...The week between Christmas and New Years 2011 was full of good things. I received my first check as a paid speaker for the Victimology course at Penn and was already scheduled for the Spring semester class. I had booked my trip to LA to visit Steve and was really looking forward to seeing how we got along in person. It's one thing to get along in emails, texts and talking on the phone but if this was going to go anywhere you have to get along in person. Not to mention my workload was increasing exponentially with no help in sight as I had asked and was told it wasn't in the budget so a 4 day vacation was well-deserved if I may say so myself.
Next I was going to tell my family and friends about my trip. My mom and brother only knew I was talking about Steve as a friend but my BF Renee had some idea of what was going on. A few weeks earlier Steve had surprised me at work with a gift which was a Stockton College t-shirt (the school we attended together) so he reached out to Renee's husband to get my address. She knew that he was interested in me. My family was excited and asked me a bunch of nosy questions as they felt it was their duty to inquire. I told my friends at a brunch get together a few weeks later which was kind of a funny story. One of the girls had mentioned someone she might want to set me up with and Renee and I looked at each other and said I guess I should tell them now. They too were excited and also asked nosy questions because they of course had the same duty to inquire.
In the meantime a few months earlier my brother and sister-in-law took my niece to London and Paris for her 16th birthday in lieu of a large party which was a much better present in my opinion. It was the first trip abroad for all of them. My mom and I had been to Europe many times solo and once together and we were getting the bug again so we decided to visit Ireland since it was on both our lists as we had never been. I knew that in January I was gaining an additional weeks vacation and was planning on using all the days my company gave me. We did plenty of research individually and compared lots of notes and decided we would book it as soon as the holidays were over. I went to her house on a Saturday where we called the AMEX travel agent and booked an amazing week's vacation in Ireland to leave on memorial day weekend. Now I had two trips to look forward to!
So in late January I boarded a plane to LA on what I thought was a great adventure full of possibilities. I decided I would get off the plane with the Stockton shirt on and he greeted me with flowers. Not a bad start. We had a whirlwind weekend full of non-stop plans including lunch in Malibu, sushi dinner, shopping, meeting his friends and seeing him perform at a local comedy club. He suffered through bringing me to all the touristy places including the Santa Monica Pier. I also made sure to text lots of pictures and details home so as to keep the curious satisfied. All that weekend we laughed and had a great time and before I left Sunday on the red eye we decided on when he would visit me in NJ and my next trip back Easter weekend. The rest as you know is history...
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