Remember in my first official entry of 2015 how I alluded to big changes happening both in my professional and personal life? And I didn’t really go into detail about the personal variants? Well, the big news is: I now have a girlfriend.

Out of respect for her privacy, I’m only revealing some minimum facts about her, because I believe that everyone has a right to her privacy. But, I thought it would be fun to share the story of how we came to be, as it’s cool and makes me happy.

The neat thing is, we both run in the same circle of friends but hadn’t really talked to each other before. We were to meet at the Christmas party that took place this past December, however she was unable to attend due to catching a common cold.

“Ah!” I thought to myself. “Oh well, this is where good ol’ Facebook will help me.”

I decided to pop out a message to her a couple days after the party, and we then began some basic chatter. She checked on me when I arrived in Louisiana for my vacation, and I then sent her another message once I got back home.

What really got us going was when I opted to ask if I could call her on January 9th. Our first conversation was at 11:30 PM on that cold Friday night, and because it was already fairly late we kept it to just under 30 minutes. After that though, we had a series of hour-and-a-half long conversations during which I worried about sailing far beyond my meager allowance of 450 cellular minutes. (I called to change/upgrade that plan, and ended up cutting my bill in half while getting unlimited talk and text with the same amount of data with the Verizon Loyalty plan. Why hadn’t y’all told me about this plan long ago!)

Anyway, we discovered that we had many things in common. Chief among these is our enjoyment of music, and particularly 90’s R&B. In one conversation, she clicked on different songs in her little collection and we reminisced on the things we were doing and experiencing when that song was popular.

Other commonalities are that she is quite intelligent, somewhat quiet, and very open to listening and helping others. Not necessarily saying that I am the latter, but well I’d like to think I am?

My favorite thing though is that she gets, often responding in kind to, my weird sense of humor and weirdness in general, probably due in part to her enjoyment of working with children. I think that one must be able to understand this if one has any hope of tolerating me. It makes our conversations a lot of fun.

We kept talking and talking until our first in-person meeting on Valentine’s Day. Ah, that day which is already preloaded with all sorts of hallmark expectations. But we enjoyed it, picking up some food from a Chick Fil-A drive-through and crashing on the couch. We first watched the game between the University of North Carolina and Pittsburgh, which UNC lost handily. The only really important thing we don’t share in common, and something on which I am still working ha ha, is our allegiance with regards to the UNC-Duke rivalry. She pulls for the Devils! Ah.

We also watched an X-Men movie that I think had come out in 2012, as she enjoys that sort of stuff. I think that meeting was all both of us had hoped it would be.

Then this past weekend, she slogged up here through the insistence snice and we just hung out again in my little spot. This is when I finally managed to get over my shyness enough to ask about what was going on between us. I am happy, and I feel that this has a lot of potential. Certainly I can already sense myself feeling more connected to things in a way that I hadn’t realized I was lacking. All people wish to be part of something bigger than themselves, right? I know I have plenty of work to do on myself to really be the kind of person I would like to be for her, but I am committed to doing my best to get there. We shall see.

So yeah, the great promise of 2015 still unfolds in new, unanticipated ways. Hopefully things will continue to head on the up and up as this crazy Winter blast finally begins to get out of here! I hope that whatever is happening with your year has been all you’ve hoped for and more as well.