A bit more than four years back, I got a message on Friendster (a Facebook predecessor that was both cooler and far less cool, all at once) from a girl named Jess. The message was long and rambling and said that she didn’t really write this sort of email (as cliche as she knew that sounded), but that I kept showing up on her home page as part of the ‘singles near you’ feature, and that she had Googled me up and found my website, etc., etc.

Ah, I thought. A crazy girl.

So I deleted the message.

Then, a few hours later, I got another message. This Jess girl had shared the first message with her younger sister who had said that you absolutely couldn’t just send that kind of thing to someone you hadn’t met, because they would think you were totally insane. So, to prove she wasn’t nuts, she then proceeded to essentially do a deep reading of her own first email, explaining jokes, etc., in a message even longer than the first.

Due to apparent technological ineptitude, she sent this second message three times.

By now, I was intrigued.

So, after much back and forth, exactly four years ago today, we met for drinks at Russian Samovar.

I was smitten. After that date, I was the one sending long messages (or, as previously discussed, faxes). And, long story short, Jessica Gold Newman is now sitting next to me as I write this on laptop on a flight back from Portland, Maine, where we celebrated our four year date-iversary, with huge amounts of foodie eats (a win for me), equally large amounts of terrifying vintage stuff and antiques (a win for her), and some time at the beach getting our first sun of the season (a win for both of us, though somewhat reduced for me, as she tans and I [after a solid twelve months locked indoors] hop straight to medium-well done]).

To which I say, god bless the internets. All my love to Jess, and looking forward to another four and four and forty and forty.