2yrs2mos – part 2

… Toward the end of our first month of communication (emails and the occasional long phone call), our schedules opened up to allow our first in-person meeting.

Grace worked as instructional designer for the moody bible institute and I was a graphic designer at crain communications, and about halfway between is L’appetito at the bottom of the hancock building. It was there that, on a windy day at the end of april, we would meet for the first time.
It was also the first time I listened to my new iPod mini, which grace would come to call “greenie.” As I walked down Michigan avenue to my date, I listened to five iron frenzy’s “dandelion,” which would become one of “our” songs, if not the one.
I got there early, having bought one yellow tulip for the woman who would become my bride.

We talked easily and at length, and left for sushi a few blocks southwest at Naniwa. Afterwards, I showed her my condo, and drove her home to her condo at clark and touhy. I’d soon come to dislike crossing the Ashlandic distance between us.

Shortly thereafter, grace took me up on my invitation to Rhythm, the smoke-free drum-circle nightclub on Randolph in the west loop gate.
Grace at the time played the djembe in the single adult ministry worship band at the moody church. I knew Rhythm from my associations with Gingarte Capoeira. I recommend this club to anyone.
That night, grace wore what became my favorite cool-weather outfit- chocolate brown pants and camisole, and a pink sweater. These would become our wedding colors.

I soon began attending grace’s church (which, in the summer, meets across the street from Park Community Church). With one foot still at Park Community, I got commissioned to design a church bulletin ad for a Sunday evening bible class on Song of Solomon. When grace learned of this, she noted that the instructor was a colleage at the moody bible institute