It started with an online dating post about Alice in Wonderland. Several long emails, hundreds of texts and daily puns later, we had a first date where he shamelessly beat me at connect four. Since then our adventures have spanned 9 states, 3 countries and a pandemic. He used to joke that if we ever got married he’d give me a smooth beach pebble with a band made out of a twistie tie, like the Gentoo penguins do. It wasn’t exactly a pebble, or a twistie tie, but it was on our favorite rocky beach on the California coast.