Alex Stengel: First-year Architecture student
Childhood Hero: Lindsay Lohan
If you could describe yourself as a movie/album title, what would it be?: Putin’s Kiss (2011)
Ideal first date: Customizing a sandwich at Sheetz
Deal breakers: Android user
Peter Layne: First-year College student
Childhood Hero: Michael Phelps
If you could describe yourself as a movie/album title, what would it be?: Dazed and Confused
Ideal First Date: Dumplings from the dumpling truck
Deal Breakers: Milk in the bowl before the cereal
Peter and Alex met around 1 p.m. on the Corner.
Peter: I woke up, I was pretty tired. I had an Arabic quiz at noon and got out at 12:50. And I thought I'd get out earlier, but I didn't. So after the quiz I walked over towards the Corner and called Alex. She was still in bed, but then she ordered an Uber and came. And then, neither of us really wanted to make a decision about where we were going to eat, but then we ended up going to Boylan, which was super fun.
Alex: Yeah, so I went with Peter on a nice lunch date to Boylan Heights. It was raining, and we met outside of Mincer’s.
Peter: I think we just started walking down the hill down the Corner and couldn't make a decision on any of the other places, so Boylan was kind of like the last line of defense.
Alex: Peter said he really liked the food and the general atmosphere there. And since it was raining, it seemed like a nice place to go sit inside.
Peter: We talked about her upcoming trip to Nepal. And it sounds like her dad has done a lot of climbing and stuff, so we talked about that for a while. We talked about summer jobs. I worked at a gas station, and she worked as a sailing instructor — yeah, interesting contrast. Hers sounds like way more fun than mine was.
Alex: First we talked about how extensive the menu was — lots of options at Boylan. But he told me he liked the wings, so he ordered the wings. And I decided to order the wings too because I thought that celery sounded nice and fresh because I was not feeling great on that Friday morning. So yeah, we got that. Peter's a Texas boy from Austin. We talked about his upbringing there. We talked about my life too, in Greenwich and California. And he told me that he spent the beginning of his life in Washington D.C. And then he told me that he actually played on Prime Time Lacrosse, which is the lacrosse team out of Westchester County, N.Y., which a lot of the boys from my high school play on.
Peter: Alex talked about her get-rich-quick scheme of student charging very expensive textbooks, reading them in two weeks or so and then returning them for cash as a way of making money, since her parents pay for them, but she can get the cash back. Yeah, pretty absurd. She’s really into it. We laughed for a long time about that.
Alex: We talked about his dog Shortcake. I would say Peter and I are mere acquaintances, but I remember the first time I came across Peter he told me his dog was named Shortcake, which I thought was a funny name, so I put it to memory. So I remembered to ask him how Shortcake was doing. Then he told me he has a cat too, an evil cat. They had to get their cat declawed because it would swipe at his friends.
Peter: I don't think there were any red flags. I mean, I had a really good time. Knowing Stengel a little bit, like, the whole textbook thing, if I didn’t know her at first I would’ve been like, ‘Uh, okay.’ But knowing Alex, that’s just how she is.
Alex: So I was out on Thursday night, and I ended up actually losing my phone at this house. And then I didn’t realize I had lost it until I got to this other house. But the jacket that I was wearing actually had holes in the pocket, so I’ve lost my phone a lot wearing it. Actually, the night of Christmas formals, I had lost my phone in Mad Bowl, and I was trying to go get it on my own and then ran into Peter. He went with me [to Mad Bowl] because he didn’t want me to look for it alone. That was one of the first times I met Peter and knew that he was just a great boy. So anyway, on Thursday I was looking everywhere for my phone. I didn’t see Peter that night because of boys’ rush rules, but it turned out that he had been one of the most recent texts on my phone because he’d been texting about our date. So when the boys at this house found my phone they called him by swiping on the text. And so Peter had been looking everywhere for my phone, and I hadn't seen anyone else that night, so Peter found my friend and gave it to her. The next day I woke up and I emailed my friend telling her that’d I’d lost my phone, and then she emailed back and said she had it and that Peter had given it to her.
Peter: We talked about how I saved her phone the night before. So I didn't actually see her that night, but I was texting with her. Maybe about where we were going to go to lunch. And I guess she had left her phone somewhere or lost it somewhere. And whoever found it saw my name because I had just texted her. So they called me, and said, “Hey, we have this girl's phone, could you come meet it and give it to somebody?” So, I left where I was and went to Mad Bowl to come meet them. I took the phone from there. And that’s when I found one of her friends and gave it to her to give [to Alex].
Alex: The other thing that’s funny about that, I’m usually really good with names, but when I first got to school I was overwhelmed with names, so I put identifiers next to people's names [in my contacts]. And so, when I met Peter, it was like, right after summer and so his hair had highlights, but they were really ginger highlights, and he had a lot of freckles. So I put his name contact in my phone as Ginger Pete, and I just have never changed it. So when those boys found the phone they were calling the contact Ginger Pete.
Peter: Our lunch was interrupted by Cole and Parker. Good to see those guys. It was nice sitting at Boylan and people watching. Hard to describe it, but we were sitting in that area by the window that overlooks the Corner, so we saw a lot of familiar faces.
Alex: Cole Wise, a previous Love Connections alum, actually was at Boylan getting lunch with his friend, Parker Driscoll. And they came up to us and said hi, asked us how our date was going and they actually took our picture. But yeah Peter is a charming, I would say, casual ginger. A nice boy.
Peter: After we ate, we got our checks and still sat there for another hour just because it was cold and rainy out, and I don't think either of us really wanted to leave. And we were just having a good time talking. Super fun. And then she wanted to Uber back [to] dorms, but I convinced her just to walk because that seemed a little excessive. The rain had stopped a little bit, so it had turned out to be a nice day.
Alex: Well, after two hours of conversation, he offered to walk home to dorms with me in the rain. But then we actually saw some friends in the window at Corner Juice so stopped by there and recounted our date to them.
Peter: I thought it would be a little bit more awkward, but it wasn't. The conversation never really dropped, so there was never any long pause or awkward silence, which was nice. Super fun. I think we were both tired. I think neither of us really wanted to do anything that day, so we just kind of sat there for a long time, people watched.
Alex: I don’t know, is this love that I’m feeling? Just kidding haha. But no, it was fun. I actually had a really fun time. I was feeling like s—t that day, but it was still really fun.
Peter: Yeah I would [go on another date]. I had a good time. It’s also just nice to have an actual meal with someone because the past few times I’ve seen her has just been when we’re out and about, but it’s nice to sit down with someone.
Alex: Yeah, [I] totally [would go on another date]. I think Love Connection is great, a nice way to get to know people better. It wasn't a blind date for me, but I had never been alone with Peter in that setting before, so it was still a nice way to get to know him. It took me a lot to get out of bed that day, but I’m glad I did it.
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