"...Even if you see 'em coming, you're not ready for the big moments. No one asks for their life to change, not really. But it does. So what are we, helpless? Puppets? No. The big moments are gonna come--you can't help that. It's what you do afterwards that counts. That's when you find out who you are."

Things surprise me all the time. I used to remark that the more time I spent alive and conscious, the weirder the world seemed to get. And sometimes it's weird in your favor. Sometimes you find enough laughter and amazement to make everything bad fade into the gray twilight of What's Past.

There's a girl, named Adrian, whom I've known since freshman year. We met, interestingly enough, through Andrew (my freshman roommate). Although I'd met her at a mixer during Orientation, I'd always felt a bit hesitant about approaching her. One of the things that I learned not to do was to snipe my friends' female friends--especially if I had an inkling that there was some mutual interest.

After the freshman year fiasco, I was more than hesitant about approaching her. Although time heals all wounds, for a while I was convinced that camps had sprung up around me and Andrew and that the twain wouldn't meet for a while. Turns out she figured the same thing, and for two years we saw each other rarely and never spoke--not out of animosity, but shyness.

And then, two weeks ago this Friday, Andrew invited me downstairs to play World of Warcraft with him, Andy, Jessica, and Liz. Pizza was included in the invitation, and lo and behold Adrian was the one buying the pizza. Now, normally, I don't go around making a fool of myself showing people I don't know that well the various memorabilia photos that I have on my laptop. Maybe that's because I don't carry my laptop around with me. Maybe it's because not everyone is Adrian. Whatever the case may be, I spent a good couple of hours playing Weird Al, Firesign, Jonathan Coulton, and The Mr. T Experience for her while giving an impromptu showing of pictures from freshman year all the way up to last summer.

What happened after that is pretty much a mixture of luck and timing. I invited her over for Firefly; she kissed me (a welcome change of pace) immediately after I stated my belief that men are expected to be forward and then reviled for just that, which has got to be the best rejoinder ever. I feel like no one fits me quite as well as she has, and she has said the same about me. And, yes, we are both hopeless romantics, and we both want to travel to Ireland and to France and see Paris in the springtime. And, I think we hold a pretty firm record for getting to Obnoxiously Cute in less than two weeks of being a couple.

Scratch everything I ever may have predicted about this summer being an in-between time, a small pause in the middle of a pretty much continuous junior-senior year. The hell with that. The ionosphere's the limit.