Tanya and Mike met in Seattle 1989. Mike moved there from Minneapolis to be in a grunge band. He met some great musicians at The Backstage bar and joined a band. Tanya grew up in the Northwest where her parents live in a 1962 Bluebird school bus. They took her to Rainbow Gatherings and Dead concerts growing up. Mike was raised on a rural farm in Minnesota with goat milk and a Christmas tree farm.
They met because Mike's bandmate worked with Tanya at a record store and she sometimes saw Mike at parties. Mike had long hair, long johns with shorts on top, a backwards baseball cap and a leather jacket. Tanya had a boyfriend. The boyfriend was really into his luscious hair and clothes but not that into being faithful to Tanya. Mike had a crush on Tanya despite her pretty boyfriend and he visited the record store where she worked and peeked over the albums at her.
Mike came to a crowded party at Tanya's house and wanted to play some records. From the kitchen, she heard a record scratch. Not like in the movies where there is a record scratch and it's love a first sight. Tanya yelled at mike, "You scratched my new Jane's Addiction album, asshole!" She banned him from coming near her stereo. He also may have kissed her roommate later that evening but Mike denies this part of the story. At the party there was also a fight between two hairy, stoned, grunge band musicians. One of them had his shoes fall off in the scuffle and the smell was in the top five worst odors of all time. This was the seed for their romance.
A few years later, Tanya broke up with the terrible boyfriend and she went to the Bumbershoot music festival with her friends to see Soundgarden. After the festival, they drove to the house of the guitar player from Mike's band for a few drinks. About ten people were too drunk to drive and slept on the floor. The carpet was full of spilled beer and god knows what else and seemed to have never been vacuumed. Mike "whispered" to Tanya as they lay on the carpet together, "I'm cold and girls are soft. Let me lay on top of you." There was a stirring in the other drunk people and Tanya said no. Mike said "c'mon, girls are nice and smell good. Just let me lay on top of you." Tanya said no. Mike got louder and a few people began to giggle in the room. Tanya inched away from him.
For some reason, she still went out with him the next weekend. Maybe it was the motorcycle. He had an old Honda with sparkly 70's helmets, one purple and one with Stars and Stripes. They rode his bike to a tour of the Raineer Beer Brewing Company to celebrate Tanya's recent 21st birthday. Mike snuck her extra beer samples. Tanya wore leggings with a dragon on the side and a men's tuxedo shirt. She had bright red Manic Panic dyed hair and she a pierced nose. That night, they went back to Mike's apartment and listened to the Stooges first album. Mike had Christmas tree lights on in the summer. He offered her a glass of water. It had things floating in it. She asked, "why are there things floating in my drink?" He said, "it's hard to get lemonade out of a glass." He asked to lay on top of Tanya. Tanya giggled and said ok.
Since those Seattle days, Mike and Tanya moved to Tucson where Mike got his PhD, then they moved to New Orleans and finally the Bay Area. They started dating 24 years ago married 15 years ago and they adopted their daughter who is now almost 21. About 17 years ago things really got really serious when they merged their record collections and sold the doubles. They love sports, the Oakland A's and the Olympics.
Their song is the Olymipc Theme Song to which they wrote the lyrics: Snugs, snugs in the snug Olympics Snug, snug, snug, that's the way we love to snug. When a German is doing well, the lyrics are changed to: Schnoog, schnoog in heer schnoog erlimpics Schnoog, schnoog das es how 'day love to schnoog