Many, many moons ago I was a socially awkward child with one friend. His name was Dusty. Unfortunately he doesn't have a website, so that's all you will hear about him.

My oldest friends who have web sites, at least that I know of, are Jamie and Wayne. I met them online in the BBS world. We all used to call a bulletin board named The Haunted Forest, which was a way cool community of nerdy people. By the way, if anybody knows how to get in touch with The Forest Keeper or Rubber Duckie, tell me. They were sweeties and I miss talking to them.

Anyway, Jamie and I had a few interests in common. He is one of the smartest people I have ever known, and we used to argue for hours and hours about everything and anything. Very talented guy. Excellent bass player. Designed his own O/S at the age of 14. You know the type.

Wayne was my original source for weird music, a lifelong passion of mine. He goes by Midnight Tree Bandit now, but when I met him his name was Moribund the Burgermeister. If you know where that comes from, and you know my musical tastes, then you can see why we got along so well. We were roommates for a time, but I was a terrible roomie and I am sure that he was happy to be rid of me.

Speaking of weird music, I have to mention Badger. I met Badger when I was involved in the SCA in the Canton of Elvegast. The SCA was far too into personal politics for my tastes, but I came away from it having met a few very unique people. Badger is a linguist by education and a nerd by profession, and listens to weirder music than me and Wayne combined. He is also brilliant, and has interests that are culturally diverse in ways that you would only expect from snobby city types like me. Except he's not a snobby city type, which is a real bonus. I met Scott at an SCA meeting in the early 1990s, and we hit it off immediately due to our mutual loves of Jethro Tull and silliness.

At my last job I met a few neat people. They include Greck, who knows everybody on the planet; Doc and Tyrian, who don't have websites but who get mentioned anyway because they are the two sweetest guys in North America; Randal, who needs to update his website (the last update says "I just saw The Phantom Menace." Jeez, Randal); Shane, who is cute enough to be attractive to me in spite of my incurable lesbianism; and Mark, one of my favourite bois and the only other person from NC besides Kit who has the same inherent fabulosity that I do!

The extended family of that group has introduced me to four EXTREMELY COOL chicks. I idolize Dragonfly in many ways. Our paths almost crossed several times during our lives, but they were a series of near misses until I met her officially through Tyrian. I also met Anne, whom I originally started chatting with via a weightlifting newsgroup (more on that later). I became friends with her much later through an annoying series of events that, really, yielded only three good things: Anne, Dotgirl and the ever-groovy Kitiara. Kit gets extra credit, by the way, for putting up with my annoying questions about web design over the past several months.

In 1997 I met my best friend Krista through the aforementioned weightlifting newsgroup. It all started so innocently with email chats and pithy witticisms exchanged on the newsgroup, but has exploded into such moments of craziness and excess as dressing as superheroes and carrying the Toronto Lesbian Avengers banner in the 2001 Toronto Dyke March ,and huddling together for hours while we puked in the corner at a rave. ("Hey, we finally stopped throwing up! We should obviously take more." Urrrrrrrk.)

Through Krista I met a group of people who have been together since childhood. While they are all nerdy enough to be able to name several obscure races from the Star Trek universe, only two of them are cool enough to have websites: Sean, a writer who won't lie to you, he's had a few; and Chris, the man upon whose shoulders rests the safety of Southern Ontario. Everybody but Terry and Pina havea LiveJournal, though: meet Lenore, Lisa, Rob, Kyle, Jane, Rebecca, Dilys, Richard, and Peter.

Oh, and my other gang? The Toronto Newsgirls Boxing Club. Now with 38% more Turbo T and Tank!