Ashley
Ashley moved to New York City after college to further her education in Dance. I had already been accepted to MIT, so this worked out really well for us. She lived in Brooklyn for all 4 of her years there.
Ashley loves to dance. When she was 14 years old, she realized that was what she wanted to do with the rest of her life. During her stay in NYC, she managed to build up such an expertise in somatics and dance improvisation, that now that we live together in Cambridge, MA, she has propelled herself into the heart of the community here.
Now that she's living in Cambridge with me, my life has become much easier. Since spring of 2008, I would travel to NYC at least once a month (but usually more like once every other week) or she would come to Cambridge. I'm in grad school, so I'd see her a bit more frequently than she'd come to see me, but that's okay because it was great visiting New York and experiencing the city together.
In Ashley's 2nd Brooklyn apartment there was a family of raccoons that lived on the roof. Naturally she decided to name the mama raccoon "Bandit" and the papa raccoon "Zorro". They would climb up and down our fire escape right outside her window, and every time it would be something of an event. It was like we had some guests over. They would peer into the window at what we were doing as we would peer back out at them. Eventually they would get bored and move on. As time went on, we saw them less and less—I guess they figured out how boring it was to stare at humans through glass when all the humans were doing was staring back.
In Cambridge now, we have a squirrel in the same way. This little critter, Ashley named "Rabbit". We don't stare at each other much at all—we've figured out our roles. Rabbit is a tightrope walker, walking along the powerlines outside our window, and we are his audience.
After knowing Ashley for 6 years, I came to realize she's a strong, loving, intelligent woman, capable of facing adversity of all kinds, and nurturing an exhausted graduate student at his wit's end. I decided to ask her to marry me (story below!) and have never looked back.
Andrew
I met Andrew in the UC Irvine dance department. He was the lively guy in the black unitard. I know most of you MIT-ers have spent the better part of a decade thinking that's just another haha-stop-messing-with-me-again joke, but it's true! Andrew was a dance major and one day he needed dancers for his choreography class, so he was also my choreographer.
When I rehearsed with this man, who was more talented than I, had honed his ability to make incredibly awesome silly-faces, randomly spoke German instead of English, and had a quick-witted, out-there sense of humor I couldn't help but befriend him. Eight years later these traits have remained. Though my skills in dance may be flourishing more with time, Andrew has the real talent, and now he has even more to offer this world.
Surprisingly close to when we got together, Andrew changed his major to Information and Computer Sciences and went on to dig into his true passion—coding like a crazy man with his fingers on fire.
Amid loving the coding-world, Andrew finished his BS and went straight to the big-leagues joining the even more insane mad scientists to pursue his doctorate at MIT. He has spent all his time since the fall of 2007 (minus one summer interning at Google in NYC with me) working diligently to appease the MIT Computer Science Lords. Luckily, this man knows how to keep anyone within his monkeysphere sane by providing an escape of beer nights, random interruptions at work, sarcasm up the wazoo, and plain awesomeness. While working on various projects, he has discovered his love of free-software and most recently, teaching.
As of summer 2012, Andrew and I have been living together in Cambridge, continuing our journey side by side.
The Proposal
It was a humid summer day. Andrew was moving into Ashley's apartment in New York City for his internship at Google. He arrived around 11pm on a Friday after a long bus ride from Boston. This was a particularly hard ride for him because it lasted a full 6 ½ hours (instead of 4), he had a large suitcase (he was moving, after all), and he sat in the last-available (and worst) seat on the bus. After trudging to their Brooklyn apartment, Andrew was extremely hot and tired.
When he arrived, he tossed his luggage into their bedroom, took off his pants, and sat down for a snack. Ashley decided to make Andrew a smoothie to help him cool off while he walked into the bedroom to get something from his mess of belongings. He emerged as she finished her smoothie. She handed his smoothie to him. He took it and put it on the table, saying, "You know, I've been meaning to ask you something."
Ashley, not suspecting a thing, poured the remaining contents of the blender into a cup for herself, content with prospect of spending the summer together. She turned around to see Andrew down on his knee (still in his underwear) presenting a little blue box with a ring in it in front of him.
"Will you marry me?"
Caught completely off guard, Ashley cocked her head to one side, and said, "Seriously?"
"Yes, seriously." he replied.
After what seemed like a lifetime to Andrew—and just a second to Ashley—she simply said, "Yes."
