We’re taking a leap on leap day!

My friend, Alyssa, told me I needed to not turn into a crazy cat lady and to sign up for a dating app. Which I thought was a terrible idea because I was about to leave for Japan to cover the Tokyo Olympics for a month. She pointed out, “Any man not willing to wait a few weeks for a date isn’t worth it anyway.” So, with nothing else to do I started swiping for two weeks in mandatory quarantine. Douglas had a picture of himself in front of a temple that looked like one I had seen while walking to my daily COVID test. His prompt on Hinge was: Where am I? I responded with one word. “Japan?” LOL. I woke up on my birthday to his response “Nailed it! How are you Jamie? Love the short hair on you.” Still skeptical of the app, but excited by his reply, we texted back and forth for a couple weeks. We went on our first date two days after I returned home and it was magic. He asked me out on a second date before the first date ended. I knew I really liked him because I agreed to the beach date. (Bikini on second date?! Yikes!!) By our third date, a hike and brunch, I knew I would want to keep dating him for as long as he’d have me around. Douglas proposed on the Fourth of July. Which seemed appropriate- it’s been fireworks for me since day one! -Jamie

It’s was 10 days prior that I received a notification that I had a message waiting for me in my Hinge app! It read “Japan?” Wow how did this person guess it!!? My profile had a picture of me in front of a blurred out temple captioned with a question where am I? That began the adventure with Jamie! We started sending messages backwards and forwards for sometime until I found out Jamie was indeed in Japan covering the belated summer Olympics and made a lucky guess - while in Rome right!? Jamie finally made her way back States side and I wanted to meet her for our first date. So of course I wanted sushi, Jamie being a huge trooper after being in Japan for a month and having Japanese food that entire time was like “sure!”. I was like wow this girl is cool. After some last minute date venue changes Jamie found a new fusion Japanese hot spot in the valley for our first encounter! OH BOY! I remember walking up to the restaurant and there was a busking line out front - Jamie had already secured a spot at the bar. As I made my way through the masses I caught a glimpse of Jamie and immediately said to myself “oh shit I’m in trouble, this girl is smoking AND damn those Hot Pink Earrings!!” 😍 Nevertheless Jamie and I closed down the place and….. -Douglas