It all started with me playing Doom...I first played the game in late '96, as far as i can remember. That was just after i got my first computer! That game had a big influence on me back then since that was one of the first games i saw on the pc and it was pretty scary too!
I used to play it at home with my sister or sometimes friends would come by and play it too.. Even my dad was playing Doom! The first thing he used to do after coming home from work was to turn on the pc and play doom1..I could hear him playing for hours from the other room..Sometimes me and my sister would watch him play and it was pretty fun since he became really good at it!
..That was the beginning. After a few years (probably 1999, i dont remember exactly), while watching a French music channel on tv (called MCM) i came across a show about all the popular games of that time and their creators. I was really amazed to see that they were talking about games on a music channel!
So i was sitting there watching the interviews with all those game programers thinking how awesome it was to actualy get to see the people behind all those games...At one point they presented John Romero as one of the programmers of the game Doom and at first i was like: "Holy s#&*! This is one of the guys behind Doom!". I thought that was soo cool!
I remember I was watching him (i dont recall if everything was translated in French or not - even so i understand some French) and i couldnt really hear what he was saying because i was just staring at him! I thought he was super hot and he had something special about him, but i couldn't tell what...

After that, he sort of became my obsession because i couldn't get his image outta my mind...When i was playing Doom i was trying to think what he felt while making that game or when he was playing it...In a short time everybody knew about how much i liked John Romero because i was mentioning him to almost every new person i was meeting - asking if they heard about him or if they ever played his games. Some people played some of his games but didnt care about the people that created it..Some got to know about him after meeting me :)

It probably was in late 2001/the beginning of 2002 when i found his website. It was just after i started learing how to surf the net, send emails, etc. (back then i never had internet at home).
I remember that the email i sent to him was one of the first emails i've ever sent! And it was kinda nutty too for a first one, since i told him "i love you" in that message!
A few weeks after, at the point i lost my hope of getting any answer back from him, i got a message from him!! I couldnt believe it was real, i was really happy...When i saw the message i jumped from my chair and started laughing and going nuts "a lil bit" (i was in a cybercafe). I told all my friends about it and they were all like: "Geez, of course its not him! Why would that guy answer your email?! He's too popular to answer random people's messages! It's probably just somebody he hired to answer his messages or something.."
I was hearing that from almost all my friends so i started to stop believing that its really him.. In one email i even tried to test him somehow to see if it really was John Romero - only that i didnt know exactly how to do that. I remember i asked him a question about Doom1 (How do you get to the blue key on the second level of the game) thinking that if it wasnt him he wouldnt know the answer...heh...And he sent me back a message with the right answer...But i still wasnt sure if it was really him!

That was actually the beginning of our friendship in a way...I was messaging him pretty often about how i was doing, random things from school, family, etc. and he would message me back. All this was in my last years of high school and we had never actually had a realtime chat at that point. That happend towards the end of high school (when i was skipping school alot and spending most of my time at the cybercafe). My friends were making fun of me because of the fact i was coming everyday to the icafe and chatting with him almost everyday.
They were saying how i'll be old and in a wheelchair and i'll still come there to talk to John! They were getting really tired of me talking about him all the time..
In time i got to learn more and more things about him from online interviews and chatting with him.
I thought he's the coolest and nicest person ever...I couldnt believe he actualy takes his time to talk with his fans like that. He was really funny and open minded- and i started liking him more and more.. I knew i wouldnt have any chance to ever see him, much less to be with him, so i was trying really hard to forget about him...But i never forgot about him. I knew alot of things about him, i admired him alot and i was happy about him- because he was telling me how he has an awesome girlfriend that's really smart and sexy and he loves her alot.
All that i wanted was to find someone to love me like that too, i wanted to find my half too... A short time before finishing high school he tells me how his gf left him and everything and i couldn't believe it! I was feeling really sad for him..At the same time i felt that maybe one day (probably in another life..) i will be with him.
Anyway, after i finished high school (at one of the final exams i had a picture of John in my purse!) we started becoming better friends - at that point he knew me pretty well but we never ever talked about being together or him liking me or anything even close to that. The first pictures of me i ever sent him were maybe one year after we started messaging and talking to each other - probably in 2002, something like that. But he knew I liked him alot and everything because i told him that alot of times before.. I knew i had no chance to be with him though..

One day (8 September 2003, it was my mom's bday) i was supposed to meet a friend in a park - i was with my friend, Georgiana, taking my school allowance from the postal office (in Romania, if you're a student you get a monthly allowance from the government) and i was running late meeting that friend so i said i won't go meet him anymore coz its too late and he probably left by then anyway..

So we decided to go at the cybercafe together. And so we did... I got there and i saw John was online. I was really happy that i could talk with him.. We started talking and i found out he's not seeing anyone there at that time and i told him that if he was living in my town i would try really hard to be with him! All the conversation started more like a joke and of course i didnt take it too serious until he said he'd like me to be his girlfriend! ^$@##%&^%$$!!!!!!!! I didnt know if im dreaming or not...I went nuts! ..
I showed my friend Georgiana what he had told me and she couldnt believe it either...She didnt really think it was real either..
That's when John and I got together (online). We began talking even more online and then on the phone...We started talking about seeing each other in person..That happened at the end of november 2003. I was super nervous seeing him for the first time in the airport. I went there with my sister Ruxandra and my friend Radu..I saw him there waiting and i thought he looks just like i thought he'd look like in reality! I went towards him and said "Hi! You're John?" and he said "Yes"....
Everything else after that came naturally, we connected almost instantly like we knew each other for a lifetime :) We held hands and talked alot, laughed and had fun together the whole time he was there with me! I felt like those were the nicest days of my life...I was really happy to be with him and in his company i felt better than in anyone else's company! He's super funny and easy going and we were just having fun even just staying all day in the house..
The week we spent together seemed like one day - we were having fun all the time, just staying inside the house or going out. When he left i felt very sad and i knew i gotta be with him forever, i felt he's the right person for me, the person i was wished really bad to find!
Then followed hours of phone calls and cards sent back and forth...

The next time he came to Romania (26th january 2004) we were married! It happend so fast first of all because we wanted to be together (in the same place) really bad and the only way to do that (in this lifetime) was to get married and to get a spouse visa (k3 visa)..Of course it didn't take at all as long as we thought it would take - it took almost 1 year and a half before i got my visa because of some errors along the way (two of them were made by the visa centers that were processing my papers).
..All that waiting drove both of us nuts even though we saw each other two more times along the way: once in april 2004 and then for John's birthday in october 2004.

I finally got here in the USA on 6th may...after 20 hours of traveling and having to change flights 3 times! (It was my first time on a plane, too!) Thats basically what John did in order to see me for 8 times total - that's around 160 hours (6-7 days total) just to travel to see me during 2 years! That's crazy!
I got in San Diego on 6th may 2005 at 11:30pm (friday)...I couldnt believe John and I were finally together after all the time of waiting apart from each other..
It took me almost a week to sleep at a normal time, because it's a difference of 10 hours between Bucharest and San Diego! The first weekend together here we just hung out, went down to the Pacific Ocean.. It was really awesome, everything was really different for me because i've never traveled outside Romania before.

The first two weeks here were crunch mode for John - he and his whole team at Midway were working really hard on finishing the E3 demo levels for Gauntlet. I stayed with him at work all through the whole crunch mode, getting back home even at 8 in the morning and John having to work the weekends too! After the whole crunch mode thingie we jumped right into E3 mode! :D That was way better than not sleeping at night though...
E3 was a cool experience even though i didnt have enough time to check out too many things there. I liked alot the new Mortal Kombat (Shaolin Monks) from Midway - its really awesome.. Gauntlet is shaping up really good too. I finished the demo a few times and its really fun to play! :) I'm waiting forward to play the whole game.
So this is the latest news about me and *most important* the story of how i met John and got married to him...I couldnt tell the whole story, just the most important parts that i remembered - because it's too much to talk about! :)

Hope you enjoyed reading my story! :) It took me a few hours to write it down..