In 2014, there was a social media platform called Vine where you could post six-second videos. I'm pretty sure that Vine is how I first stumbled upon Michael's existence. I was scrolling through Vine and probably saw a video of a guy being adorably trampled by puppies. I probably thought he was cute, so I clicked through to his Vine profile and saw the rest of the videos he had posted -- some were of him playing the guitar, and at least one was a video of him interacting with a flying squirrel within the confines of his LSU apartment (???). Whatever those videos were, they were entertaining enough for me to find him on Twitter and follow him there as well. Over the next year or so, Michael and I would exchange an occasional tweet, usually about college football. In the fall of 2015, LSU and TCU went head-to-head in what can only be remembered as an absolute ass-whooping of TCU at Jerry's World. I decided that was as good a time as any to open up Tindr and start swiping. A few left-swipes later, I lay my eyes upon a tie-dye shirt with a huge cat face on it which is being worn by none other than Michael Barnett, Jr. Back then, you were only able to swipe through profiles of people who were geographically close to you by, I don't know exactly how much, but enough that even from opposite sides of Jerry's World Michael had appeared. On Tindr. On my phone screen. Feeling brave, I sent him a message. Probably some trash talk not knowing how this game was going to turn out for TCU. Not only did we *not* interact in person that day, but we wouldn't meet in person until the summer of 2016. So, let's fast forward to May of 2016. Much to my parents' chagrin, I had six credit hours left to complete at TCU preventing me from graduating "on time" with my roommates that month. Luckily for me, a two-week Maymester abroad in Scandinavia was available and I was going to get to study a little bit of comparative criminal justice! The trip was awesome. I learned a lot and was super out of my comfort zone, honestly, because I didn't know a single other soul on that trip. Toward the end of the trip, I receive a notification on my phone that mwbarnett added me on Snapchat! Confused, but recognizing the username from Twitter, I open the app and see he's already sent me a Snapchat. Probably a classic "yo" or (because I'm pretty sure he was in Florida on vacay with his family) a picture of the beach or something. "what... how did you figure out what my snapchat username was?" "idk i think i just typed in your twitter handle and it worked" Cool cool cool. Not weird at all for sure. I regretted having all my social media usernames be basically the same for approximately 10 minutes, but then realized that bmurs is too good to not use, so... whatever I guess. Michael and I exchange pictures and messages through Snapchat for the rest of May, and I learn all about how a treadmill at the Barnetts' place in Florida caught fire and then Michael tried to "help" the firefighters on his way out of the building during the evacuation. I share all about how most of my roommates were traveling home for a week or so and I was suddenly a single mother of our hamster, Akon. We finally met in Fort Worth in June, where our first IRL (in real life) conversations focused on the Angola Prison Rodeo and Scandinavian prisons... and by July I was living at his Aunt and Uncle's in Plano (<3) so I could look for jobs in the Dallas area. I moved home with my parents by the end of July and Michael and I spent the next year and a half long-distance. I moved back to TX in August of 2018 so I could teach middle-school English (nightmare), and we've mostly been inseparable ever since! We feel so very lucky to have found each other and be welcomed so warmly into each others' families and friend groups, and we can't wait to make things official-official and start our own little branch of the Barnett and Murray families on October 18th.