Texts from last night

...and the rest of yesterday, which was our 20th anniversary.

7:43 a.m. Dropped off the camper and now questing for pancakes with her hubby of TWENTY years
MJ got to NBTSC with her Oregon roomie, Sean, but Chloe still had to do the dawn train run. Then Frank and I went for breakfast at IHOP, using our Seahawks ticket stubs to get free short stacks.

10:54 a.m. Jamming at the EMP
Despite being locals who have a lot of out-of-town visitors, Frank and I had never been to the Experience Music Project. It was very cool, especially the guitar gallery, which is worth the price of admission all by itself. They have a lab where you can play instruments and sing; we spent a fair amount of time in there.

12:39 p.m. Seriously tempted by Firefly action figures and an Alien lunchbox at the Sci-Fi Museum store.
Admission to EMP also gets you into the adjacent Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame. It was so fun! It was also entertaining to see how much of their collection is on loan from Paul Allen. The dude knows how to spend his money! No Firefly, Galactica, or Back to the Future materials on display, which struck us as odd. But they did have Firefly gear at the store. I resisted. Barely.

1:22 p.m. Checked into our hotel room! View of Sound, islands, ferries, Pike Place Market. Awesome sauce!
Part 1 of Frank's surprise. I used hotel points to get us a room at the Red Lion downtown. We were on the top (20th) floor with a spectacular view of a spectacular day on Puget Sound. Sailboats, parasailers, shipping traffic, and ferries on the water. Planes and helicopters of all shapes and sizes in the air. Busy tourists down on the street. Loved it!

1:51 p.m. Hey, Frank brought the wine!
Frank surprised me with a nice bottle of Merlot (my favorite). We ordered up a room-service snack and spent a blissful couple of hours eating, sipping wine, and watching the world go by.

7:28 p.m. Napped to recover from an early wakeup and a bottle of red. Now at Ruth's Chris for free dinner.
Part 2 of Frank's surprise: I used credit-card points to get gift certificates to Ruth's Chris Steak House, far and away the best place to get a really good steak but with prices that are usually out of our reach. Not last night! Although we did go over and a bit, so it wasn't purely free: we had to supplement the tip with $3 cash...

We had crab cocktail in remoulade sauce, steak, lobster, beautifully prepared asparagus and broccoli, and bread pudding dessert. Everything was SO yummy.

We realized after dinner that we were sipping our complementary anniversary champagne at about the exact moment of our anniversary. Nice!

9:49 p.m. Watching the lights and the nightlife (yes, Seattle has some). This day has been everything I hoped for.
After a lovely post-prandial stroll through the bustling city streets, we settled back in front of the window. It was a wonderful day, and a wonderful way to commemorate twenty years with my wonderful man.

Here's to the next 20!