On Tuesday night we went to the Jahnsi official Evening of “Dinner and Fun!”™. Jo and G had cooked up appetizers, garlic bread, salad (not actually cooked, of course), and some damned good lasagna even though it had yellow peppers in it which I picked out and Doug ate for me.

Dinner was followed by an assortment of board games, which is what generally happens when G is around; he is king of the board games. People were getting their vendettas on in the kitchen playing "BANG!" (Mancato!) while another group tracked their way to victory in "Ticket to Ride" in the living room. Jo, G, Dev and I headed down to the basement where G taught us to play "King's Gate", which I enjoyed very much. After losing, I headed upstairs to play some "Pirate's Cove" (Yarrrr!).

Something about being at G's parent's place took me back. My friendship with G started in my third year of University. We had a linear algebra class together and happened to recognize each other from Choir. Every class we sat together and wrote notes to each other, mocked the crazy guy that sat in front of us and generally had a good time in an otherwise boring class. We eventually took the notes outside of class, leading to lengthy emails and many late night conversations.

On more than one occasion people assumed that we were dating but luckily for both of us, the element of romantic interest never really came up. We both decided independently quite early on that we would never work as a couple. We became quite good friends, confiding in each other on many topics. It was both a comfortable friendship and an exciting one, with many new things to learn about one another. I can remember how much I looked forward to his emails, especially during exam time when we used these emails as an extreme form of procrastination. It's a bloody good thing that linear algebra is easy.

Our friendship flourished until he went away to BC on a school co-op. Our communication became gradually less frequent, but I still considered him a friend and made a point to get together when he was in town. That is the level that the friendship stayed at until 2001.

Let's bring the story back to choir for 2001. In the choir was a girl named Jo, who G was quite smitten with. Jo's brother Paul was also in choir. I'm sure you can see where this is heading. In October of 2001 Paul and I started dating. In December, G and Jo got together. In December 2002, Jo and G got engaged and were married in June of 2003. In June of 2004, the day before Jo and G's first anniversary, Paul proposed to me. We were married in May of 2005.

Small world, eh? Jo is now my sister-in-law, Paul is G's brother-in-law, and G and I call ourselves "The Outlaws" (we're going to make matching Outlaw T-shirts and bandanas).

It seems so strange to me that someone who I knew so well, who knew fairly intimate things about me and I about him, is now my relative. I know that he keeps his mouth shut, as do I, but if I think about things the wrong way, it makes me uncomfortable to think of the things I shared so freely then.

I have to say, though, that it's nice to have an in-law who’s my friend and a friend for an outlaw.