We met in our first year at Whitman College in Walla Walla, WA. We lived at opposite ends of the same dorm hall and ended up with a shared group of friends, most of whom joined the fencing club. For the next four years, we went on night walks to the local aviary, hung out in the art and science buildings, and spent time with our goofy, nerdy friends, holding late-night Deep Talks™️ and serving tea.

After graduating in 2018, we alternated between long-distance and extended visits to stay with each other’s families until spending a month traveling together in Europe. Mercer moved in with Sam and his family in Palo Alto for the summer in 2019 while interning for the city’s public art program. We then moved to Seattle for Sam to attend grad school at UW in late 2019, just in time to hunker down in a small basement apartment for the COVID-19 pandemic.

Nowadays, you can find us:

• Going on long walks around Seattle’s beautiful neighborhoods

• Playing cribbage at a café

• Making weird Halloween costumes

• Hosting monthly game nights with our housemate and friends

• Doing the NYT crossword puzzle as fast as possible, projected on the wall

• Taking road trips, camping, hiking, and rockhounding

• Cooking vegetarian Ottolenghi recipes

• Watching bizarre indie films at The Beacon

• Negotiating in antiques stores (“How much uranium glass is too much uranium glass?”)

• Doing interpretive dances based on our three guinea pigs (Kabocha, Raisin, and Saltine)