01/01/01

The first time we met I was hanging out with my friend Jess in the basement of Clement Hall, her dormitory and his, too. I think Jess and I had been in the computer lab. Joel was waiting on his laundry. Besides that and the fact that there was the Alanis Morissette Thank You music video (which I really dislike) playing on the big screen tv, I don't remember much of the meeting. It was a pretty brief encounter.

Months later, Jess and I were supposed to meet up with our friend Andrew one Saturday. That same Saturday Joel asked Jess if she wanted to hang out with him/go on a date with him/something to that effect. She told him she already had plans with friends, but he was welcome to join us. At some point, Joel made it known that he remembered my name. Jess made a big deal about this because it took him a very long time to remember her name, even though they ran into each other fairly often, and he'd only met me that one time.

Long story short, Joel decided to join us. We watched Life of Brian and then played spades, once again in the basement of Clement. After that I started coming over to Clement more frequently and spent many evenings playing spades with Joel and his friends. By the end of that month, Joel and I had our first date: O'Chuck's and a trip to Walmart to buy Play-Doh.

The rest is history. We got engaged less than a year after we started dating and got married a little over a year after that on 01/01/01. Ten years, two kids, and six moves later and we're still together.