There are certain dates I try to remember. Birthdays, holidays, and important relationshp dates. Today, Facebook served me up one of its "this day in history" posts, which was full of photos of Kayla and I being cute couples forever ago. I didn't understand what was up with that until she later texted me while I was at the store "happy day we met four years ago". Doh! I don't think I've covered the "how we met" story anywhere outside of our wedding, in which the tale was woven by a certain Rev. Tim. So, I shall regale that here.

One of my favorite questions to yield from people is "where did you two meet", to which we both reply (sometimes in unison) "the internet". That's true, but more specifically OkCupid. I don't remember how Kayla was served to me as a match, but I do know how I introduced myself. As a response to a picture of her in front of the Dublin zoo, my first words to her were "is that dublin, california or dublin, dublin"? Why she answered, I'll never know, but that kicked off a long chain of messages that went on for weeks. It probably wouldn't have gone on for weeks except for the fact that I was days away from a long vacation to Oklahoma and Michigan to visit friends and family. That made me nervous: the longer the delay between first contact and actually meeting, the higher the chance of that meeting never happening. But we kept chatting good chats and I eventually returned home, where we arranged a date. (For a while, we joked that this was actually date two due to the amount of talking we'd done while I was away).

Said date happened at a now defunct Italian restaurant in downtown San Mateo. In retrospect, I'm not sure why I chose that restaurant beyond it being mildly fancy... except, it was more fancy than I had remembered. We had lukewarm conversation over a very expensive meal, and then went to my apartment to watch Coco (if not Coco, it was some other Disney movie). I spent the entire time on the couch being nervous as hell, but not making any moves even though it seemed like moves were expected. Those didn't come until the walk back to her car where I made a motion to hold her hand, a motion which was accepted. And, we held hands all the way to the parking garage where she'd parked. It wasn't a long walk, but I felt a little more at ease holding her hand, having done something instead of anticipating the need to do something.

The walk to the parking garage wasn't long, so we hung out next to her car for a few minutes lightly chatting, awkwardly putting off a ?"good bye". It was there in the B street garage that we kissed for the first time... or I tried to eat her face off for lack of technique. On a scale from 1-10, I think we both rate that kiss a three. Still, that kiss wasn't enough to keep a healthy amount of dates flowing over the next couople weeks, culminating in the road trip to Disneyland where we made the whole thing official.

Hard to believe that was four years ago; seems like yesterday but also forever ago. I can't imagine that either of those kids would've thought that in scant few years, they'd be married with a newborn. Lord knows where we'll be four years from now. Probably have another kid.

Maybe a successful electronics YouTube channel...