Good heavens. Today is my friend Janne’s birthday. Janne turned 28 the year I met her; I remember quite specifically four years ago thinking I was the age then that she was when we met. We both of us thought that was pretty funny. Time, she had flown!
Time, she has flown even more. I’ve known Janne–who is one of my oldest Internet friends–for twelve years now. I figured out she was in Europe in early 1994, not because of any idiomatic uses of language, but because of the hours she was online to play at TwoMoons, the Elfquest MUSH we both frequented. Janne taught me HTML, for Heaven’s sake. From Norway. In November 1994. My *career path* for most of the last eight years has been because of her. (That’s a good thing!) It’s unquestionable that without the net I never would have met her.
And yet I was one of the very first people she told when she was pregnant with her daughter Catriona, who is named in part after me. Pretty soon I’m going to be living in Europe, too, and with any sort of luck we’ll be able to get together and hang out a couple times a year, which would rock beyond words. Such is the strange and wonderful world we live in.
Happy birthday, Janne. I hope you’ve had a fantastic day. :)
(Also, on a completely unrelated note, it appears to be a good day for my friends turning in dissertation drafts. Congrats, Laura and Lance, and good luck.)
I’m all blushing and tearyeyed here, thank you for the wonderful words! And I’ve had a fantastic day indeed heaped with congratulations and presents and balloons and all that comes with a proper birthday. Looking forward to seeing you and Ted again once you’ve established yourselves on the emerald isle :)