Let’s do the damn thing

Michael and I met towards the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic- as if dating in LA wasn’t already hard enough!?                                                                                         I had moved from Sacramento to LA just a few months before and had my stepsister, Sofia and her friend visiting me. There was a dating app that hosted virtual speed dating and I had signed up to join. I’ll be honest, I hadn’t had the best luck with the speed dating events. I had joined 2 or 3 before and was skeptical that this one would be any more successful. I was veeeeeery close to not joining but Sofia was curious so she and her friend told me to join and they would sit on the other end of the couch and eaves drop. So I did… First, I met a guy who was interested in salsa dancing (cool but not really my thing) and then another that was waiting in line at a frozen yogurt shop (lol, you can speed date from anywhere these days!). Michael was my last and final match. He had three minutes to woo me, and hit the “like button” 10 seconds after seeing my face. I guess it didn’t take much for me to woo him ;). 

Each match starts out with an “ice breaker” question, ours was “what is something you are obsessed with right now?”. Michael was in the middle of studying for his helicopters license and shared that he was, in true Michael Sasser fashion, obsessed with that. Later I would come to find out how true this would be about many things…tennis, anything he could pilot, music and 3D printers just to name a few. I had been really into making tapas, especially baked dates stuffed with goat cheese. 

So naturally, with no context, I responded, “putting cheese on my dates.” And Michaels response was, “I’m imagining cheese all over my chest right now…” At that moment, we found out we were the just the right amount of weird for each-other. We talked on the phone later that night, made plans to hang out two days later. And now,  5 years later, we are still laughing, weirder and more in love than ever. I’ve yet to rub cheese on his chest, but hey, life is long. And we plan on being married for the rest of it.