The Double Ds

So, I'm going to try and explain the story behind how Darin and I met. I apologize if it's stupid or makes no sense, but I'll try hard to have it be funny/cute/romantic/etc.

Well, first off, we've been dating since 2/14/2005 (yes, Valentines Day) and have been engaged since 4/2/08 (yes, that is the date after April Fools.)

It all started...

by us working together. I had just moved down to Florida with my old adviser (who moved his group down from Clemson to start the NSTC at UCF) after getting my MS degree and NOT yet having gotten a job. I was pretty excited to get to experience starting a new lab - ordering things, organizing, and all the jazz. Darin had decided to go back to school (which I give him A LOT of credit for) after working for seven years and not being happy. He just happened to choose my new boss/old adviser for his adviser. And we met. Yeah.

Now the story behind us not initially dating is kind of stupid. My friend Abhijeet told me that Darin was engaged. So yeah, I liked him, but didn't overly flirt with him because of that. I totally thought he was engaged to this girl Jackie - which is funny now, but was annoying then. A couple of months went by and he asked me to go to a party of, you guessed it, Jackie's. I was really confused because he was going to drive me and this guy Bob there and I couldn't figure out why he wasn't going to be there early and then stay later. You know, to help out with the party and all.

And then I was thinking he was trying to set me up with Bob, but Darin totally didn't like "push" us together. Just, "hey, this is Bob", very casual.

So we go to the party, and Bob and I like totally stick together because it was Napolean Dynomyte themed and neither of us had seen the movie. And it was weird. Jackie was dressed up very strangely and there were tater tots as food.

(After seeing the movie, it made sense. But come on, without seeing the movie it was WEIRD.)

Turned out Darin though it was weird too and we all just stood together talking.

And that was when I realized he wasn't dating/engaged to Jackie. It was way obvious.

Hurray!

Anyways, we went to Fiddler's Green for beer afterwards and we kissed. Ahh.

Then dummy Darin wanted us to get together to discuss us dating. I guess if you know Darin you'll understand this a little because he kind of worries/over complicates things. But, you have to understand that office romance and graduate school romance were different things - and he just didn't realize that it wasn't going to be a problem...

So we went out to eat at Linda's La Cantina and decided to start dating, but not tell anyone at work because we didn't want things to be weird.

And our "official" first date was on Valentine's Day where he cooked me dinner!

That's it.

I guess it wasn't very romantic. I'll have to blog about when we got engaged.