Meme: Know who your friends are
I've seen this meme a few places now...
There are many amusing stories I could tell you about nearly everyone on this list, but I have deliberately restricted myself to introductory stories of one kind or another to save space.
Where to start....? This can go in two or three long chains, most of which started when I was probably 12ish.
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lynthia is my best friend from Jr. High and Highschool (though she insists she remembers me from 2nd grade). She ran up to me one day in highschool to declare "I'm getting married!", which nearly gave me a heart attack. It seems it was actually her *character* that was getting married (she herself didn't get married until a couple years ago), which leads me to NERO (the subject of nerowest), and how I know
jazric
lmorningstar
satanya
sylvan
and later, how Lynthia met and even later introduced me to
technocowboy
Via various NERO players I got involved with other LARPs which is how I met
medancer
merovingian
stealingtime_
And the charmingly brooding chainsawraven. We actually originally met at a Vampire LARP where I was not in game, and thus nobody would speak to me, except chainsawraven, whose character was a Malkavian, and could thus get away with it. He was cute and amusing, but I was already attached, so I ignored the attraction entirely until much later, when I had broken up with Terrag. We dated for a few loud months before I realized I needed more time to get over Terrag, so I broke up with him.
Speaking of Terrag (the first man I ever fell in love with), he and I met at my first NERO event. We broke up ages ago and he is currently dating auroradawn_21, a lovely woman he met through NERO as well. I met her myself at Lynthia's wedding shower, where upon hearing my name she said "Oh YOU'RE Ember!", and I was afraid. It turned out ok, though. We hit it off immediately and spent several hours after the shower drinking Chai at the coffee shop across the lot.
While we were still together Terrag and I had decided to try Meridian 59, a pre-Evercrack MMORPG (oddly I don't seem to have found any of my old Meridian friends here in LJ yet...), which is how I got into the Elfwood art galleries, which is how I met jemstone, though we'd run into eachother years before at a party thrown by friends of mine and my mom's, and usually see eachother at BayCon nowadays. shadopanther is, of course, Jemstone's lovely mate.
gremliness I also met via a LARP, Adventures Unlimited, though I run into her so often in so many places I had to think long and hard to figure out exactly how it all started.
bellacrow (the focus of the bellahive) I met through Iron Chuck, whom I met via my Mom's former housemates (whose journals I would like to friend, if they have any), whom I met via NERO.
It was also they who introduced me to jadecat9 but she is included here primarily because she is my Reiki Teacher.
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Over the years and years of attending various conventions (thanks Mom!), including but hardly limited to BayCon and PantheaCon (the subjects of baycon and pantheacon respectively), I met an awful lot of interesting people.
These folks I've run into so often for so long that I cannot hope remember our first meeting. Maybe they remember - go pester them!
blackfyr and lysana
cadhla (I may blame her for teatime2)
figmo
hilarypoet
lokiz_mom
norsebiker43
seshat
supersniffles
threetimes
lynxcat - I met more recently via BayCon. I can't remember why exactly we first started talking, but I think it was LosCon this last year that really clinched in my mind that we were friends.
pentaclemoon - Her earliest memories of me seem to involve my hiding under the tables in ops when the other spawn of fen had been mean to me, or I was just generally tired of being a kid at Con. I knew how to keep my mouth shut (quit laughing!), and I was cute, so she kept me around. That explains how I got into the habit of hanging out in ConOps, which is how I met...
mecracker - Mr. Midnight Ops Man. I met him one con in ops, and we talked the gods awful hours away, wherein I learned that the world is a much, much stranger place than I had ever imagined... well, assumming everything he told me was true, anyway.
skydancer, farmount and her boyfriend Nevynn I met all at once wandering the halls of WorldCon this last fall. It seems like I've known Farmount forever now...
Though I had met her repeatedly at various cons, my recognising karisu_sama outside of a hotel room at the Double Tree is largely Farmount's fault, though oddly enough I had randomly stopped by her house some years before while picking up a friend of LunaticSX's...
Backing up, BayCon is also how I met lunaticsx, whom I spent about 10 months hanging out with every weekend, while he introduce me to cool people like
digitalsidhe
cr0wgrrl
feyandstrange
glamtasm
Fandom is, not insignificantly, how I met Honor. He introduced me to his Stepmother auntiematter, and is also how I met
firehair28
cynan_poly and freyaschild
most recently collapseylamb
and of course last but not remotely least, mendou
He and Mendou, and indirectly, AuntieMatter are how I got into Hrafnar, (hence pagan, sfpagan, hammeroak, asatruar, and of course trance_class), which is where I met
lferion
countgeiger and of course the illustrious lwood
and more recently mirgar
LWood is how I got my LiveJournal, and also how I met
ardaniel
lori
purplevenus
rentravler
teloric
And last, but CERTAINLY not least in the Fandom category, BayCon is how I met my current Love, chiendarrendor. thechick is his other girlfriend, and coyotegrrrl is our housemate, and his ex.
------------------------------
Now, my Mom took me not only to Conventions, but also to Heather Alexander concerts (which are the subject of heatherfans), which is probably where I *first* saw onyxdubh, but we didn't really become friends until Chad's current girlfriend Ragani took me to his birthday party on the assumption that I would probably know many people there, which I did. The party in question was held at evergrey's house, which also accounts for her, though I mostly see her at Hrafnar these days. For his part, Onyxdubh and I share so much context that he is the ONLY person I know who is friends with all four of my best friends and yet knows not a single one of them THROUGH me!
It was Onyxdubh who introduced me to maiandra.
Speaking of best friends, and Heather Alexander concerts, it was a Heather concert sometime after highschool that I first met Chad and Wendy, who then invited me to game with them, which is how I met rhylar, and ultimately slothman (though I'd run into him several times at Cons before then).
It was Chad and Wendy who got me the job at Mpath Interactive, which is how I met Wendy's best friend preciousjade, who then became my supervisor. I later shared an apartment for a year with who is now her husband.
While working for Mpath (which later changed to HearMe) I met
aelfsciene
seaweasel
and
wicketbird
Working and playing online at Mpath is how I found the Brunching Shuttlecocks, and ultimately Brunchma.com (which is the subject of brunchma), which is how I know
cheezdanish
genarti
latinrastaqueen
mschilepepper
redtwo
and of course batyatoon, who just happens to be Cadhla's clone, which I didn't know until I happened to spot a quote of hers in batyatoon's signature.
---------------------------
Now we get to the stragglers...
tyrsalvia I met, of all places, at Bay City coffee house during the summer I was learning to drive and working crew for my sister for the the full run of a professional theatre production. My Mom and I would stop for coffee about halfway home, and always there were large groups of young people dressed in black clothing to one side, and many similarly aged people dressed in much brighter colors at the other. The latter group were caught frequently yelling at eachother, and calling their girlfriends "bitches", while the former were often found discussing the finer points of shakespeare. My Mom promptly bummed a ciggarette off the nearest goth, and we were in. After some conversation, Tyrsalvia and I realized we both knew Honor, whom I was dating long-distance at the time.
elishevateth I actually friended because the name looked familiar, and as it turned out we have many friends and interests in common, and live not terribly far apart. The funny thing is, I'm not sure whether or not we've ever met, but her journal is quite interesting to read.
arhuaine found me, I believe, and wanted to read my Pagan filter.
wiccanpolice I found through the LJ Pagan community, and friended because I find it a hilarious read.
east_o_the_sun I read because I love Grimms Fairy Tales.
Anything else I missed is a second journal of somebody already mentioned.
Now then, if you have me friended and aren't on the above list, and want to be, so you can read the Pagan lock or some such, let me know. (zyxwvut comes to mind, in particular, since I was just reading the list of reasons to friend people in his profile.) If you tell me why you want to be put in my Pagan lock and I don't have any reason not to, I'll add you (note: I don't necessarily add folks from my Pagan lock to my default reading list if I don't know them).
*bows*
--Ember--
There are many amusing stories I could tell you about nearly everyone on this list, but I have deliberately restricted myself to introductory stories of one kind or another to save space.
Where to start....? This can go in two or three long chains, most of which started when I was probably 12ish.
----------------------------------
lynthia is my best friend from Jr. High and Highschool (though she insists she remembers me from 2nd grade). She ran up to me one day in highschool to declare "I'm getting married!", which nearly gave me a heart attack. It seems it was actually her *character* that was getting married (she herself didn't get married until a couple years ago), which leads me to NERO (the subject of nerowest), and how I know
jazric
lmorningstar
satanya
sylvan
and later, how Lynthia met and even later introduced me to
technocowboy
Via various NERO players I got involved with other LARPs which is how I met
medancer
merovingian
stealingtime_
And the charmingly brooding chainsawraven. We actually originally met at a Vampire LARP where I was not in game, and thus nobody would speak to me, except chainsawraven, whose character was a Malkavian, and could thus get away with it. He was cute and amusing, but I was already attached, so I ignored the attraction entirely until much later, when I had broken up with Terrag. We dated for a few loud months before I realized I needed more time to get over Terrag, so I broke up with him.
Speaking of Terrag (the first man I ever fell in love with), he and I met at my first NERO event. We broke up ages ago and he is currently dating auroradawn_21, a lovely woman he met through NERO as well. I met her myself at Lynthia's wedding shower, where upon hearing my name she said "Oh YOU'RE Ember!", and I was afraid. It turned out ok, though. We hit it off immediately and spent several hours after the shower drinking Chai at the coffee shop across the lot.
While we were still together Terrag and I had decided to try Meridian 59, a pre-Evercrack MMORPG (oddly I don't seem to have found any of my old Meridian friends here in LJ yet...), which is how I got into the Elfwood art galleries, which is how I met jemstone, though we'd run into eachother years before at a party thrown by friends of mine and my mom's, and usually see eachother at BayCon nowadays. shadopanther is, of course, Jemstone's lovely mate.
gremliness I also met via a LARP, Adventures Unlimited, though I run into her so often in so many places I had to think long and hard to figure out exactly how it all started.
bellacrow (the focus of the bellahive) I met through Iron Chuck, whom I met via my Mom's former housemates (whose journals I would like to friend, if they have any), whom I met via NERO.
It was also they who introduced me to jadecat9 but she is included here primarily because she is my Reiki Teacher.
----------------------------------
Over the years and years of attending various conventions (thanks Mom!), including but hardly limited to BayCon and PantheaCon (the subjects of baycon and pantheacon respectively), I met an awful lot of interesting people.
These folks I've run into so often for so long that I cannot hope remember our first meeting. Maybe they remember - go pester them!
blackfyr and lysana
cadhla (I may blame her for teatime2)
figmo
hilarypoet
lokiz_mom
norsebiker43
seshat
supersniffles
threetimes
lynxcat - I met more recently via BayCon. I can't remember why exactly we first started talking, but I think it was LosCon this last year that really clinched in my mind that we were friends.
pentaclemoon - Her earliest memories of me seem to involve my hiding under the tables in ops when the other spawn of fen had been mean to me, or I was just generally tired of being a kid at Con. I knew how to keep my mouth shut (quit laughing!), and I was cute, so she kept me around. That explains how I got into the habit of hanging out in ConOps, which is how I met...
mecracker - Mr. Midnight Ops Man. I met him one con in ops, and we talked the gods awful hours away, wherein I learned that the world is a much, much stranger place than I had ever imagined... well, assumming everything he told me was true, anyway.
skydancer, farmount and her boyfriend Nevynn I met all at once wandering the halls of WorldCon this last fall. It seems like I've known Farmount forever now...
Though I had met her repeatedly at various cons, my recognising karisu_sama outside of a hotel room at the Double Tree is largely Farmount's fault, though oddly enough I had randomly stopped by her house some years before while picking up a friend of LunaticSX's...
Backing up, BayCon is also how I met lunaticsx, whom I spent about 10 months hanging out with every weekend, while he introduce me to cool people like
digitalsidhe
cr0wgrrl
feyandstrange
glamtasm
Fandom is, not insignificantly, how I met Honor. He introduced me to his Stepmother auntiematter, and is also how I met
firehair28
cynan_poly and freyaschild
most recently collapseylamb
and of course last but not remotely least, mendou
He and Mendou, and indirectly, AuntieMatter are how I got into Hrafnar, (hence pagan, sfpagan, hammeroak, asatruar, and of course trance_class), which is where I met
lferion
countgeiger and of course the illustrious lwood
and more recently mirgar
LWood is how I got my LiveJournal, and also how I met
ardaniel
lori
purplevenus
rentravler
teloric
And last, but CERTAINLY not least in the Fandom category, BayCon is how I met my current Love, chiendarrendor. thechick is his other girlfriend, and coyotegrrrl is our housemate, and his ex.
------------------------------
Now, my Mom took me not only to Conventions, but also to Heather Alexander concerts (which are the subject of heatherfans), which is probably where I *first* saw onyxdubh, but we didn't really become friends until Chad's current girlfriend Ragani took me to his birthday party on the assumption that I would probably know many people there, which I did. The party in question was held at evergrey's house, which also accounts for her, though I mostly see her at Hrafnar these days. For his part, Onyxdubh and I share so much context that he is the ONLY person I know who is friends with all four of my best friends and yet knows not a single one of them THROUGH me!
It was Onyxdubh who introduced me to maiandra.
Speaking of best friends, and Heather Alexander concerts, it was a Heather concert sometime after highschool that I first met Chad and Wendy, who then invited me to game with them, which is how I met rhylar, and ultimately slothman (though I'd run into him several times at Cons before then).
It was Chad and Wendy who got me the job at Mpath Interactive, which is how I met Wendy's best friend preciousjade, who then became my supervisor. I later shared an apartment for a year with who is now her husband.
While working for Mpath (which later changed to HearMe) I met
aelfsciene
seaweasel
and
wicketbird
Working and playing online at Mpath is how I found the Brunching Shuttlecocks, and ultimately Brunchma.com (which is the subject of brunchma), which is how I know
cheezdanish
genarti
latinrastaqueen
mschilepepper
redtwo
and of course batyatoon, who just happens to be Cadhla's clone, which I didn't know until I happened to spot a quote of hers in batyatoon's signature.
---------------------------
Now we get to the stragglers...
tyrsalvia I met, of all places, at Bay City coffee house during the summer I was learning to drive and working crew for my sister for the the full run of a professional theatre production. My Mom and I would stop for coffee about halfway home, and always there were large groups of young people dressed in black clothing to one side, and many similarly aged people dressed in much brighter colors at the other. The latter group were caught frequently yelling at eachother, and calling their girlfriends "bitches", while the former were often found discussing the finer points of shakespeare. My Mom promptly bummed a ciggarette off the nearest goth, and we were in. After some conversation, Tyrsalvia and I realized we both knew Honor, whom I was dating long-distance at the time.
elishevateth I actually friended because the name looked familiar, and as it turned out we have many friends and interests in common, and live not terribly far apart. The funny thing is, I'm not sure whether or not we've ever met, but her journal is quite interesting to read.
arhuaine found me, I believe, and wanted to read my Pagan filter.
wiccanpolice I found through the LJ Pagan community, and friended because I find it a hilarious read.
east_o_the_sun I read because I love Grimms Fairy Tales.
Anything else I missed is a second journal of somebody already mentioned.
Now then, if you have me friended and aren't on the above list, and want to be, so you can read the Pagan lock or some such, let me know. (zyxwvut comes to mind, in particular, since I was just reading the list of reasons to friend people in his profile.) If you tell me why you want to be put in my Pagan lock and I don't have any reason not to, I'll add you (note: I don't necessarily add folks from my Pagan lock to my default reading list if I don't know them).
*bows*
--Ember--