Some of you may know how I initially caught Andrew’s eye*:

We had both very recently started working at Michael’s Arts & Crafts. It was evening close to closing time and we were doing ‘go backs.’ And then the magical moment: I started in on my theory of how scrapbooking is a cult. …. or maybe it was the fact that I was a self-professed member of the cult.

Do any of you know how Andrew first won my heart?

It was with a mix tape.

How …. cliche.

Of course, it really was so much more than a mix tape.

• It was the generous, selfless act of driving from SCV to Glendale to surprise me by leaving the tape on my car.
• It was the strange and fascinating music on the tape – all punk rock. Very different from my preferred sounds of musical theatre. I found Andrew’s music very interesting (not great, but interesting)
• It was the first of many many many (many) mix tapes and CDs Andrew has made me. Each one very different. Some to familarize me with music he has loved in the past. Some to introduce me to music he was obsessing over at the moment.

I knew this was a boy unlike any I had met before.

I was 18.

Fast forward 9 years …

When we first moved to our current home, Andrew was SO excited about the walkman he borrowed from work, riding his bike to and from the studio, and digging out all those tapes we had kept.

3 full big tape cases PLUS a box. Not all mix tapes, but still …

He went through A LOT of work with some of these cases/linernotes/song lists. A couple of them he did by spending HOURS at Kinko’s copying, shrinking, printing, cutting-and-pasting, re-copying into 1 tape-case-sized document.

Others he hand wrote.

You just never knew. …

Some of them are numbered so we can get a rough guess of what order they were made in … and Andrew thinks he has a notebook somewhere when he kept track of all the song lists.

That boy and his lists.

Is it any wonder I love him so much?

*you’ll notice I did not say “won his heart” — you’ll have to ask Andrew when that happened.

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