it was a year ago, to the day, that i met lauren for the first time.

my friend anna from the lovely shmittenkitten.com had asked me to drive up to philly and DJ the site’s christmas party.  i remember feeling a little stagnant at the time and i was excited for the chance to get out of richmond, meet some new people, and step outside of my comfort zone a little.  the only person i was going to know at the party was anna, so i was a little nervous about meeting people, but i thought it would be a good experience.

after a particularly long stint of being single, my main contribution to the site at the time had been a column called “things that make me a bad boyfriend”.  the idea had been pretty well-received and i got a big kick out of writing self-deprecating pieces about why girls shouldn’t be dating me.  i found the whole thing to be pretty funny.

i’ll never forget the moment i first met her.  for me, there was an instant attraction.  she looked so beautiful that night, had this big smile, and was wearing this crazy gold hat.  i remember instantly thinking that if she was cool enough to be able to convincingly pull off this hat, she’s probably pretty awesome.  after anna introduced us, i learned that she also wrote for shmitten kitten.  instantly i had an “oh shit!” moment.  i realized that this girl’s only first impressions of me were the countless posts i’d written explaining why it was a bad idea to date me.

i’m not quite sure if this thought had ever occurred to me before during the several months i spent writing these posts, but it definitely hit me full-on then.

we made some small talk and i tried to minimize the damage by being as charming as i could possibly muster.  later in the night as i was DJing, my eyes kept finding her in the room.  i was already hooked in.

later, after i was done DJing, i found her and we danced for a while.  it was a little hard to talk with the loud music, but we managed to talk a little more as well.  the hour grew later and when the time came for her and her friends to leave, i said goodbye and in typical playing-it-cool phil fashion (ha!) shouted, “hey!  come to richmond!” as she was walking away.  smooth, right?

anyway, i continued playing it cool by adding her on facebook less than 24 hours later.  (no game-playing here, obviously)  soon we were sending e-mails back and forth, then chatting online, then talking on the phone.  a few weeks later, i had made plans to drive up to philly to take her out on our first date.

the rest is history.  what an amazing life-changing year this has been.  i think of how much fun we managed to fit into one year and it blows my mind that this is still just the beginning.

exciting things ahead.  i can’t wait to see what happens next.