Allie and I met on February 6th, 2015, at an event called Dinners For Eight. The event was put on by Cru (the campus ministry group, not the rowing team) and designed to group together eight USC strangers in the name of sharing conversation and a meal. I had no plans to go that night; my newly-minted Apple employee ego had all but checked out of campus involvement by that time. I didn’t even RSVP to the Facebook event. But I got over myself and went anyways. After dinner, each group was to congregate at Mag House (a common meeting place on Magnolia Street) for dessert. After maxing out my social output with consecutive conversations, I grabbed the dangling aux chord and began to play music from my phone. Before I knew it, I had somewhat sarcastically crafted an early-2000’s Alternative playlist on the fly. I had hits by legends like Yellowcard, All-American Rejects, and Matchbox Twenty flowing seamlessly together, one song in to the next, and the crowd was there for it. As I landed on “Slide” by The Goo Goo Dolls, one girl in particular jumped at me, yelling “I love this song!” My first thought was: You do?… My second thought was: She’s cute. She was wearing green Warby Parker glasses and a gray Patagonia fleece that she still wears to this day. We talked a little bit that night about liking music we know is objectively bad, colleges in Oregon, and botany. Our conversation at this crowded church event transitioned in to a conversation over Facebook, which then turned in to a “tea date” on the USC lawn. Major life things slowed things down that spring (I moved off campus, Allie almost died in a long boarding incident), but eventually our conversation turned in to walks around Culver City, bike dates to the beach, and ramen dinners. On August 25th, 2015, I asked Allie to be my girlfriend on Venice Beach, CA. On August 25th, 2017, I asked Allie to be my wife at Heceta Head Lighthouse along the Oregon Coast.

Ross and I met at a party following a Cru Bible study event in February 2015. I heard a song playing by the Goo Goo Dolls. I flung my head around toward the speaker it was coming from and had to know who was playing it. I had just seen them in concert a couple weeks before. I think Ross was playing them ironically, as a sort of joke. We started talking and when he asked me what I wanted to do, I probably told him that I wanted to be a physician’s assistant, but I really wanted to be a florist. He said he had wanted to be a botanist when he was a little kid, and he was from Eugene, Oregon, where I had almost gone to college. A love for plants and the state of Oregon were a happy common ground. Weeks later, Ross asked me to get coffee, but I couldn’t tell if it was a date or if he was just being nice. My roommate assured me it was just a friendly gesture. Sure enough, it was platonic, and my vanity was offended. I got the reality check I needed and decided that vanity was ugly. I also decided that Ross was a nice friend to have, and that I would be silly to think of him as more than that. We loosely kept in touch. I played down the life-threatening accident I had in March. We got the occasional coffee. I made sure to offer to buy so that it seemed like I didn’t think it was a date. Our occasional talks got more frequent, and I was always looking for a reason to say hi to him. Early in July I got a call from a number I didn’t know. I answered on speaker phone with my mom in the car and it took a few seconds to realize it was Ross. We had never talked on the phone and I was immediately suspicious that it was something I wouldn’t want to share with my mom in real time. I called him back 15 minutes later and he asked me on a date for three weeks from then – the day after his birthday and birthday party. I awkwardly attended Ross’ party as the girl he hadn’t gone on a date with yet. And our date the next day was just the beginning.