Demonstrating Love and Affection

Here is another snowy pic. On Monday the clocks were digitally reporting the temperature at one degree fahrenheit, but it looked like they were saying 1f, and it made me imagine all the possibilities.

So, today I thought I'd write a post in keeping with the impending holiday on Thursday. It's also kind of like what Gyuss is doing on his blog. He's been writing these amazing posts about different incidents that made him realize how much he loves his wife. You should all run along to his blog right now and read them. They are way more smart and funny than schmaltzy. I'm not sure if mine will compare, but I'll take a stab at it. I will now write about how Erik and I got together:

Okay. I first met Erik about ten years ago when he was dating my friend K. I had seen him around town here and there since then, but we had both kind of ruled each other out for whatever reasons.

Then this Fall Erik joined us at the Vine for football watching and wings and it was deep in the heart of Make-Out Quest and we all had a great time discussing one of our wonderful make-out quest experiences and the fact that I was totally lacking in make-out experiences. Then I wrote this post about that day. I didn't think much about it until one night when I was closing out of my computer, I thought I'd just check out my sitemeter and saw that someone had just googled, "Iowa City Santa Crawl" and then checked out where it got that person and found the comments Erik left on my blog. I was a little embarrassed that he saw me talking about the possibility of me making out with him to complete strangers, but when I called my friend K. with my concerns, she just said, "Are you kidding? It's Erik. He probably loved it." Apparently, she was right. Fringes comment in particular seemed to have planted a seed with him and he keeps saying how much he needs to thank her.

After some consideration and a break-up, Erik started asking my friends' K. and T. about me and they both thought we would be a good match. Much of this went on without my knowledge or at least with a few vague references to the fact that Erik was looking for a girl who was "a little more down to earth" like me.

By the time the Santa Crawl rolled around in December, things got a lot less vague. I told my friend Tara that I heard Erik might be a little interested in me and she said, "Oh, that's perfect. You guys should totally mack." By the time I walked into the Que bar, Erik grabbed me and gave me this kiss:

Apparently, I wasn't all that resistant. Nothing much more happened that night except the promise of him taking me on a "proper date" sometime after Christmas. But the next day, Erik joined us at The Vine for football watching and called me afterward to tell me he had fun hanging out with me.

On Monday morning, he called and left a voicemail message to see if he could take me out for lunch before he left town. I only have a half hour for lunch and plus I looked like total crap that day, so I declined. He called one last time to tell me he was sending some photos from the Santa Crawl and that I should get them the next day in the mail. I texted him to thank him and then he texted back and then we ended up texting all that day until we talked on the phone that night. We texted so much that Erik changed his phone plan to include unlimited texting. We had the strangest, most wonderfully fun and at times frustrating long distance three week courtship, but I wouldn't have changed it because of all the awesome conversations and creative flirting we did. So far, it's been an amazing ride.

So, there you have it. In keeping with Gyuss' formula, feel free to tell your courtship/love stories in the comments or on your blogs. I'm a sucker for romance.