The start of 2012 also marks six months with my girlfriend, who shall henceforth be referred to in this blog as Prettybird. It has been a tremendous half-year spent with her, so much so that I’ll risk hyperbole and cliche by saying that I fall  in love with her a little more each day.

Needless to say we spent New Year’s Eve together. We had planned on heading out to a party, but when those plans fell through, we did something that I wouldn’t have predicted so much as a month ago.

We played Magic: The Gathering.

It’s unusual considering that when December started, I hadn’t played in more than five years and she had never played. But in the process of dusting off some old cards with the plan of selling them off, I actually ended up getting bit by the bug again. Initially, when I suggested to Prettybird that we should try and play, she laughed at me. But the math and strategy appealed to my left-brained companion – or she decided to humor me just that once – and we played a game.

And somehow, someway, she got into it. Especially when she started winning. Winning and winning and winning. I had never set out to let her win. The first couple of games I went easy just like anyone would when you’re teaching someone a game. But I never took a dive. She kicked my ass with the deck I made her out of those old cards I had, and then kicked my ass with some new cards I bought us both for Christmas. And we went from playing once every two or three days to two or three times a day. And somehow, she’d always win. She has some innate ability for it. Her logic trumps my creativity on the battlefield, it seems.

I finally, finally won my first game against her today. I won’t go into the details or the spoils of my victory aside from this one rather remarkable result: After I went to work, Prettybird sat down and built her very first custom Magic deck.

A geek is born on the dawn of a magical new year!