On March 9th, 1996, I received the following email:
Subject: Your vegetable intake
Andy! Where have you been hiding all my life? I found your homepage and suddenly felt OK about staying in on a Saturday night. The highlight of my evening before your Gallery of Household Appliances was MacKenzie Phillips guesting on "The Love Boat" as a (I'm not lying) transvestite.
My Email is acoughli@niu.edu [it's now amy@petdance.com]
Write me and we can talk English style. (Hey--I teach it!)
Amy
How could I not write back? I don't have what I responded, but it was along the lines of "Hi, how's it going, and how did you stumble across my web page?"
How did I find you? Well, it went something like this:
1. I entered a Net search using "BoDeans" because I dig them.
2. I enjoyed playful banter between Isaac and Gopher.
3. Your sister's home page came up (although I think it may have something to do with Idaho, not only a BoDeans song but a place to live, I can't be sure.)
4. I read with great interest stories about your family and your sister's braids (can your dad look up yet?).
5. I pondered where Capt'n Stubbing's wife is and why Vicki lives on a cruise ship.
6. I noted you were wearing a Dr. Seuss shirt and decided to see what you were all about.
7. I found out and sent you a message, expecting you to be too busy to notice.
Of course, I wasn't too busy to notice. After much email back and forth, she accompanied me ("You're not a psycho killer, are you?") on one of my Thursday night forays to Rolling Stones Records where I get the Reader so I can do the weekly update of The Chicago Shows List. It all went uphill from there.