I just love this story of R. Harrison's "meet cute" with his wife. I've heard of having chemistry, but cyanide might be pushing it..... Dry Ice & Cyanide - or - How I Met My Wife, by R. HarrisonIf character is defined by how you act when you’re alone, then love is more than how you act when you’re together. Dry Ice and Cyanide. Or How I met my wife. It was at the introduction party for the new graduate students, of which I was one, green, wet behind the ears and unaware of it. Typical lab-fodder. In between the beer and the dancing, except well, the stereo was only a tuner, not an amp, so it was more like in between the beers and the conversation, that I met her. Actually, I'd gone to refill my glass, to get away from the crush and noise, and she was standing there, next to the keg. Her appearance definitely improved the scene. She was (and is) a babe; a devastatingly intelligent babe at that. For once in my life I chatted calmly instead of issuing the inane nervous chatter that usually bubbled out when I met a girl. It must have been fate, but her strong English accent probably helped. I can't remember all the details, but we talked about life on the rough side of town – where the rents were low enough for the students and the housing, once proud and rich, hadn't completely crumbled. As an aside, my building still had the tubes for gas lights, that and bare, naked wires on ceramic posts – first generation electricity, but I digress. Like every building in that city, it had roaches, armies and armies of roaches. A horde of roaches who threatened to conquer the world. Genghis Khan had nothing on them. You could tell they felt, “We out-lasted the dinosaurs for this? Crumbs? It's time for real meat.” They hid in every crevice and watched threateningly - waving their antenna at me when I showered. Either that or they wanted popcorn, I never could tell. We also had mice, but they were pets. Especially when we found they ate the bugs. I mean what are a few fleas between friends and allies, united against a common foe. Her apartment had the same issue, but she'd controlled it. She told me she used 'prussic acid', an old word for hydrogen cyanide, to deal with them. I was hooked, she was a woman after my own heart, a serious chemist who brooked no nonsense. That would show those roaches who was boss. We must have parted, but next I remember we talked for a long time while I fiddled with the dry ice used to cool something, and to generate the sodden chilly fog of water vapor that filled the rooms. Not only was she British, but she was a post-doc, way up the academic feeding chain from a rookie like me. She worked in the lab where I was assigned my first rotation. I was in luck – we'd meet again. The course of true love is never straight, and there were a few misadventures on the way, but she was in my dreams almost from the time I met her. By the way, she said 'Boracic acid' (boric acid which is much safer, though less effective) and I'd misheard her, as she explained to me one afternoon. By then it didn’t matter. About R. HarrisonInternational man of mystery, able to split infinitives with a single bound, faster than a speeding semicolon, and equally inept in several languages, including hieroglyphics, R. Harrison has taken a break from making the world safer for computers to write sweet romantic and historical fiction. A mild-mannered professor by day (hey, it's a job), a dashing author by night, and an all around great guy, he writes his own biography. Some parts of which might be true. Connect with R. Harrison online: Blog * Facebook * Twitter * Google+ * Amazon Sign up for his newsletter here Read More From R. Harrison in The Curious Profession of Dr. CravenWhat is a poor anatomist to do? Twenty pounds, wasted, up in smoke when a beautifulyoung woman wakes up on the dissection table. Someone has made a ghastly error. Dr Richard Craven, an ethical doctor, has but one choice, to nurse the girl back to health and restore her to her family. That’s when his troubles start. She can’t remember anything, only her first name, and she isn’t even sure about that. As his household helps her to recover her strength and her memories trickle, then flood back, their mutual attraction buds into a flowing passion. Unfortunately one of the things she’s conveniently forgotten was her arranged engagement to a vulgar, but wealthy son of a Northern industrialist. Not only that, but there is some deep dark secret about Dr Craven that her father believes makes him completely ineligible. Resolving the resulting tangle in this sweet historical romance takes the combined efforts of the doctor’s once profligate brother, the Earl of Craven, a displaced French Royal, le Duc de Bourbon, and the visit of a mysterious French Baron to the sacred floor or Almack’s.urb Get it here: Amazon
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