13 Years!

It's been thirteen years since this photo was taken. Ilyn and I both decided to get married during December, between Christmas and New Year's Day because we wanted not only our wedding, but our anniversaries to happen when the weather was relatively cool, and there's a feeling of holiday and celebration in the air.

I still remember the day like it was just last week. We had our reception at Roño's Place, back when it was still owned by the Roños. They even gave us a free night in their bed and breakfast right next to the reception. The following day, Ilyn and I just walked a few blocks to our apartment, newly painted, with all new bamboo furniture and new appliances, utensils, tools, and bed sheets. We spent the day in bed just watching the special extended edition DVD of Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring. To this day, new paint and Lord of the Rings make me nostalgic for the Christmas season, and our wedding.

Our anniversary is actually tomorrow, December 28, but we won't be able to celebrate it then so we just decided to do it today.

Just like last year, Ilyn and I went on breakfast, lunch, and dinner dates here in San Pablo to commemorate our anniversary. The places we went to weren't that particularly special, but we didn't mind.

For breakfast, we went happily to Dunkin' Donuts. It just occurred to me that we also went to Dunkin' Donuts during our breakfast anniversary date last year.

I guess I just wanted to go to a place where I can have coffee and something to dunk into the coffee, proper breakfast style. Sadly, there's really no other place you can do that in San Pablo that's open at that hour. We would have opted to go to a local business, but even a place like Si Christina doesn't have anything you can dunk into their coffee. Can you imagine dunking cakes and sansrival into coffee? NO. Ugh.

The coffee at Dunkin' comes in really small though. As in tiny. See photo on the left for evidence. It's crazy. What is this, Hobbit land? Still, Dunkin' coffee is far more decent than most fast food coffee like those from Jollibee or McDo.

I went crazy and had three...THREE donuts. I wanted simple donuts. I didn't want those overly sweet, overly elaborate donuts that seem to be the norm in places like this. I would have loved to have a simple sugar raised donut, not any of these bavarian filled strawberry choco coco puff sprinkled sparkling carbonated bacon wrapped rainbow-colored monstrosities. Oh no, I'm starting to rant. Let me go and move on to lunch.

We happily had our lunch at David's Tea House at Puregold. David's wasn't my first choice, but we wanted to go to the newly opened Office Warehouse nearby. David's was the nearest, relatively decent place to eat.

I won't go at length about what we ate because I might start another rant haha. But let me just say that we did enjoy the food and I probably ate a little too much. No, I can't let this go! THEY FORGOT THE SAGO IN THE MANGO SAGO! There. I'm OK now.

For dinner, we happily ate at Simple Treats, one of our favorite places here in San Pablo. We actually struggled... STRUGGLED to decide where to have dinner. We were deciding between places like Hungry Gorilla, YOu Japanese Canteen and SuperWok, all of which are very near to our house. In the end, we decided on Simple Treats because I really wanted to have a really... REALLY good cup of coffee.

Hands down, Simple Treats has the best coffee here in San Pablo. I'm very sure you'll hear few arguments from those who have actually tried it. We like this coffee so much that a few years ago during our 10th Wedding Anniversary party, we actually asked Simple Treats to cater their coffee. No, they don't cater coffee, but since we're tight with the owner, he said OK. He even thought it was such a good idea that he might start catering coffee himself for other occasions.

Tonight, the coffee didn't disappoint. As usual, it was simply awesome.

So awesome that it made us truly happy.

It's really been such a nice day. Although today was special, we do try to make each day as special as this one, just in different ways.