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Written by both Clarissa and Clint.
Officially dating After that he managed to find me at Razorbattles, the sf/gaming con where I was on staff. He overbid for a Discworld RPG book during our charity auction, and I called him my hero. (For geeks like us, this passes for heavy flirting.) Since it was toward the end of our next-to-last years in college, there was a lot of stuff going on like Phi Kappa Phi inductions and so on. We were both being invited to the same ones and we made plans to go together. Clint's GPA was higher than mine but I still qualified, and he was even in the history honors society despite being on the way to earning bachelor's degrees in Physics, Math, and Computer Science! (hence the five years...) So it was after the Phi Alpha Theta dinner that we were out far too late and felt this amazing pleasure just being in each other's company. The next morning, in good geekish fashion, Clint (who'd gotten ICQ just to chat with me), messaged me and asked, in a roundabout way, if I'd "ever" be interested in going out with him. I guess it seemed like a long time on his end before I said yes, though there wasn't any doubt in my mind. And we were exclusively committed from that moment--at least once we'd affirmed, over iced grasshopper lattes at Arsaga's, that we had compatibly wacked-out liberal political and religious beliefs. That was April 24, 1999. Then we got to know Fayetteville together--it has a surpising amount of interesting things, including our favorite places: the Wilson Park Castle and the Dickson Street Bookstore. When we eventually combined libraries, we realized that Clint had bought several of the books I had sold there. Since then we've done all kinds of things together and survived summers apart (including my summer in Taiwan). We drove halfway across the US, stopping by Albuquerque, the Petrified Forest, and so on. We've been to anime conventions, the Alternative Press Expo, Lake Tahoe, and lots of other places. We find bookstores nearly everywhere we go, and we always have a good time with each other, even if it's just staying at home in Fremont. The engagement Being both romantic and sensible sorts, we had alread established that we did want to get married at some point. So I didn't think Clint would be able to surprise me with a proposal. But the night he proposed, he wasn't actually planning on it. I had had a lousy day, and when I picked him up at BART, he suggested getting something good for dinner at the supermarket. When we got home, we lit a relaxing vanilla-scented candle. I discovered that the decorations on the chocolate-iced angel food cake I had picked out for dessert were actually little rings. During the first CSI commercial break, Clint turned off the television. I didn't know was was going on. He turned to me in the candlelight and asked if I would marry him. First I asked if it was for real. Then I said yes. He proposed with the metallic green plastic Halloween cat ring that was on the cake, and I wore it for a little while--we were both really happy. That was October 10, 2002.Knowing how much I like jewelry and art, and since neither of us like diamond rings, Clint thought we could have the engagement ring made specially for us. We decided to go with Pave' in Oakland, and you can see the wonderful result on the gallery page, along with the cat ring. The engagement ring arrived just in time for our winter holiday visit home. Now Currently Clint is a PhD student, TA, and instructor at UC Berkeley in Science Education. He plans to research and teach. Clarissa is finishing her MA in East Asian Studies at Stanford, then hopes to go into library studies and digital archiving.
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