Bill and I celebrated out 25th wedding anniversary yesterday. Here's a wee story about how we met.
On October 16, 1998, at 7:10 in the morning, I logged onto Match.com for the first time and responded to a profile posted by a guy named Bill. He used the word “electrons” in the first sentence of his dating pitch, so I knew he was not a highly tuned pick-up machine.
Hahaha. That’s true…and was a plus because my recent dating experiences had felt shallow and uninteresting. I wondered if Electron Man might be different and hoped he'd find my message to him intriguing.
Thankfully, Bill responded – what you’d today call swiped right – at 10:34 that same evening. We then corresponded by email every day for two weeks while we got to know each other and traded Cincinnati Chile recipes and Beethoven jokes.
On October 27, 1998, we met in person for martinis at a joint on Central Avenue. We then walked around the University of New Mexico and had a bite to eat at the iconic Frontier Restaurant.
I was living in a 600sf adobe cabin off the beaten path east of Albuquerque with my three dogs and two cats. Bill was living with his two dogs south of Albuquerque on the west side of the Manzano mountains. He was a geologist working for New Mexico Tech and I had recently left my safe gig at Intel to pursue a much-less-safe life as a writer.
We introduced our animals and considered it a positive sign when they didn’t eat each other. We also passed the can-they-travel-together test during our first trip to San Francisco.
Introverts – adventurers – dog lovers – keen on New Mexico, check, check, and check. He loved cooking and I hated cooking. The chances seemed good we'd be compatible long term. We got married on May 7, 1999, by a judge named Buddy who had planted a field of chile earlier in the day.
We went on a bike trip through Tuscany for our honeymoon. Since then, we’ve traveled together to Bhutan, Mexico, Alaska, New Zealand, Thailand, Scotland, Britain, Canada, and many places in the lower 48.
We’ve lived in the Albuquerque area, Seattle, Cincinnati, Houston, Lexington, and are now in Albuquerque again. We’ve raised eight dogs and three cats to ripe old ages.
We’ve done a lot of hiking, biking, kayaking, exploring, walking, and some fishing. Through the good and bad, we’ve been lucky and lived well. Now that we’re back in New Mexico, we’re ready to live adventurous, active lives while managing what the aging process throws our way. We've much to be thankful for.
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And yes, I know these details because I printed out and have kept our early messages.
