Today is Joel’s Birthday, so I’m surprise posting. when we started this site the original intent was to have a place to record Joel’s experiments in the kitchen, and little snippets of our life and love for food so we could look back on them later. Almost 5 years in Well Preserved has achieved that and so much more.
In the spirit of our original intent I’d like to ‘document’ his 40th birthday.
I’ve known Joel since he was 14. We didn’t start dating until 17 years later and we will have been together a decade next spring. Joel loves numbers and statistics, I still count on my fingers and math can make me cry. When we met, I was trying pretty hard to ‘fit in’. Joel was trying ‘pretty hard’ to do the opposite. Eventually I moved downtown, he got on a bus and traveled all over Canada. Through most of our 20s when we didn’t have a lot of contact, we found out later we were at a lot of the same events or hanging out in the same neighbourhoods. Without going into a lot of detail, it’s pretty much a fluke (or you could call it fate) that we ran into each other at all 9 years ago. To say ‘there’s never a dull moment’ is a complete understatement and after all this time I still sometimes laugh and shake my head that we’re together (15 year old Dana still thinks it’s hi-larious). I’ve always been really independent and self motivated, but Joel has helped me see how much more fun it is to tackle stuff together , inspire each other and carry each other’s luggage every once and a while. I feel very lucky. I still can’t believe that weird kid is 40 though. Happy Birthday Einstein*
*unimaginative 14 year old me’s nickname for my smart computer lab partner, that I used get to do most of the work.
