General Discussion & Chat: Why Do You Live Where You Live?, 1 by Marylyn_TX

Marylyn_TX wrote:
I grew up in the Midwest - Illinois, Wisconsin, and Ohio at various times. After graduating from high school, my sister and I rented an apartment in Columbus for a while and then moved into a rented house with a friend for a few years. Our friend got married and then my sister graduated from college and got a real job and moved out, so I ended up in an apartment by myself. I was lonely and bored! So one day after work, in the fall of 1996, I was playing with my computer, and wandered into a Christian forum in CompuServe (Christian City - or CCity - if any of you are familiar with it..) It was SO much fun! I was hooked on the chat rooms almost immediately and made a ton of friends. I even met 20+ of them in real life. I became a sysop in there ("sysop"=systems operator; I was a moderator in the chat rooms; other sysops were in charge of various message boards) in June of 1997. Also in June of 1997, this guy wandered in one day and started chatting. I was NOT in there to meet "someone!" Actually, I had watched several people who were hoping to find romance get very hurt and I wasn't interested in going there at all. But this guy... for some reason I still can't explain he seemed... different.

Anyway, before very long we were doing IMs and e-mailing back and forth every day. He flew up in September and stayed at my brother's house for a long weekend. He met my whole family on the first day and didn't run away screaming!! And then in December I flew down to Houston and stayed with his sister. She more or less proposed to me for Charles the first day I was there. LOL! We met in Colorado in January at his niece's wedding, so I got to meet the rest of his wonderful family. And then in April we met in St. Louis at the wedding of some friends who also met in CCity.

In June I came back down here to go to his best friend's daughter's wedding (are you starting to see a theme emerging here??) and to look for an apartment. It had become obvious that we needed to spend some real time together to get to know each other and decide where our relationship was going, which meant that one of us needed to move. He LIKED his job, so I came down here over the 4th of July weekend in 1998 and rented a spare bedroom from a lady from Charles' church.

We were engaged in October and married in May of 1999. :-) Now we have 2 little bunnies (Joy is 4, Katie is 2) and are very very happy and blessed. I would love to live closer to my family, but since Charles STILL likes his job, we aren't likely to be moving any time soon. I keep trying to talk my family into moving down here, but so far they seem to be content to visit occasionally.

~ Marylyn :-)

This message was edited Aug 19, 2005 6:34 PM