i happen to know that today is the two year anniversary of my friends dan and rachel. it's a little known fact that i am very good at remembering important dates of other people's lives. like scott bakula, i know all of his special anniversaries, special days, special minor milestones, etc. sometimes scott calls me to find out when he should buy his wife flowers, or when he should mail in his taxes. sometimes this talent of mine becomes a bit of a burden.

anyhow, two years. in another month, chris and i will reach our two year anniversary. in the span of about four weeks, dan and i both found our other halves, our standing dates, our fall-guys. it's strange; neither dan and i were ever that lucky in love, and, bam, the solutions to our problems show their faces in less time than one would have to allow for shipping from certain mail-order catalogs. i am still waiting for that power juicer.

of course, dan's solution (the lovely rachel) was staring him in the face for some time until things came together. i didn't see the face of my solution until the day that we count as our anniversary; it only took one date for me and the cheese to consider ourselves "going out," as the kids like to say. we met online and then, after a few emails and a couple months when the cheese had decided to pursue another cybergirl, we met face to face at a sushi restaurant. that first date took the cake, or maki roll, as far as first dates are concerned. the banter was witty, the laughter was plentiful, the kiss at the end was surprisingly pleasant. on our second date, he was already asking me to go to a wedding with him. not our wedding- he wouldn't ask that question until a year and a half later.

so strange. dan had pretty much sworn off dating before rachel, and me? well, there was a long period of my life in which i miserably reveled in a lonely future filled with cats, take-out food, and anonymous male escorts. granted, i do enjoy the take-out, but i have yet to become a cat owner or a frequenter of strange men who demand money for favors. by favors, i'm not sure if i mean sexual favors or simply smiling at my puns. then, after a while, i grew certain that i would eventually meet somebody, but, after a drawn-out series of dates, short-lived romances, and other lust-filled encounters, i was sure that this somebody would not quite fit the bill. i would not really love him, but merely use him for his connections with the lithuanian mafia. he would not really love me, but merely use me for my vast knowledge of ocular diseases and useless trivia involving the origins of font styles, pez dispensers, foreign cuss words, and french canadian limericks.

alas, the cheese never asks about ocular diseases or french canadian limericks. once, i think, we had a discussion about times new roman, but that was the end of that. and even when i fall asleep in bed first and then wake up because i sense him in the corner of the room, stealthily taking off his pants, and then when i start screaming because i don't recognize him and am instantly convinced that he's a psychopath who has broken into the apartment with the goals of raping and pillaging, even then, when i am short of breath and reaching for the nearest object i can use as a weapon, he still takes me in his arms and holds me tight and tells me he loves me. and even when i can't immediately understand him and nearly have a heart attack and start writhing around like i'm about to be murdered, even when i start babbling about lawyers and the cops and how-did-you-even-get-in-here,-you-crapface, even then, well, you get it.

anyhow, it's a nice little world we all live in.