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I wasn't born yet when Ben and Kathy met. They both lived in Fleming House, a dormitory at Caltech. They started dating in February of 2000 -- that's 21 dog years ago! (Photo: KJ and Ben at Caltech's Formal, May 2000.) |
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Ben graduated in June of 2000 with a degree in computer science. That summer, Kathy worked on a magnetized target fusion experiment at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Ben joined her in New Mexico after a couple weeks as a counselor at Lutheridge. When school started again, Ben headed off for his new job at Trilogy, a software company in Austin, Texas, and KJ headed back to start her sophomore year at Caltech. (Photo: Hiking in the Weminuche Wilderness, Colorado, August 2000.) |
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Even though they got to visit each other a lot, living two time zones away was stressful. After six months of being apart, Ben and KJ decided to reunite. Ben quit his job, Kathy took a term off of school, and they went gallivanting across the United States. They went skiing in Austria, hiking and swimming in Texas, spelunking and rock climbing in Tennesse, backpacking in North Carolina, and SCUBA diving in Florida. They settled down for the summer at counselors at Lutheridge. (Photo: A campsite in Western Tennessee, April 2001.) |
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At the end of the summer, Ben and KJ moved back to Pasadena together and adopted me! Ben now teaches CS11 at Caltech and does some consulting for Arzyx, and Kathy is finishing up her mechanical engineering major and working on her thesis on booming sand dunes. I go to class with them a lot. I also go mountain biking, skiing, and hiking with them. (Photo: Mountain biking the Slickrock Trail in Moab, Utah, September 2002.) |
| Ben asked Kathy to marry him in November. I was there when it happened! We were out peeing late at night -- well, I think they were looking at the moon or something, but *I* was taking care of business -- and Ben got down on one knee and gave KJ a beautiful ring! (Photo: Kathy's ring, January 2003.) |
