Saturday, September 22, 2007

The story of how Unix-Jedi and I met

When I turned 30, I decided to totally turn my world upside down.

I was living in a rural west Georgia town with a population of about 700 people working at a botanical garden. I'd been working there for 7 years and was getting nowhere with my career despite taking on tons of additional responsibilities and working my butt off.
Plus, upper management had changed 2 years prior and everyone was bailing ship. We lost 90% of the managerial staff in the horticulture department before it was over. (I was the 10th out of 13 people who left.) I began to look for other jobs in horticulture, but there wasn't much call for someone with a specialty in the native plants of Georgia. So, on a trip to visit my parents I came up with the idea to go to nursing school.

At the same time, I decided that too much time had passed without me dating. (There wasn't much to choose from in the town I lived in.) But the question was, how to meet someone. I was going back to college, but not too many guys go to nursing school, and chances were they would be far younger than me. I HATE going to bars because of all the smoke and noise and all the, well, people (yeah, I know, I was trying to meet people.) What about.......the internet?

I thought about it for a week or two. Finally, I decided to give it a shot. I did a little research and decided to try eHarmony. To my surprise, I met several nice guys. I dated some of them, but none for more than a couple of months. I also decided to try Match.com.

One night I was browsing on Match.com and came along a guy who sounded interesting and sent him a message. I got nothing back. (Now, I fully expect U-J to have some things to say about that.) A few weeks later, guess who I got matched up with on eHarmony? It was the same guy who hadn't responded to me on Match.com. And now he wanted to talk to me.

The mean girl came out in me, and I thought I'd get my revenge. So, the plan became to date him, make him really like me, and dump his ass.

I ended up marrying him 2 years later.


7 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's pretty funny, altho it seems a rather elaborate level of revenge for an imagined slight.

DixieLaurel said...

I'm a woman, what can I say....

Anonymous said...

Yeah, dating people you've met on the internet is nothing but trouble.

Anonymous said...

*snort*

Heck, I met my wife on the Internet. Well, technically on Bitnet. Using Relay. OF which IRC is a knockoff, albeit far superior. Heck, when we met, there was ONE IRC network. 200 people connected WORLDWIDE was a crowd.

We celebrated our 17th anniversary this year, so, obviously it can work.

Anonymous said...

I met my friend John in a Compuserve chat room (that right there should tell you how long ago this was).

We've been good friends for 12 years now. We visit, exchange cards and mail, pictures.... Would probably have gotten together if we didn't live so far apart.

Are you doing one of the eharmony commercials soon? :)

DixieLaurel said...

We actually joke about doing an commercial! You know, when we got married eHarmony sent us a beautiful Tiffany crystal bowl as a wedding present.

Barbara said...

A certain other couple who met online - albeit through their blogs and not eharmony - were just at that same botanical garden a week ago. Sat on one of the swings in the back and enjoyed the scenery and the company while awaiting a tram ride back to their starting point. :)