Thursday's Trip Down Memory Lane

First of all, I promise to have a wedding recap sometime next week. At this point, I'm waiting to get all of the pictures back and I just haven't had the energy to give the subject justice. I'll chalk it up to having seven nights off in a row which always seems to bring out my inner sloth!!

In honor of "wedding week" why don't we travel back about a year to a magical time in Jenn's life, a momentous occasion, an event that changed two people's lives for better (at least we're hoping) ... the first date of Jenn and BJ.

I didn't post effusively about the date because I had learned in the recent past that sometimes it can bite you in the ass if you gush about a blossoming relationship. I think I played it coy and just said "it went well" or some other nonsense .... but now you'll get the full story.

BJ and I (or should I say hogshtrbug and GennX) were introduced on match.com in February '07. He winked at me (matchspeak for "hey you look kinda cool") and sent me a message, but by that time I was embroiled in a blossoming relationship with Bachelor #1 (henceforth to be known as "He Who Dumped Me By Never Calling Me Again"). Since I'm an honorable woman ... seriously I really am ... I let hogshtrbug know that I was currently dating someone but thank you for the interest.

Fast forward about 6 weeks and I put my profile back up on match. Pretty quickly I got a message from BJ to the effect of "Hey you're back!" We ended up talking on the phone, getting along quite well, and planning to meet for lunch. After he cancelled on me THREE TIMES, I was getting the feeling he wasn't really interested. It was no skin off my bones because I was leaving for an assignment in Colorado in 5 weeks - a fact that I told him of upfront. I sent him a text (don't you love this new high tech courting?!?) and said, "if you don't want to meet me, that's fine." Apparently that lit a fire under his ass, because he scheduled another lunch date for Friday, April 5th at 11:30 a.m. at Vino's - a local brewpub/pizzeria. Of course in the back of my mind, I was waiting for a 10:00 text cancelling because of "work" or some other rubbish.

We met at Vino's and I WAS ON TIME (just for the record) and my first thought was that BJ reminded me of my friend Spooky's younger brother. We got our pizza and beer and commenced to talk about everything under the sun. We quickly found that we had similar tastes in movies and TV, were both fans of Star Wars and Buffy (something I normally reserve for later dates) we hit on politics, religion ... basically all taboo subjects. The hours flew by, the beer continued to flow, BJ called his office and took off the rest of the afternoon and we stayed at that lunch for FIVE hours.

At this point he suggested that we just change clothes and go out to dinner ... but I actually had another dinner date already planned (remember BJ had cancelled on me numerous times so I wasn't planning on it really working out) so I said, "I'd love to but I have other plans." BJ replied, "Well if your other date doesn't' work out, I'll be out at Sticky Fingerz ( a local restaurant/live music joint) with friends and you should join us."

Long story short, I did end up at Sticky Fingerz later that night. The local paper was shooting pics of the crowd and we actually have a photo to commemorate the first day we met (near the top of the page) .... I like to call it Date 1B since BJ refuses to allow it to be Date 2. I got home at an ungodly hour but still managed to get up early and run a 10K race the next morning. Obviously things went marvelously from there!!! It was the best first date I ever had.