I mentioned in the post of 7/8/13 that today, September 9, is our anniversary.  We have now been married 41 years.  This is the first prime number (41) anniversary since our famous 37^th – 09/09/09.

Anniversary 35, in 2007, was one of the best celebrated.  We decided that just like 25 is silver and 50 is gold, 35 is license plates. 

Michigan was changing plates, meaning that Diane would have to give up her SAM 278 plate.  She really liked SAM, as it was easy to spot in the parking lot.  Who knows what you would get on a new, assigned plate, although Jesse has CAP and Amber BUG.  With personalized plates, we could have something that started with SAM although we were denied just plain SAM because that was already taken, presumably by someone whose real name is Samuel. 

We tried lots of options – SAM 2 (taken), SAM AGAIN (too long), SAM SAM (too repetitive), and SAM TWO (taken) – and finally found a winner:  SAM TOO.  It has a nice play on the idea of “also” and is easy to read.

For Allan, the new plate had to start from scratch.  We thought of variations of ZOOMER, but they were all taken.  One time last year Jesse and Amber saw the sports car with the ZOOMER plate, in the parking lot of Home Depot on Waverly Road.  “Good on ya” to that guy.

The next choice was SYSTEMS, a shout-out to my now-defunct graduate school department at MSU.  We were helped by getting a personalized Michigan State University fundraising plate, with the block S on the front.  YSTEMS was, surprisingly, already taken, but YSTMS reads almost as well.  So the gift for Allan was SYSTMS.

Unfortunately, Allan was in an accident and totaled the SYSTMS Buick.  We purchased a new vehicle for Diane, Allan inherited Diane’s old car, and the world has turned upside down.  Allan is now SAM TOO and Diane is SYSTMS.  I think we are handling it alright; most days we know who we are, even if our license plates don’t.