I never planned on getting married... well, I did when I was very young, but I soon gave up on that fantasy after getting a sampling of what was out there (no offense to those I may have dated).  I decided I would be a working professional and just reserve my love for my cats.  You got it, the freaky single lady with cats.   

My friend Dan introduced me to The Sierra Network, an online gaming community that had nothing to do with the Internet... this was 1991, before most people even knew what the Internet was.  To access this system, you needed their software, a local Sprint access number, a computer (a fairly fast one, hopefully), and a phone line.  Once online, you would create a character for yourself (that could be funny and look nothing like you or, in Joe's case, just like you!). 

After creating your character, you would dial into your local number and would be magically transported to a "room" where you'd see a number of yellow nameplates of the other people online in that same room.  The great thing is that these people could be in the same town, state, or country as you! You could then address the entire group or click on specific people to talk or invite to play games (backgammon, checkers, bridge, etc.).

I was best known online as StarGazer, and was known to hang out in the Clubhouse or in the mountains of Yserbius.  Needless to say, I got majorly hooked!   Several months after I joined, I became a Sysop for the network in their first major Sysop hiring, going by the name of TSNRoxy, a tousled redheaded siren working mainly in the adults only area containing gambling games called Larryland, named after the Leisure Suit Larry character.   I was so obsessed with TSN! 

Later, Sierra Online sold TSN to AT&T, who was going to make it the next best thing in online gaming on the Internet and renamed it The ImagiNation Network or INN (I was INNPaige by that point).  But they gave up fairly quickly when they saw what a financial drain it was.  So they sold it to AOL, who worked on it for many months as Worldplay on AOL.  It was great to see so many of the same names the few times I beta-tested, but it just wasn't the same.  The last I heard, Worldplay was all but gone, the great place that never was.

I'll mourn for The Sierra Network for the rest of my days because my son will never know the camaraderie I knew there, playing games with friends, playing trivia with other triviots (though I didn't play as often as I'd have liked!), running around slaying things in Yserbius, Cawdor and Twinion, and doing the late-night coffee/cigarettes thing while pretending to be hot-tubbing with the other late-nighters.  Yup, we had no life, but we were happy.

It was on this network that I met my dearest Joey, the love of my life, the man who saved me from myself.  He stayed my friend when I asked him to and then I fell in love with him.  We used to log on as Harry and Sally, because that almost seemed like our story, with the exception that Joe wasn't a pig, like Harry, when it came to women.

After five months, we spent one particularly long online weekend, after which Joe hopped on a bus and rode across country from Cleveland, OH, to Fresno, CA, to see me.  For me, it was love at first sight.  For him, I fit into his arm on his shoulder, just like his mom had always told him the perfect girl would.

The next day, I proposed.  The next day, HE proposed with a ring.  Six months later we married.  That was September 25, 1993.