The union of a computer geek and a family doc
The story of us
Tod and I started dating on September 6th, 2000. Of course, we'd met at some point before that date, but quite honestly, I don't have that date ingrained into my memory. I blame my meeting Tod on a friend of ours, Suzie. I was staying in Cleveland for the summer taking a class, and she was one of the handful of friends I had that were still in town. She introduced me to this nifty online communication thing called IRC, and in particular, introduced me to the group of people who frequented irc.cwru.edu. There, I met all sorts of interesting people, many of whom would eventually become very good friends, including Tod and his housemates, Froggy, Tyger, and Jen. I became known as the_kat, since that was my IRC nickname. Tod went by either tod or t0d or apshai, i think. Most other people went by various other nicknames as well. Those were fun days.
I think Suzie was really scheming to get me to meet Tod, since at some point later that summer, she suggested we go up to Crawford, where Tod worked, and see if we could mooch some free chocolate off of him (since he kept chocolates in his desk at work). And thus, I met Tod's office. Too bad he wasn't there at the time.
Shortly after, I think Suzie was scheming again, since she suggested that we go to The Geek Empire, also known as Tod's house, for air conditioning, blueberry buckle, and a really cute kitten. A good time was had by all. No, we weren't dating yet, because quite honestly, I was rather clueless and just figured, hey, tasty blueberry buckle, nifty!
There were more encounters after that one. One was at Baycrafter's, a Renn Faire that a group of us went to where much fun was had running amok in fancy garb and feasting on turkey drumsticks. Another was at a Counting Crows and Live concert at Blossom, where lightning crashed while Live performed Lightning Crashes and we danced in the rain to the Counting Crows' Rain King.
Tod thinks our first date was a trip to Denny's at around 3am. We were both on IRC, talking, and both of us felt a bit nibbly, so Tod asked if I wanted to go to Denny's. I said sure, and then asked who else was going. Apparently, since nobody else seemed to be awake or up for food, it was just us. No, it did not sink in to me that this was a date. Not really, at least. Regardless, once again, much fun was had.
Labor Day weekend was a few days later, and around that time, I realized that I thought Tod was a fairly cool person. I, being the typical Case Geek, poked around online and discovered through various friends' blogs that Tod had a blog. Not only this, but I discovered Tod was single, looking, and not only that, but he thought I was cool and he liked me! Hey, someone likes me! Sweet! There's this guy, who's cute, who's smart, and who shares my interests, and he likes me! Yes, I was a giddy little school girl. Too bad I couldn't share this revelation with Tod because he was away at his family's cottage in Canada for the long weekend.
Then came September 5th. Tod was back from Canada and was on IRC. I was on IRC as well. Chatting commenced. A few hours passed, and it turned into September 6th. I eventually managed to hint to Tod that he should ask me out (since it never occurred to me to ask him out). And thus, we became todkat (or kattod, but I personally prefer todkat; it flows better).
Addendum: I imagine Tod's version is slightly different, but he's not as verbose, and I doubt I'll be able to have him write his version. If you really want to know, just pretend his is mine but with Tom, one of my friends and Tod's coworker at the time, doing the scheming instead.