We met during a game night at Eli's sister Sara's house, but the story starts a few weeks prior! It was the first Friday of the 2019-2020 school year, and I was most likely taking a nap when Kelly called. She was headed out for drinks with her new teacher-friend, Sara Lampo, and they'd be at my place to pick me up in a few minutes, so there was no, no thank you option. I'm an avid napper, so I begrudgingly walked downstairs after being stirred from my slumber. However, the three of us quickly hit it off, and we ended up talking for hours. Eventually, Sara Lampo exclaimed, "You have to date my brother!" While pulling up Eli's Instagram and showing me pictures of him, most of which seemed to be him holding large, bloody fish, she asked, "Would you date him?" I laughed, said he was cute, and sure, I would meet him. She promptly invited me to her wedding in a couple of weeks to meet him, to which I suggested perhaps we wait for a less significant day. She then invited us to a game night at her house, but Eli reminded her that evening was the night of her rehearsal dinner, so it was back to the drawing board, as Sara was obviously excited for us to meet. We settled on Friday, September 13 for a game night at Sara and Josh's. However, Eli would need to leave early because he'd recently purchased a new telescope and he needed to be home to scope that night's Super Moon! Kelly, Damian, and me and my giant bag of games headed out to Huntley for game night. I'd been alerted that Eli had purchased a new shirt for the occasion, so I was fairly nervous. It turns out the crew wasn't really interested in my nerdy games...the kind that takes a lot of concentration to learn, but we must have been having a great time because Eli never left to scope the Super Moon. Rather the two of us sat on Sara and Josh's driveway talking under it. It turns out Eli really does enjoy those nerdy concentration games, too, and we've been arguing over the rules ever since.