Killing time while Kristi gets ready (beauty takes time, I have come to learn) I’d like to wax poetic about an important date (and all the better, because despite our promises to keep the blog updated, I haven’t been waxing anything lately).

This week is the one-year anniversary of when Kristi visited me in State College — the day we “met” was April 9th, although we had been getting to know each other over the Internet and phone since Feb. 23, 2011. In fact, in the first week that we talked on the phone, we racked up 272 minutes and 515 texts; I had to change both my phone plans.

Ironically, we would have never found each other if not for the 75-mile radius. On PlentyOfFish.com, you set a radius around your home where you want to look for potential dates. It was winter and it didn’t seem logical to get in a long-distance relationship, I figured. I hadn’t had much luck with local women, and on advice of a friend (who said he would easily drive 2 hours for a date), I expanded that radius from 50 to 75 miles. It turns out, this was just far enough to include York in the search.

I didn’t show up in her search results on the website (which is ironic considering we were such peas in a pod, amongst the drooling Neanderthal masses, we would later surmise) but she showed up in mine. I knew as soon as I saw her picture that she was a different kind of girl than I had experienced before — a higher level of woman, if you will.

At the one-year mark, I’m happy to report that we’re still very in love and enjoying being with each other every day. Kristi and her daughter have lived with me since November 1, 2011 and we are all enjoying the companionship. The way that Kristi makes me feel, and the things that we have in common, make life so fun — every weekend is like a “vacation,” even if we don’t go anywhere.

On Sunday, we will tour and take photographs of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, a short drive away, something we had been wanting to do for nearly a year now. Next weekend we will return to the Mount Nittany Inn for lunch, like we did on April 10th, 2011, which was the day we changed our relationship status on Facebook, and therefore we treat as our anniversary date.

(The photo below was taken last year at the Inn)