I've been wanting to post this for a few days but I had decided to wait and see until after the happy event had come and gone. Well, it was mostly happy anyway.

November 4th was Mrs. Tin's and my eighteenth wedding anniversary. To celebrate this year, we were going to keep it simple. We planned on going up to Washington state and visiting with her parents and going to a local casino on Saturday night. Now, I'm not much of a gambler and going to a casino didn't appeal to me very much, but free dinner did.

So we drove up Friday night after work and school and parked the car. We proceeded to drink and visit while the kids played with their aunt and uncles and cousins and what not. Typical visit really.

Saturday wasn't a very big day. I watched The History Channel for most of the day instead of interacting with my family. Bad Tin! Bad! (I know!). But I was still doing okay.

Saturday night we left for the casino around 6pm. When we got there, we found out that the wait for the restaurant was 1 - 1 1/2 hours! Forget that, we went to another nearby restaurant. Yeah, it was a gourmet burger place but I still got a rib eye steak. It was a pretty good meal. I was kinda quiet and reserved at least until I had my first beer. Then I became more talkative and interactive. That happens I guess.

So we went back to the casino by about 8pm or so. I really wanted to look around more than anything. But I got led over to the slot machines -- they no longer have pull arms, it's all push button. My mother in law gave us each $5 to spend on the slots which was kinda cool. Everyone else in the party got right down to the serious business of playing the electronic games that probably wouldn't give them any money back. I decided to look around after all.

Heh -- they need to make slot machines more like video games, with more addictive play. I'm just saying.

So I saw all the tables. I'm not much interested in craps. Roulette is kinda cool to watch but again the odds aren't something I wanted to play. I saw Pai Gow poker which I have no idea. The only game that I would have wanted to play, Blackjack, had tables that took $10, $15, and $25 dollar minimums. Yeah, if I had $100 to blow I could have had some fun. But I didn't.

They also had baccarat. Not being James Bond, I still wasn't interested. Tables for roulette and craps were minimum of $2. Pai Gow had a $5 minimum. Baccarat had a $25 minimum.

So I went back to the slots, found a fantasy-themed one, and played for a bit. I won a bit (almost doubled my money!) then proceeded to play it down to $0. *sigh* oh well. I hadn't planned on winning anyway, even though my brother-in-law and mother-in-law both won a bit of money -- about $15-$20.

Ah, but here comes the topping on the cake:

Sunday was a pretty lazy day and I had mentioned that I didn't want to go home. But by the time that 1:00pm rolled around we knew it was time to go -- it's about a five hour drive. So we loaded up the car and were ready to go not long after 2:00.

I go to start the car. It turns over but does not catch. I try this several times, mostly in shock since the car has almost never before been difficult to start. I try pulling off the gas cap and seeing if the car was vapor locked. I think that happened once before. Nope.

So here we were, stuck 220 miles from home without any tools. At least we weren't out on the road somewhere, and the kids didn't have school the next day.

Unfortunately, I did have work.

So my father-in-law can't find his sockets. My idea was to pull out a spark plug and see whether I had any spark. I had to go to the nearby auto store and buy a ratchet and an extension and a spark plug socket in order to do so. Sure enough, no spark. I could smell gas and feel compression in the cylinder so I knew that I had two out of three necessities for an internal combustion engine.

By the time we got hold of my wife's cousin to borrow some tools, retrieve the tools (because I was too cheap to buy another $100 worth) and start working on the car again, it got dark. We called it a night and went inside, I called my boss' voice mail, and we went back to TV and visiting.

Now, I had figured that the problem was the coil, which I found out from my Haynes manual was integrated with the distributor. I was able to measure one part with an ohmmeter and it read good, but I couldn't get a reading on the other part. So it had to come out. That was okay, since I was already about 80% sure that was the problem.

Man, what a pain in the ass! It probably took me about two hours to finally get the thing out, and I may have broke part of it in the process. But sure enough, the secondary of the coil was reading practically open. So I called the parts store to get a replacement. $230, and it wasn't in stock so I had to wait until later that day.

*sigh*. It was still cheaper than having someone else do it, and the part went in much easier than it did coming out, but still. I got the job done and we drove home a day later than planned. School for the kids today and work for me. Huzzah.

It was still a fun weekend, over all, even if Mrs. Tin and I didn't celebrate quite as well as we did the previous two years. I thought about titling this post "Eighteen and Life" after the Skid Row song, but after the other stuff I decided not to, even though it would have been a more tongue-in-cheek title.

And for anyone who asks how we've managed to stay together so long? It's just because neither one of us knows any better. Which is, again, tongue-in-cheek on my part -- but also partly true. We do still love each other very dearly and it just cannot be put into words. It is nowhere near the same feeling that fills endless teenage imaginations with romance.

And one last interesting thought -- I figure that next year, on our 19th anniversary, we will have been married for half of our lives. Most couples don't face that fact until many years later than we do. That's gonna be an important one, but maybe we'll go on a cruise or something for our 20th.