The last in our string of celebratory anniversary activities involved going to a painting class but not just any painting class, a class to paint a blue police box. Yes, those of you with nerd cred know exactly of who I speak.

Painting with a Twist is a little place in Murray that features daily canvas tutorials of all sorts. The atmosphere is relaxed and no artistic skills are required, which is great because I have none. And, for the record, that wasn’t a faux-humble statement that I expect someone to benevolently contradict. Truly, you would have a difficult time matching something I sketched to its corresponding object in the real world. Yet, rather miraculously, my blue box spiraled through the brush-time vortex relatively undistorted.

As you would expect from something so wibbly wobbly, time in our class flew by at an unpredictable pace. Three hours came and went in what felt like minutes. You had to paint quickly to keep up with our instructor and, unfortunately, due to my perfectionistic nature, I’m generally the opposite of quick. Therefore, my TARDIS materialized slower than anyone else’s but I did manage to only finish last by a few minutes.

This unique ending to our anniversary amusements was well received and appreciated. Many thanks to my clever spouse for planning so many fine and uncommon outings in honor of our topnotch marriage. And many thanks to him also for being the best husband a girl could ask for! Thirteen definitely doesn’t deserve its villainous reputation.

Jason and I don’t hesitate to celebrate. No, no one could ever accuse us of skimping on festivities. So, not astonishingly, when our thirteenth anniversary came around this year we spared no revelry. Jason, whose turn it was to plan our activities this time, decided that the proper commemoration of this event shouldn’t be limited to one day but distributed over weeks. Yes, weeks of anniversary exploits means weeks of related posts. I wouldn’t want you to be subjected to more excitement than you could handle in one sitting.

Our dedicatory partying started on our actual anniversary. Jason made a lovely breakfast for us that morning, after which we headed to Tracy Aviary in Salt Lake City. He had arranged for me to take a behind-the-scenes photography tour with the Curator of Exhibit Collections there. This was extremely cool and a very thoughtful idea on my hubby’s part. I was able to go into the birds’ enclosures and take pictures of them up close while learning fascinating facts about those feathery creatures from the curator. I got some terrific shots and a glimpse into the personalities of each of these rare species, some of which are now completely extinct in the wild thanks to the stupidity of our species.

We finished our afternoon by strolling The Gateway and stuffing ourselves with sushi from The Happy Sumo. Then, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 occupied the bulk of our amazing evening. After all, seeing superhero flicks has become an anniversary staple for us.*

Our anniversary was relaxing yet distinctive. It was an outstanding day spent with many fantastic fowls and one fantastic non-foul. But the merriment didn’t end with these fine happenings. Check in next week for all the mind-blowing details about the second phase of our anniversary saga.

*We are uber-nerds.

April Fools’: the one day a year that pranks are not only accepted but expected. Admittedly, I frequently make use of this holiday to humor myself at my coworkers’ expense. However, this year Jason decided to surpass me in the mischief department. He planted several gags in our house, some of which I, the should-have-been suspecting victim, didn’t discover until days later.

First, Jason rendered our computer’s mouse useless with a piece of tape and got a good chuckle out of my failed attempts to use it. Yes, although this is a classic hoax, I didn’t catch on right away. Jason also decided to make my bedtime rituals more exhilarating by pushing a dried cranberry into my toothpaste tube. I, a self-affirmed sanitation zealot, felt like I had fallen into an oral-hygiene nightmare of the Freddy Krueger variety thanks to that red blob.

Jason’s last trick, at least of those I’ve found so far, was modifying the autocorrect in our Word program to automatically change “the” to “bachHa’.” BachHa’, apparently, means “to make a mistake” in Klingon and was chosen specifically for its insulting significance. This prank wasn’t uncovered until days after all the jokers were supposed to be done with their bamboozling. And yes, I did think our computer was possessed.

Thus, I, the April-Fools’ trickster, became the chronically fooled. Jason believes he arranged a couple more traps that day but he can’t remember their particulars so, perhaps, he will get to be the twofold idiot when he steps into a snare that he set himself.