with figuring out the plan for the day, was that I'd originally planned to see Mamma Mia 2 at the Bay Street AMC, then walk over to Chevy's for dinner, then head home. Except the AMC stopped showing Mamma Mia 2 a few days ago! So I got tied up in knots for a while. I settled on a Cinemark theatre in Walnut Creek for a bit, near a Baja Fresh, but then found out they had a new almost-no-bags policy that discriminates against pedestrians and bicyclists that don't have giant metal death machines to store their crap in, so f*** Cinemark. But I eventually realized that we could just grab a Lyft from the Elmwood theatre, which was still showing Mamma Mia 2, straight to Chevy's. Easy!
So our whole path was: walk out to the Elmwood (which we'd never been to before despite decades of living in Berkeley), stop at the Basic Bird and look at cats we'd like to adopt if not for our impending move, see the movie, drive to Chevys, eat, and bus back. And that's how it went.
A nice anniversary. (Love you, hon.)
However, Kimberly had a show that she wanted to see in Seattle last Saturday, an all-but-unknown extravagance. She flew out there last Friday and got back extremely early last Sunday for our anniversary, but it was obvious there wouldn't be much energy for exciting traveling about. So we had a very nice dinner at Millennium, which has been our anniversary restaurant of choice since they moved to the Oakland/Berkeley border.
This Sunday was supposed to be our more full-fledged wedding anniversary celebration, but when we made that plan many months ago, in support of Kimberly's Seattle trip, it was under the assumption that Kimberly would be fully mobile ... and she still has a broken foot. It seems to have gotten a bit better since she accidentally abused it last month, so she can walk a few miles again in her boot, but that's only very recently been the case, so we weren't going to test it. too much.
Instead we settled on dinner and a movie. (And what would turn out to be a very reasonable 2-3 miles of walking.)
The movie was Mamma Mia 2, which we've been wanting to see since before it came out. This is the pre/sequel to Mamma Mia, another musical built around the songs of Abba. It was very enjoyable, and a worthy successor to the original, but I think we all knew that it was never going to hold up to that standard. I mean, one of the problems was that they'd already used all of Abba's best-known songs except "Fernando". They reprised those in interesting and surprising ways, and included "Fernando", but they also went deeper into Abba's lesser-known pieces. But the prequel bit, which filled in the ellipses in the original movie, was wonderful, with the terrific Lily James rocking it (ha!) as a young Donna. And the sequel bit, which revisited our characters in the modern day, was touching. A few times early on I thought the show was a little too careful in aping the successes of the original (such as rendition of "When I Kissed The Teacher", which has them biking through town just like they ran through a town in the original), but pretty soon I got lost in the music. Lots of awesome choreography, especially with the flotilla of ships in "Dancing Queen", and lots of songs that did a great job of touching upon the themes of the movie. Definitely fun. A good diptych with the original.
One of my problems with figuring out the plan for the day, was that I'd originally planned to see Mamma Mia 2 at the Bay Street AMC, then walk over to Chevy's for dinner, then head home. Except the AMC stopped showing Mamma Mia 2 a few days ago! So I got tied up in knots for a while. I settled on a Cinemark theatre in Walnut Creek for a bit, near a Baja Fresh, but then found out they had a new almost-no-bags policy that discriminates against pedestrians and bicyclists that don't have giant metal death machines to store their crap in, so f*** Cinemark. But I eventually realized that we could just grab a Lyft from the Elmwood theatre, which was still showing Mamma Mia 2, straight to Chevy's. Easy!
So our whole path was: walk out to the Elmwood (which we'd never been to before despite decades of living in Berkeley), stop at the Basic Bird and look at cats we'd like to adopt if not for our impending move, see the movie, drive to Chevys, eat, and bus back. And that's how it went.
A nice anniversary. (Love you, hon.)
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Date: 2018-08-20 05:27 pm (UTC)