By all rights, Mindy Montgomery should still be living in, well, Montgomery County. She grew up in Bethesda and graduated from Walt Whiteman High School in 1971.  And her brother still lives here. She's even a descendant of the Richard Montgomery, the Revolutionary War general after whom the county and the high school in Rockville are named.

For the lognest time, Virginia wasn't in Mindy's sights. "It might as well have been Mars when we were growing up," she recalls.

So what is she doing stuck in afternoon traffic on Route 193 in Fairfax County commuting from her nursing job at Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington, D.C., to her home over there?  The question hangs in the ether as she tries to explain over her cell phone why she moved from Bethesda's Bannockburn neighborhood, a mere seven-minute drive up MacArthur Boulevard from her workplace, across the Potomac River to what seems like another planet to many Marylanders.

It all boils down to one word: love...