My wife and I first met in a Fidonet conference having to do with Rush Limbaugh. This is a whole other story in itself, which I may put up on this site at some later time, but for now, suffice it to say that some months passed between the time we first “met” over this electronic medium, and the time we actually met in person.
After a few months of corresponding via an assortment of media, which included badly off-topic (but nevertheless, very well-tolerated) public messages in the Fidonet LIMBAUGH conference, some email message, a few snailmail letters, and some phone calls, Seanette made a trip from her hometown of Reedsport, Oregon, to visit me in Santa Barbara, California. It was planned that this visit would be for a week or two, to see if anything was going to come of it. As it turned out, much did come of this. As a matter of fact, Seanette's return to Oregon was only to retrieve some of her belongings. But this was well after the story I am trying to tell here.
To understand the full significance of this story, there's something you need to know. Seanette and I are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (commonly known as the “Mormon” church). One thing that is unusual about this religion is that ideally, our marriages are performed in special buildings, called Temples. These buildings are very different than our regular church buildings. There were, as of the time this story took place, about fifty of these Temples in the world. I believe a few more have been built since then, and I understand that there are, as of this writing, plans to build a fairly large number of them in the near future.
The closest Temple to Santa Barbara is in Los Angeles, roughly a hundred miles away. The next three closest are all over three hundred miles away (Oakland and San Diego, CA, and Las Vegas, NV).
If it was going to happen that Seanette and I would end up marrying each other, the Los Angeles Temple pretty much would have to be the place where it would happen, since it was the only Temple within a reasonable distance.
Here's a picture of this Temple:
This picture really doesn't do it justice. This is a very impressive building to see. If you are ever in the relevant area of Los Angeles, you can see it for yourself. It's on the north side of Santa Monica Boulevard, not very far east of the 405 freeway.
Anyway, back to the story. Four days after Seanette arrived in Santa Barbara, we made a trip to Los Angeles. We did not actually go into the Temple that day, but we went into the Visitors' Center behind it, and wandered around a bit on the grounds. Afterward, we went across the street, where there is a small shopping center, containing a 7-Eleven, a bookstore, a Chinese restaurant, and a few other small businesses. We had lunch in the Chinese restaurant, and, of course, each received a fortune cookie.
Here is the slip that came out of my fortune cookie.
This was April 12th, 1994. A year and a day later, on April 13th, 1995, Seanette and I were indeed married, in the Temple across the street from where I got this fortune cookie.
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