Firstly, this is to Sam: Happy Anniversary, baby. I love you…so much.

Now, then…

Today Sam and I celebrate one year as a couple. I’m going to take a bit and tell how we got where we are today.

It was February, 2008. Sam and I both play a “game” called Second Life. I was DJing a party at an inworld bar called PIER. Sam, or xquitz, requested a song from me. My name ingame is Skaja. I think he ended up leaving before I could play the song, but I saw him a few days later, when I was DJing again (and I did that a lot in 2008, as in nearly daily), I played the song for him. We started talking and he asked for a version of Peter Gabriel’s In Your Eyes, but as done by Jeffery Gaines. I found the song and we kept talking.

In April, I opened my own bar and xquitz showed up a couple times with a female friend. I wasn’t interested in him, so it was no big deal. Within a couple months, my bar was closed, and I was spending a lot of time at PIER again. By mid-July (still in 2008), Sam started coming to PIER more often. Our avatars would dance and we would talk. One night, probably in August, I didn’t want to type, and voice chat wasn’t working for the umpteenth time, so we moved to Skype. And since I wasn’t interested in him, really, I told him about everything going on in my life. All the turmoil, happy things, whatever. I was also DJing 25 hours a week, and he would log in just to come listen to whatever I was playing.

[The picture to the right is our avatars on Sept 4, 2008.]

A year ago, September 2nd, he shows me a prim sculpture someone made of the Buddha, and tells me that if he wanted to date someone, he’d ask me, cause I’m really nice. He had previously stated that he wasn’t looking for a girlfriend. And I wasn’t interested anyway. But, that night, when he told me that, I started to wonder. The next night, we were talking in instant messages while I was working at a club, and indicated that he was interested in me.

I knew in my heart that I shouldn’t blow Sam off. And, really, I think I was starting to fall for him (yes over the internet). On the 4th, we became a couple. By the 16th, our avatars were partnered, which is to say that Sam went to Second Life’s website and checked a box and the website sent me an email asking if I wanted my profile to tell the world that I was involved with him in some capacity. At this point, we agreed that we wouldn’t date other people in Real Life, even though the question of us being a Real Life couple was still unclear.

On the 28th, our avatars got married. Yes, it sounds silly and possibly deranged. However, I know and have talked to in Real Life (via the phone and skype) several couples who have met in Second Life, and are really together in Real Life as well, so it doesn’t sound so hokey. Also, I met my ex-husband on AOL back when that was the rage, so it’s not like this was anything new for me anyway. [end rant.] Anyway, that night we talked and committed ourselves to each other.

After further discussion, by the way, we decided that we had really decided to be together as of the 4th, as a Real Life couple, and just took awhile for that to become clear to us.

Next step: meeting in person. It was important to me that Sam make the trip to see me. One of his friends was pushing him to meet me, too.

Sam flew to Minnesota in early November, 2008. I took the weekend off from work and we spent about 4 days together. The picture here is from the 8th, when we stopped at my place to hang out in between different activities. Among them were the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, an independent film, dinner out, and driving around Central Minnesota, so I could show him where I grew up.

By the time he left to return to Florida, I knew I was in love. We started making plans for me to visit in the spring.

Fast forward to February. Things were not going well for me in Minnesota, and I was getting the feeling that I should get out of Dodge, so to speak. Like my time in the state had passed, and I was supposed to be somewhere else. After a lot of discussion (days of it), we agreed to move in together. I had many days in a row off from work, which worked to my advantage. I reduced my belongings by 2/3 and mailed everything I wanted to keep to Florida over the period of several days.

A week before my flight (which I had scheduled before any of this moving talk had been decided), I donated and shipped the last of my belongings, during a blizzard. My last visit to my brother’s house was to pack up the things I was giving to Vanesa, and what I needed for the next week.

On March 4th, I got on a plane for the first time and made the 3.5 hour non-stop trip to Tampa.

The day after I left Minnesota, the area was hit with a blizzard. I celebrated my shortened winter, in a sense.

I celebrated my 33rd birthday.

It’s been interesting acclimating to the more intense heat. My pale European skin has burned a few times. I’ve not lived with cats growing up, and now there are two (though adorably cheeky). Those close to me have noticed I’m happier overall.

The picture to the right is one of our trips to the local park, before the summer got too hot for me to spend a significant amount of time outside. We do most of our walking around the local malls (where we spend little money, because we don’t actually go into the stores), changing up the location for variety.

And, as I mentioned in my last post, we’ve done more “event” type things (theatre, etc) than we had before I moved. It’s given Sam an excuse to explore the area in which he’s lived for nearly four years.

A couple weekends ago, we had tickets to see The Wizard of Oz on a big screen at Tampa Theatre. Afterward, we took a drive across the Sunshine Skyway. This picture, to the left, is us sitting at water’s edge on the access road to the west pier on the bridge’s southside.

I took  this picture. Yes, Sam’s face is cut off on the original photo.

[Surprisingly, we don't have a lot of photos of ourselves together. We take many of the cats and things around us, but not many of us. In fact, we have no pictures of us displayed in the apartment. Is that strange?]

So, we come to today. September 4th, 2009. Six months in Tampa. And 365 days with Sam. We’ve grown more in love over the past months. We’re pretty inseparable.

He’s got this sense of humor that’s not easily described as witty and cheeky. Some of the stuff that he says is so odd, or unexpected. Or, it’s how he says it. Imagine the most stoic person you can think of and imagine that person saying “Woot.” That is my boyfriend, y’all. Except he’s not stoic. Sam’s patient with me and my periods of flakiness. He’s calming.

And I should bottle up his laugh and sell it. I’d be a rich woman.

Here’s to another year.

* title comes from a line spoken in the movie Juno.

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