Hilary and I have our mutual friend Ben to thank for bringing us together. We met one typically bitterly cold winter Ottawa night at Mexicali Rosa's at Dow's Lake. I had skated from downtown with several friends, while Ben and Hilary, plus a few other less brave friends, met us at the restaurant.

Hilary and I sat across from one another. In retrospect, this arrangement was probably the product of clever engineering by Ben, but any deliberate planning was lost on me at the time.

Hilary struck me as mysterious and intriguing, which had a lot do with what appeared to be a tattoo on her left wrist (it is, in fact, a tattoo of 12 stars that represent the zodiac or some such thing). I'd never seen anything like it. I could make out two or three small stars of different size. What did they represent? When did she get them done? How many were there and how far up her arm did they go? Did she have tattoos all over her body?!

Obviously the tattoo wasn't the only thing that struck me about Hilary. She was certainly beautiful. She was gentle and sensitive, but not insecure. She seemed satisfied with who she was as a person. This in fact is true, which is one of the things I love about Hilary.

She drove a bunch of us home from the restaurant that night. I sat directly behind her and made some disparaging jokes about her driving, her beat-up car, and the various stickers on her dashboard, all in jest of course. I mean, how could I not make a joke about the fact that 3 among the many stickers on her dash were of Freddie Prince Jr.? She took all the jokes well, and dished some of her own in return. Again, intriguing.

So my impression of Hilary that night was that she was mysterious, intriguing, beautiful and really smart (as described by Ben and confirmed by her conversation), which added up to her being sort of unattainable.

A number of weeks later, Hilary called me at work and left a message. I'll never forget her gambit: "I understand from Ben that you wouldn't be averse to going out on a date with me." Whoever uses the word "averse" when asking someone out?! It might sound geeky, but it hit the spot. As it turns out, Ben had told us separately that each had the hots for the other (I never took Ben to be a matchmaker!).

We met for drinks on a Friday night. The night before I sustained a nasty knee injury playing soccer. For those who care or know about these things, I tore my ACL and meniscus and ended up requiring two surgeries. That Friday night I could hardly walk, but I wouldn't miss the date. I figured I couldn't do any more damage to my knee, so I may as well see if I could get lucky! Just kidding, Ann!!! Anyway, the date went really wonderfully. We kissed beside my cab as the snow fell, and Hilary turned and ran off into the night. The rest is history!