If you ask Patricia: In 2018, my old college gaming group lost a member of our Pathfinder campaign and needed a replacement. Our GM suggested a friend known to everyone but me, so he threw a little pizza party to see if all of us would vibe together. Caleb showed up and we all had a fun hangout, but we were both seeing other people at the time, so we were just friends for many years.

Fast forward to May 2021-- the pandemic was in full swing and Caleb suddenly needed a new place to live. He reached out to me for assistance. As luck would have it, I was moving out of a 2-bedroom apartment and my roommate wanted to stay in the unit, but couldn't without someone else to help pay rent. I got them to meet each other a couple times before Caleb moved in.

After that, Caleb and I hung out a lot more often, including being in more tabletop games together. We would get together for food or just to talk about the stressors in our lives. We grew closer bit by bit, though neither of us noticed as it happened.

Then in December of the same year, we both got COVID. Caleb still had a roommate, so I offered for him to come live on my futon in the livingroom to keep to keep roomie from getting sick, and so that we could be miserable in quarantine with company. Though there was a lot of tissues, cough syrup doses, and mid-day fatigue naps, we also binge watched a bunch of things on streaming services and downloaded the early access version of Baldur's Gate 3 (and conversations about BG3 events had us in stitches well into the crack of dawn).

It wasn't until we both tested negative and Caleb packed up to leave that both of us realized we didn't want the adventure to end. <3

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If you ask Caleb: The funny thing about memory is that it can sometimes fail us, especially when many years are involved!

Sometime in 2016, was invited by a good friend at UWRF to hang out, play some games, and get to meet some of the local college folk. I wasn't informed of the scale though! Out of the 15+ people I met there, many would become long standing friends. One person in particular was a lady named Patricia. She swears up and down that we didn't meet there, but I suppose that's what this section is for. :P

Fast forward a few years and we once again found ourselves playing table top games together at our friends' cramped dining room table. Over many months of rolling dice, eating terrible food, and telling even worse jokes, we formed a solid friendship that only grew for the next four years (much like she said in her blurb up above).

Enter COVID-19! During a bout of the plague that we both contracted, we decided to try and keep the germs from getting to other folks by holing up together. I gotta tell you, you learn a good amount about somebody and how you feel about them when you're stuck together for a week! We understood that there might be something beyond simple friendship when it came time to leave... and now we're getting married!

Holiday Inn & Suites St. Paul NE - Lake Elmo, an IHG Hotel