A storytelling side trip

This is a blog, right? Hopefully, it's a blog with some semblance of an overall theme, storytelling, right? Well, forget about that for a moment. I am going to meander off onto Tangent Road, and I do mean meander.

My husband and I celebrated 25 years of mostly wedded bliss on the 14th. In typical fashion, although Hallmark tells me this is a Significant Anniversary™, the silver one, we were fairly low key about it. Oh, it's not as if I didn't try to make it significant. My first suggestion involved going to Vegas, taking in one of the permanent Cirque shows, and getting married by a fake Elvis. Okay, yeah, that's cheesy, but it would've been fun. So I tried to look for something more our style. Hmm, how about staying at the Twin Pine Lodge on the Au Sable River in Michigan, doing a little canoeing, and just happening to catch a Kirtland's Warbler guided tour? Nope, that didn't work, either.

Really, when we look at each other, we sometimes have to ask how in the world we even got together, much less stayed together? I mean, our first date was not exactly the stuff of romance. Dick took me to his year end bowling banquet. With the guys. All guys. Guys who would do strange things like pour beer down their throats and then gargle, creating a living beer fountain. It's a wonder there even was a second date, but all either of us can figure is...someone who would choose that for a first date has to be good for entertainment value, if nothing else.

The real indicator of how unlike each other we are is our taste in music. Dick has some CDs that I can kind of tolerate. Marshall Tucker. Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. A few I actually like. Led Zeppelin. Crosby Stills and Nash. (He can keep Neil Young). Definitely Santana, the vintage and the new. Van Morrison. But please, don't play yet another Grateful Dead/Old and In the Gray/Ratdog/any of the jillion incarnations of the Dead. They had one good song. "Truckin'." They should have stopped with that one!

Now Dick will say the same about my stuff. The ones on which we agree, you already know. He can't figure out any of my classical music at all, Natalie MacMaster, Loreena McKinnett, anything by Clannad, a variety of no name Celtic groups or any of my Baka CDs. Well, if the guy would travel, maybe he'd get it! In fact, he claims my music is so weird, no one has bothered to categorize it at all.

Well, he's wrong.

Thanks to a bit of random surfing today while waiting for the laundry cycle to finish so I could hang it on the line, I visited a lovely site dedicated to Michigan lighthouses. This was discovered after I linked to Lighthouse Lassie's blog on Two Peas. Her blog is cool! It has music! It has a drop down menu! One of the selections was Natalie Merchant. I didn't think I'd ever heard of her, but I liked what I heard. I bought the only CD I could find at Best Buy™---but only after I watched the Thunderbirds do an awesome flyover the store (told you I'd meander)--"Tigerlily." Well, I did know one of the songs, once I heard it.

This sent me surfing again, to see what else I could learn about her. In the process, I discovered that my kind of music has a category name, and even a website with a mailing list for similarly cultured individuals. We're Ectophiles.

So THERE, my husband of 25 years and two days!

As to our Significant Anniversary™, we ended up having dinner at Ed Sullivan's Restaurant on the river in Trempealeau, our two sons joining us. Even though we didn't do anything fancier than that, the weather presented us with a Significant Event™ while dining. Cloudbursts were happening all day, and one such downpour resulted in a lovely rainbow just outside our window.

So, it would appear my husband and I did indeed find the pot of gold when we met some 27 years ago. And I have found the other pot of gold, the one that validates my taste in music!