Happy Galentine’s Day, lovelies!*
Since tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, I took the liberty of diverging from my usual blog topics to take advantage of the season and instead of updating you on the status of Dan’s office (you’re on the edge of your seat, I know) I thought that I would actually talk about Dan. Awwww. I’m warning you, this might be an over share and you might throw up in your mouth a little bit. Let me take a second to get uncharacteristically mushy. I know Liv is a huge fan of “how did you two meet?” stories and since I’ve never done a proper history of our relationship I thought it would be fun to start the day with a little nostalgia.
I met Dan when I was 16 on a church retreat. Yes, you did just read church retreat. Catholic teen retreats, where all the best hook ups happen in high school. We didn’t exactly hit it off. On the bus down to our retreat, I was playing a game with some friends. You know those games you play in the car that are like bred out of pure boredom? In this one the object was to name a movie that started with the last letter in the last word of the movie the person before you said. Like I said pure and utter boredom. Anyway, I had the unfortunate task of trying to think of a movie that started with the letter ‘y’. Now if you didn’t know already, I am an insanely competitive person, so I was not about to lose because I couldn’t think of a movie that started with ‘y’.
Since I spent much of high school perfecting the art of looking down my nose at people with glasses perched at the tip of my nose, I figured “I got this, I’ll make up something and say it was a documentary. These philistines will never know the difference!” and I did pretty much the lamest thing, cheated at a stupid game on a church retreat. “Y? Hmmm, of yeah “Yellowriver”. I saw it a few weeks ago. It’s an independent film about China.” For about 30 glorious seconds I watched as the group chewed on it and agreed that I was just weird enough to have seen something that boring. That’s when he appeared.
From over the top of the seat in front of me wearing a Less Than Jake hat askew, “I work at an independent movie theatre and I’ve never heard of a movie called the Yellowriver. You. Made. That. Up.” Game over. Who was the snide round-faced villain ruining my game and my pride? Why Dan Maxwell obviously, apparently one of the girls in the group had a mad crush on him at the time and was psyched that he was gracing us with his presence. And that was the start of my anti-Dan Maxwell years which lasted until about 18 when I got a job at the same record store that he was working at (he had since moved from the “independent” movie theatre). He randomly asked me a few months after I started working with him if I also wanted an internship at Vagrant Records. Uh duh. I didn’t realize it was just a ploy to hang out with me.
Boy couldn’t seal the deal though; it took him from 2005 to 2008 before we actually got together. Oh and I made him write me a song before I agreed to go out with him. But that’s a story for another time. Music has always been a massive part of our lives (that and one up-ing each other on our indie cred) so last night I thought it would be cute to make each other playlists like we used to do when we first started dating. The links to the playlists are below and if you have Spotify you can listen to them! Happy Valentine’s Day from Dan and Ali!
Ali’s Valentine’s Day Mix For Dan
Dan’s Valentine’s Day Mix For Ali
* If you don’t watch Parks and Recreation (and seriously, why not?) Galentine’s Day is the day before Valentine’s Day where you and your lady friends celebrate loving each other. Obviously my number one lady crush Amy Poehler would come up with a holiday that awesome. To all my ladies – love you bunches, you all rock.
