On our second date — dinner at No Mas Catina and a viewing of American Idol — my husband told me that he was going up to Minnesota that coming weekend for a job interview. He dismissed it, saying it was for a job in an industry with which he had no direct experience, and really it was just a good opportunity and a trip back home. I didn’t give it much more thought; after all, this was only our second date.

After dinner that night, we walked across the street to his loft to watch American Idol. I remember being struck by the many family photos he had around (and by how many cookbooks he owned). I wandered over to the window shelf to look at the photos and there was a picture of him at age 19, taken at his dad and stepmother’s outdoor-camping wedding. He was young and tan and so super cute. He also had an old party pic, taken at a fraternity formal years before. He and his friend Dave (one of our groomsmen) were both wearing white tuxes and, well, I just fell in love with him a tiny bit in that moment.

That night he asked if I wanted to go to the Billy Joel concert with him the following week, and of course I accepted. About three days before the concert, he called and said he couldn’t wait that long to see me, and could we get together sooner? So I invited him over for dinner and to watch a movie. I made a Rachel Ray pizza and salad, and we watched a DVD. (And I totally had him fooled that I liked to cook!)

Us at the Billy Joel concert, March 1, 2007

Two nights after the concert, he took me to Bacchanalia. (Which you Atlantans may recognize as one of the nicest prixe fixe restaurants in the city.)

Me before our Bacchanalia date.

We sat in a corner booth and drank wine and talked talked talked. I had never felt so pursued and so treasured. I mean, no one else had ever taken me to a restaurant like that for no reason whatsoever. (And, an aside: He picked me up for the first time before this date — prior we’d met somewhere or I’d gone to him — and his car was super, duper clean. Only much, much later did I realize how long and hard he must have worked to get his car to that state. I mean, there’s a reason Allison and I refer to messy car owners as attending the “Aaron P. School” of car maintenance.)

We saw each other quite regularly after that. Because we only worked two blocks apart, we met for lunch often; we met on Saturday mornings at the dog park (where it all began!), and we watched American Idol together every week.

We went to Thrasher games and Hawks games and Braves games.

He courted me in the smallest and sweetest ways. One day a work security guard called and said I had a delivery in the lobby. When I got up front, there were two Starbucks lattes waiting for me. (One for me and one for Sarah. Smart guy, right?)

When I was a senior in college, I told a friend that I just wanted to be wooed. Was that so much to ask? And here, finally, nine years later, was this man who was out to woo me.

And on March 13, 2007, barely a month into our relationship, he told me he was moving 1200 miles away to the great state of Minnesota.

My dog Scout is extremely high energy, and also crazy smart. Aaron says she’s like a Velociraptor: she is able to problem solve and find your weak points. So, as a puppy, she was a handful. Saturday morning walks with my friend Lauren and a few hours at Piedmont’s dog park were my saving grace.

Lauren, Scout and I would meet every Saturday about 10 a.m. We’d walk the perimeter of Piedmont Park, swinging by Caribou Coffee before heading over to the enclosed off-leash dog area. We’d spend an hour or two over there, watching Scout careen around and chase balls and make friends. We’d chat with other dog people, or we’d sit on the rocks and just chat with each other.

On one particular cold Saturday in January 2007, we started talking with a really nice guy with a bulldog. I don’t remember who approached whom, but pretty soon I knew where he worked (2 blocks from my office) and lived (I drove past his loft building on my way to and from work every day), and for some reason I told him I was 30. (I really can’t remember why that came up!) I asked him if he went to Georgia (since he had a bulldog), and he said, no, Minnesota. I remember thinking – “That’s far!”

Somehow Flickr came up (maybe I was taking pictures of the dogs?), and he said: “Oh, I have a Flickr account.”

Later that week, I found his Flickr stream by searching for bulldog puppies named Eller. I left a comment on one of the photos that said — “I figure… how many bulldogs named Eller in Atlanta with Flickr accounts can there be? Hi from Scout’s mom!”

He (quickly) sent me a Flickrmail back:

“I was completely WAY too excited when I saw someone had sent me a note on FLICKR — life’s little pleasures. I think you can tell a lot about someone by looking at their photo album. I hope I see you again. By looking at your pictures, it seems our paths cross often.”

The next Saturday Scout and I returned to the dog park at our usual time, and Aaron and Eller were there. We chatted for a bit, and as Scout and I were getting ready to leave, Aaron gave me his card and said, “Uh, um, maybe we can get lunch sometime?”

“Sure,” I said. “I’ll send you an e-mail.”

When I got back to my car, I texted my friends, “Guess who got asked out at the dog park?! Not Scout.”

That Monday I sent him an e-mail (and this I wish I had a copy of, but alas, neither of us are at those jobs or accounts any longer), saying hi, and he asked if I was free for lunch on Thursday.

I remember telling my small group about him, and how I felt very conflicted about going out with him. I think, in my mind, I thought that since I was dedicated to going to church regularly, and I’d set it in my mind and on my heart that I was only going to marry a fellow Christ follower, that God would send me a man through those church avenues. That I would know upfront, first thing if he was a Christian; that there would be no question about it, no uncertainty. And here I’d met someone quite randomly; someone I knew very little about, and how did you go about finding out – exactly – whether someone is a believer or not? There was some fretting on my part, is what I’m saying.

I didn’t want to waste anyone’s time, but I also figured: it’s just lunch.

On February 16, 2007, we met for lunch at a sit-down restaurant in the Omni CNN Center. The very first thing I remember is that he helped me with my coat. And how shocked I was that he did. (Which shows you how sad some of my dates must have been.)

We ate lunch and as he walked me to the door of CNN Center before going back upstairs to his office, he asked for my phone number. That’s when I figured it was probably more than just lunch. Except I do remember walking back to my office thinking, “I talk too much! I rambled! Why do I talk so much?!”

But by the time I got back to my desk, I had an e-mail from him, thanking me for meeting him for lunch, and asking for my phone number again, as he’d messed up putting it into his BlackBerry.

There was another date and then another and another. The story shall continue.

(I found out later that we actually met before we officially met. That he’d seen me at the dog park several weeks earlier and I was there with a guy. [“You were there with a date,” as he tells it. Aaron says he saw me and thought, “There’s a pretty girl, but of course, look, she has a boyfriend,” and he’d said something to me about how my dog should be named Oreo.] I do clearly remember that particular day, because I was actually there with my friend Chad and his senior Golden Retriever, and it was very much most certainly NOT a date. I’d been asking Chad for months to come to the dog park with us [as I asked everyone with a dog, because I loved the dog park so much], and that was the one and only time he ever showed up. What I also remember about that day was that it was the Saturday before Christmas and it was so warm that I was wearing a tank top and gym pants. I remember that Chad’s old dog Maggie played fetch for so long that she hurt her paw, and that as I walked back to my car, Scout barfed her breakfast and part of a sock all over the sidewalk.)