How I Ended Up In Texas

I used to work for a major airline at one of the largest international airports in the world. I used to regularly volunteer to work in other cities, and I took advantage of every discount I could get to visit other countries. Possibly the best work trip I ever had though, was when I volunteered to work in Austin, Texas about 7 years ago. I'd been e-mailing and talking with a woman I'd met online for several months, and she seemed too good to be true. She was smart, had a wicked sense of humor, and could talk about almost any topic. She was just as nerdy as I was, loved Star Wars and knew all the trivia. It pains me to admit this, even all these years later, but she knows more than I do.

She also lived nearly 1000 miles away. So when they posted that they needed people to go work in Austin, only an hour or so from where she lived for a week, I put in for it. My boss thought I'd lost my mind.

"M, you do realize that you're volunteering to go work in a state that is still hitting the uppper 90s even though it's October, right? Have you lost your mind?"

Yeah, I'd pretty much gone crazy. But it was totally worth it to get to go and see her. She agreed to have dinner with me one night, and that was the best first date I'd ever been on. And she was just as wonderful in person as she was online. I knew by the end of that dinner that I was going to be spending a lot more time in Texas, lol.

As it happens, I was laid off from my job that next summer. So, I moved down here. It's still too hot, but at least I've got her to come home to at the end of the day.