We disagreed on all our favorite sports teams. I went to Clemson, like the Red Sox, and the Bruins. For some reason every Red Sox-Orioles game that Tony and I went to together, the Red Sox won. When we'd go to the Capitals-Bruins game, the Bruins would win. And of course when we went to a Clemson-Maryland football game Clemson won. Tony almost stopped going to watch his teams play mine, until Maryland beat Clemson in a basketball game we were at. And of course Tony screamed like a maniac the whole game.

Tony was the first person that I'd call to get a guy's opinion. He was also a screener of any guy that I dated. You could always count on Tony to give his opinion, being as up front as ever and never holding anything back. He always referred to any guy that I was dating by a nickname that he had made up. Suction Cup Boy, the Player, and Stud Man are a few that I remember.

On our rides to work together, sometimes we'd listen to the #2 track "Red & Milky White" on the God Street Wine album over and over again the whole way there, and the whole way home. We'd plan to drive in to work together at night. We'd both be ambitious and want to get to work early. Needless to say, in the morning one of us would call the other to say that we were running late. No matter who made the call, we were always both running late. But the next time we planned to go in together we'd set a really early time again and do the whole thing over.

In a grad school class, we had this teacher who said "clearly" a lot. At the beginning of class, Tony, a friend of ours (Doug Ray), and myself would take guesses on the number of times our professor would say "clearly". Then we'd all spend the entire class making hashes in our notes marking the times "clearly" was said to see who'd win.

I remember one day he told me he considered himself a beer snob, and a coffee snob and that he had aspirations of one day becoming a wine snob.

He was appreciative of the little things. The first day that he met one of his new doctors, the doctor offered him a glass of water. Tony accepted, and the doctor took a mug off of his shelf and went to get Tony some water. Tony mentioned how great he thought it was that the doctor would take a mug right off of his shelf and get Tony a glass of water.

Last Christmas he had some raspberry candy canes that I loved. He knew that I'd make myself sick eating them all, so he hid them in his desk and only gave me one every day or so. I also love candy corns. For some reason he didn't mind me getting sick eating too many of them. Whenever he had them, he'd tempt me with them until I had eaten so many I had a stomach ache. He'd just smile.

At a Clemson Maryland football game that we went to, we sat in the Maryland section around all of Tony's friends. I'm still amazed to this day at how good the National Anthem sounded sitting in that section.

The first time Tony met my then boyfriend, now husband Scott, was at a Paul Hill Chorale Christmas Concert. After they met Scott made a comment that Tony had amazing eyes, and Tony gave Scott an initial thumbs up because he was wearing a Santa Claus hat.

Tony was at Ballston mall wearing a bandana one day after he had lost his hair. A security guard came over to him and asked him to take his bandana off, people were not allowed to wear them in the mall. Tony got a big kick out of that, thinking that the security guard must have thought he was in a gang. I remember him laughing about how he was this clean-cut guy dressed in khaki shorts and a polo shirt, being mistaken for a gang member.

He told me once that he thought Pizzeria Paradisio (in Dupont Circle) had the best pizza that he'd ever had.

One time we were on a business trip to San Diego. We were working at our office there, Tony had finished his work, but he hung around helping me track down a bug in the software. We found it around midnight. We were so tired and giddy; I remember both of us being so ecstatic about finding the bug.