This is the story of us.

Year One.

We met in September 1999 when we moved into our dorm rooms our freshman year of college. We happened to be assigned to rooms that were right next door to one another, and Mike was one of the first people that I met in college. Since we were both in the engineering school, we ended up taking a lot of classes together, and as nerdy as it sounds, we got to be good friends because of class. We walked to class together and did homework together. (Note - we never studied together because Mike is a lot smarter than I am. He just wrote a bunch of equations on a sheet of paper and called it studying. I actually read the book and did extra problems to prepare for exams. He still got better grades than I did, anyway.)

I don't know how we actually started dating. Our mutual friend, RJ told me one day that he could tell that Mike liked me a lot. I decided to test this theory by asking him into doing my physics lab homework, and he did it without any hesitation. I could just be vain in thinking this, but I'm pretty sure that he wouldn't have done homework for just anyone.

I think the big moment came when he awkwardly asked me to go out with him, and I said sure. I don't remember when it was or how it happened. All I know is that we never really stopped dating after that.


Year Two.

I spent a good deal of the year watching Mike and Brian play Tony Hawk Pro-skater 2. How our relationship lasted beyond this year still bewilders me to this day.

Year Three.

I spent the better part of the year watching the tv show, The Practice. For some reason, it was always on tv in 3227 St. Paul St. where Mike lived with 4 other people. And yet, they watched this show maybe 3 times a day every day for a year. However, at this point, I lasted a year watching Mike play skateboarding video games so The Practice was a big step up.

Year Four.

We moved to the Subway House, which was a set of apartments situated above the new Subway (the sandwich place). This year made me have a strange aversion to Subway for the longest time. To this day, when I smell the nasty bread that they make there, I just want to vomit. That smell wafted up into our apartments, and we smelled it all the time while we were living there. But I digress ... this was also the one time we came the closest to living together. Mike lived on the second floor, and I lived on the third floor. This was also our last year or college and certainly the most fun. When we graduated from college in May 2003, we decided to just see how things went from there.

Years Five - Seven

During this period, I was working for Merck in Rahway, NJ, while Mike was working for CSC in Maryland somewhere. I lived in northern NJ and Mike still lived in Baltimore, so we got to know the I-95 corridor very, very well.


Year Eight - Nine

We got tired of working and applied to grad school. I ended up at the University of Delaware to get a PhD in chemical engineering. Mike went to the University of Pennsylvania to get a masters in computer science. Some people are surprised by this, but Newark, DE and Philadelphia are not that far from one another and the drive between our houses is about 45 minutes, so we're not actually long distance anymore. Yay!

Year Ten

At this point, I am kind of fuzzy with when exactly everything is falling in place, but I believe we got engaged at some point here.

Year Eleven

Getting married! Woot!