Blog: Articles filed under friends

My life seems to be full of countdowns lately. Two days until the premiere of Battlestar Galactica. Five days until classes end. Eight days until my calculus exam. And so on. Now I‘ve just added one more: 36 days until I fly to Ohio to meet someone I know only online.

As someone who spends most of his time online, I’ve come to know many people whom I‘ve never met in my offline life. Some of them I consider close friends. I’m sure that many people, particularly those in my demographic, interact other the Internet with foreigners all the time. We are a global village, as Marshall McLuhan might say. Still, going to a foreign country (yes, America is a foreign country!) to meet an online friend is a big step. It’s increasingly common despite the pervasive fear of Internet predators. I’m not going to meet up with “sparky004m” from a faceless channel on some yuppie IRC network, however. That would probably be asking for trouble. Sorry, sparky.

Lauren and I met on deviantART. I used to be quite active there until school ate up my time and I devoted my writing time to novels instead of short stories. Lauren regularly read one of my offline-friend’s submissions. She was impressed by the depth of critique I gave this friend’s poetry and asked me to comment on hers. So I read her work, looked at her art, and she reciprocated. Eventually we began to chat via AIM. In many ways, it was much like any other online friendship. We had conversations (sometimes quite long), discussed our lives, compared our countries (go Canada!), and whatnot. Yet through some wonderful sequence of cosmic events, our friendship was deeper than the average online friendship usually is. Lauren’s one of my best friends, even though we’ve never met in person. We just seem to sync.

After a while, we started having audio conversations, and then audio/video conversations, using Skype. (Yes, I‘m plugging software. Get over it.) Video chats add a whole new dimension to any online relationship, making conversations seem much more real and sometimes more natural. It was so cool being able to talk to this girl in Ohio as if she were in the same room as me! Plus, it does provide security. Thanks to these conversations, I’m reasonably sure Lauren is not a muscular biker named Doris. If she is, Doris has gone to extreme lengths to create an elaborate deception at my expense, so I applaud her dedication! Still, I was somewhat shocked when Lauren invited me to visit her. I got used to the idea quickly, but initially I thought she was joking. We talked about it, and I realized she was quite serious—and the more I thought about it, the more appealing the idea became. Speculation turned quickly into planning, and now the plans are coming to fruition.

There’s more excitement to this trip than just the fact that I’ll be meeting Lauren for the first time, of course. This will be my second trip on an airplane. I don’t get out much. :P My brother and I took a plane to Hamilton, ON once to visit my grandparents, who live in Waterloo. That was several years ago, however; since then, I’ve never been on a plane. So this will be my first time flying alone, to a foreign country—and I have to catch a connection in Minneapolis. Then I’ll be spending two weeks in Columbus, OH. This will be a welcome vacation—I don’t think I’ve left the city in two years!

I‘m posting this tonight because I bought my tickets tonight. The tickets are non-refundable, so I just passed the point of no return. In 36 days, I’m going to Ohio!

But before that happens, I have lots of planning, shopping, and packing to do. The next month will be filled with lots of preparations for this trip. I‘m kind of overwhelmed at the moment because I’m bubbling with excitement. I don’t know how much I’ll be online while I’m in Columbus. I hope to get my site redesigned before then, but that is a very optimistic hope. Maybe this will provide some more motivation to code quickly. Then I can blog about my days in Ohio, from Ohio!

Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!

Mr. Gradgrind, Hard Times by Charles Dickens.

Sorry Mr. Gradgrind, but I refuse to believe in a universe based entirely on fact. The universe can’t be based only on fact and science. If it were, why would we have emotions? Why would we feel terrible half the time and ecstatic the other? Why put ourselves through so much pain and trauma? If the universe were based on fact, we wouldn’t need this. We could be moist robots going about with logic and reason. But we aren‘t. And to me, that means that there’s something out there logic and reason cannot explain. Our emotions are our ways of navigating that which we can’t quantify. And that’s magic.

I had an awesome day today. I fixed a problem with VSNS Lemon’s new code, which I celebrated by playing the Hallelujah Chorus. Then Ms. Sukalo called, and we agreed to meet at 2:30 at Starbucks, as she’s in town this week. At 2:00, Carly logged onto MSN. She’s also a former student of Ms. Sukalo, so I thought it would be cool if she came along, and I invited her. So we both went to Starbucks and had a great visit with Sooks.

Then I picked Cortney up from Kakabeka and we went back to my house, where we cooked dinner. My dad was out of town again until tonight, so I cooked dinner for the second time ever from scratch. I did the same diced chicken type dish. It was good to have some help though. After dinner, Cortney and I watched the first disc of nip/tuck; she ended up lending me the entire season.

Too often I feel lonely over my lack of a real social life. It’s too easy to become withdrawn, especially when one doesn’t do things with friends often enough. Days like these that remind me of how great my friends are … these are days worth blogging about, so I can remember them years from now.

It’s scary, sometimes. My peers and I are growing up. Our parents aren’t driving us to each other’s houses anymore; we‘re driving ourselves around. While preparing dinner with Cortney, I realized this experience was one of the most adult things I’ve done since I turned 18, because my relationships with my friends are changing. No longer fuelled by the day-to-day interaction of high school, our friendships endure because of what we hold in common and new types of interaction, like making dinner together.

Now if I can survive this weekend from Hell, then there’s hope for the future after all!

The clock hit midnight and we watched Dick Clark (who is still alive, yes) kiss someone on national television. In order to get this “pretty picture” out of our mind, we (my friends Laura and Rhiannon—we were playing DDR and watching movies) came up with the insane idea of phoning our former English teacher, Ms. Sukalo, who currently resides in the Big Apple.

So Laura dug out a phone card and we attempted to reach her several times. For the first few attempts, no luck. Busy line, “circuits were busy”, blah, blah. Apparently everyone drinks and dials on New Year’s Eve. Go figure. Finally, at about the third try, we get through! Success—or was it?

“United Airlines.” United Airlines? United Airlines? So I thought I had dialled a wrong number, and hang up, too chicken to say anything. Of course Laura pointed out that they had probably just said that as a New Year’s (drunken) prank. We tried it again—line was busy. At this point, we wanted to check that we had the number right. We went on an epic quest, first confirming the area code, then confirming it was not the number of United Airlines. Boy were we dumb. Lastly, we looked up the phone number in the white pages and it was a cell phone. So we tried again.

Fifth try got us United Airlines again. This time we weren’t giving up. I gallantly surrendered the phone to Rhiannon, who has more pluck than me, and she asked in succession these question three: “Where are you located?” (New York City). “What is your address?” (We have it right here… one moment.) “What’s your phone number?”

At this point, we were hearing hushed voices in the background. Then suddenly someone (hello, Ms. Sukalo) burst out laughing and the voices were no longer so hushed. We tried to elicit further response only to have the call cut out on us and get replaced by a busy signal. And that’s where this tale ends. Or does it?

Well of course not, because I just have to take things too far. I fired off an email to Ms. Sukalo with contributions from Laura and Rhiannon, congratulating her on redecorating her apartment into an airline. And that’s where we left things. I guess we’ll find out tomorrow (or the day after that … or the day after that—check your email, Ms. Sukalo). But it was an interesting New Year’s diversion!

Speaking of which, I have fallen in love with Dance Dance Revolution. I suck at it, but it’s just too hard to hate that game.

Have a happy new year. Speaking of which, if you haven’t already heard, we’ve decided to give 2007 a miss, since it probably won’t be a very good year anyway. I’m thinking a rerun of 2002 may be in order. Sorry for the inconvenience this abrupt change in the schedule causes, but I‘m sure we’ll all adjust soon.

Don’t touch that remote.

No, I didn’t go to Rock the Fort this year (you American people of course have no idea what I’m talking about, let alone you poor people in Britain, Singapore, Ireland, India, etc., but bear with me). However, today my friend Laura and I did take a trip out to Old Fort William Historical Park to take a tour and have some fun (and to laugh at our friends who were working out there).

For those of you who don’t know, Fort William was the largest fur trading fort west of Montreal and was essentially the “bottleneck” for furs coming eastward from the interior of the country. Back in the nineteenth century, this is why people settled here. The Historical Park, rebuilt to detail after the original Fort burned down, attempts to bring that atmosphere alive with costumed guides who play the roles of all sorts of people there, including the famous voyageurs.

Several of my friends work there, including Graham and Cortney, so Laura and I agreed that it would be cool to spend the day down there and take a guided tour and see if we could locate our friends. Unfortunately, that was easier said than done. Once we paid at the Visitor Centre for admission, we sort of got…lost. I blame it on the maps; they really weren’t that nice and accurate, so how were we supposed to know which way to go? Anyway, we spent a full ten minutes wandering aimlessly and ended up all the way behind the fort, where a kindly costumed fellow supervising some day campers pointed us in the right direction of the main gate. Once there, we waited a bit more and then the tour started.

Our tour took us around a bunch of the fort, although not all of it. We got to learn a lot about the history of the fort, the fur trade, etc. It was really very fascinating and brought back a lot of memories of grade eight history (when we first learned this). After the initial tour ended, Laura and I left and ran into one of her friends. Then we ran into Graham, a fellow of Scottish descent who proudly plays the bagpipes and wears a kilt. He pointed us in the direction of another friend, Cortney, who gets to play a voyageur’s wife (which is really a tough life indeed).

Cortney was in the process of giving another tour, so Laura and I tagged along. She took us to different places than the other guide; we got to see the hospital, kitchens (from which I tried a bit of hardtack). We went to the shops to see what the latest fashions were (apparently my shorts were out of style at the time and leggings were in). Then we went out to join in some singing and dancing.

We sang and danced (some of which I got on video ) until it was virtually closing time. It was a great time, nice to see my friends and a nice way to spend the day, which was very hot but had a cooling breeze. Then, after a nice group photo, it was time to go home and make this blog entry. Which you have now read.