Who Are My Friends? (a meme-let)

[darcydodo]

Okay, I liked mciac's "Who are my friends?" thing, and I thought it could be easily adoptable as a meme. If it isn't one already, that is. ;)

I'm not going to friends-lock this, but if anyone feels that something is too sensitive of information, just comment and I'll be happy to lock it. But please, only comment for yourself, don't assume on other people's behalf.

Oxford People

shreena and I met in Latin MILC, back in Michaelmas of our first year, with Reverend Smail. Lots of stories there. Anyway, probably nothing would have come of this, if it hadn't been for a few extraneous circumstances. 1) Shreena could remember my name, so I was the one she would e-mail about assignments. 2) At one point, livredor was looking over my shoulder as I read e-mail, and she exclaimed, "You've got an e-mail from my friend!" It evolved that the two of them had attended school together. 3) I pretty much lost contact with Shreena after MILC ended, but following Mods, she invited me to celebrate with her. And this led to a great friendship, because we're both very strange. :)

elemy I met through shreena, because Shreena dragged her along to sing in the chorus of Ruddigore, and then we all went and stayed up one May Eve. Toggles and woggles were discussed, and that's really all it took. How could such a thing not serve as a fine bonding experience? She's one of my very best friends, now.

livredor approached me at a J-soc bagel brunch, and we became friends, and after a year of slight strangeness, we started going out. I introduced her to the term "semi-ex-boyfriend," and she introduced me to the term "scorf." I think it was a good bargain all 'round.

pseudomonas came in a package with livredor when I first met the two of them, but later on he joined the G&S society and became a person in his own right.

wychwood is, as one might guess from the name, a friend from Wychwood Warriors, the Anglo-Saxon reenactment group I joined in my third year. I was dragged along, not exactly kicking or screaming, by shreena and elemy and loreid.

Through wychwood, I met starstuff and red_tree, who were at one point all housemates. But they were also in Wychwood (the society).

neonchameleon was another Wychwooder. He's big and occasionally breaks things. And has much bigger hands than I.

eviltroll is yet another Wychwooder, who strangely has very random non-Wychwood friends in common with me.

loreid is someone else I met through shreena; they were housemates the year we had Mods, but later she ran the one D&D campaign I was in at Oxford. She has, upon occasion, been mistaken for a lesbian, through no fault of her own. ;)

jhwaller lived next door to me in my third year; she's very sporty and generally nice, but I didn't know her all that well at college.

taimatsu is someone whom I met through LGBsoc, at a women's video evening in that one fine year when they were still going strong. We also have some friends in common who aren't on lj. It's very sad. She's one of the two most anime-obsessed people I know. There was also a time when she lived about two doors down from wychwood and starstuff and red_tree, and they didn't even know each other. :)

j4 is someone else I met at one of those video evenings, but I kept in touch with her far less than I did with taimatsu. Still, I saw her occasionally.

sampiano is a very dear friend and a mad physicist. He's currently in Long Island and will soon be moving much farther away, to Trieste. He plays piano for me, which is a good thing. I met him when Gillian brought him along to play piano for all the G&S singthroughs. Really, he only likes me 'cause I'm a soprano. ;)

midnightmelody and kht were wooed into G&S when they came to see Anselm not dance in the performance of "The Mikado" that I directed. Once again, I say, "Hooray for foot-and-mouth disease!"


Berkeley People

mciac is a fellow classicist, and I know about half my acquaintances through her in one way or another. She's the one who introduced me to BtVS, too. She keeps trying to get me to wear something other than t-shirts and jeans, and to wear dark red lipstick, and yet somehow I find the courage to refuse. She now lives in LA, which is not as good as her living in Berkeley, but it's a hell of a lot better than anywhere else Ray could've chosen to go to law school.

girlwithjournal is someone of whom it could be said "I met her through mciac!" Except, it wouldn't be true. And yet, at the same time, it would be true. Hee. Now would possibly be a good time to commit our saga to writing. girlwithjournal and I went to the same preschool. We have some very good friends in common who live in New York, but who used to live a block away from my house in LA. I met her once or twice when we were both very little (though she was far littler than I!), but I don't remember this at all. Our parents do. Now, about a month before Berkeley started last year, I was at a barbeque at our neighbors' house, and girlwithjournal's parents were there. My parents remembered them, and as we were talking, it came up that I was going to Berkeley, and so would their daughter be. Oh, the two of us should get in touch, they thought we'd get along. I was given an e-mail address, gave mine in exchange; it was, apparently, dutifully passed on. Both of us had the same reaction, the mild sort of yeah, that could be nice, then lose the address and not think about it twice. Cue a semester on, when mciac invites me over to watch Buffy for the first time, and has also invited her Latin class; of this class, the only one who actually watches Buffy, and hence the only one who comes, is girlwithjournal. Introductions happen, no recognition flares. Then comes the "Oh, you're from LA?" bit of the conversation. And then come little brief flashes of illumination, bit by bit, which eventually cause me to ask, "Wait a minute, did you go to Playgroup? Do you know the Viertels?" Very, very small world.

Through girlwithjournal I met dizzyditz and nenar, both of whom I now see on a regular basis in Heaven. I also at one point met her brother, filmgeek; I've still never met spazatron, however, despite him being my lj-grandsire. This will, I'm sure, be rectified eventually. I had to go to a memorial service the day I was supposed to meet him. Ah well. And through dizzyditz and nenar, in turn, I know lordelessar and taurendur, their respective boyfriends. I also met adrienne2 in Heaven; she has a very cute little white rat. taosterman is another person I met through girlwithjournal, but we have drastic numbers of other friends in common, too, mostly singing-ish people.

psychopepsquad and sschmitt are two other people whom I met at mciac's Buffy evenings; I now hang out with psychopepsquad on a semi-regular basis, while I see sschmitt far less frequently than I used to. But now she's started going to Alias evenings, so hopefully I'll be seeing more of her, as well.

leech is the source of a number of other Berkeley connections. I sing with leech, but now I also game with him, occasionally, and hang out with him and provide transport. ;) He's probably my closest graduate friend in Berkeley.

Through leech I know grimhild and mrjonesandme, whom I see as often as I go over to their house; also arrowedumbrella, though I've only met her once. filosophy101 was also introduced to me by the intrepid trio, here; he's got a lovely booming-ish sort of voice.

jour_pluvieux sings in P5 with me.

lordkrishna and tzeentch are other people whom I know through UCCE; singing = good, clearly, both on more philosophical grounds, and also as a way to meet fun people.

sylphigirl is also someone whom I met through UCCE, but she's also friends, independently, with dizzyditz and nenar, and she doesn't know either of them through the other. Webs are so much fun. She's now in Edinburgh, so I'm vaguely trying to manipulate a meeting between her and pseudomonas, pulling strings from across an ocean and a continent.

wageslave is another Classicist in my department. On the other hand, I met him through livejournal prior to that, because mciac coincidentally stumbled across his journal immediately after he'd decided to go to Berkeley. The strangest thing, however, is the circle that the two of us connect, which is composed of us, fengshui, schlafmanko, and queen_of_wands.

wolfemancs concludes our tour of Berkeley; he's my housemate. He's a very good housemate, so I'm very lucky. mciac doesn't think he exists, because she's never met him. leech doesn't think he exists, despite having met him, because he's sure that no one can exist who actually doesn't like any sort of pie.


Other People

Some of these are Oxford-related, but not actually in Oxford themselves; others are childhood friends; still others are people I know solely through the internet.

fengshui is someone whom I have known since middle school (I was in middle school, he was already in high school); we had friends in common and were brought together through gaming. We dated for a year, some time after that. Now he's married (aah!) to schlafmanko, which is why I know her. And we're discovering that I now know lots of his friends from Chicago, because they're at Berkeley and I happen to have met them. Mutual friends, German class, any other number of reasons.

doseybat is a dear friend of livredor's, and I met her a couple of times when she visited Oxford. I believe she came to one of the Corpus Christmas carol services.

rysmiel is someone whom I have not yet met, but will following a visit at the end of October. I actually have proper, if distant, connections with rysmiel, through livredor.

emidala is officially a Berkeley person, but I never met her while she was here. So despite her knowing many of my friends, I think of her more as an lj person. This will have to be rectified when she comes out to visit.

c_iulius is a fellow Classicist, but not a Berkeley classicist; and now she's at Oxford. Go, meet some of my Oxford friends! :) Anyway, she was "discovered" by mciac, I think, so technically this is another mciac-connection.

monanotlisa I inflicted myself on when I read that she couldn't see the point behind Willow/Faith, which prompted me to say well what about this? She very kindly humored me, and now she's a good friend. In Germany. Whom I'm hopefully going to inflict myself on yet again, in person this time, during the summer.

ladycat777 and nongenius and eliade were people whose livejournals I started reading because I liked their fic. Although nongenius is also doubly cool because she's a neuroscientist, like my dad.

glossing is also a fic connection, but this time because she got my lyrics for a Lyric Wheel challenge. And I adore her writing.

valereix also writes good fic, but this is not why I read her journal. I read her journal because she totally cracks my shit up, being the single funniest woman alive. Go. Read her journal. It's funny. You will be rolling on the floor laughing, and that's literal. girlwithjournal and I have plans to kidnap her.

penmage and I came into contact mostly because of an icon of hers, I think. It was through marryshagcliff. But she's very cool, and she likes Edward Gorey, and I'm going to visit her next time I'm in New York, hopefully. Which may not be for an age, because I was only there a month or so ago, and my trips to the East Coast are not precisely what I'd call frequent.

miggy I friended because I wanted to read an entry of hers, but now I like reading her journal, too.

And, lastly, pameladean is an author whom I like. I discovered she had a livejournal. She writes beautiful entries. It's all of the good.

Comments

[chele74.livejournal.com]

Well, I wish I could help you get your girl, but what can we do about girlwithjournal? Maybe she wants Honza...or maybe the greenhouse wasn't just a dream about authority figures...

[darcydodo]

or maybe the greenhouse wasn't just a dream about authority figures...

*smirks and thinks this is a good test of whether she's reading the comments here* ;)

Speaking of no one, obviously, any more progress on Kieran getting lj?

[chele74.livejournal.com]

We'll see the next time he emails me. We exchange emails every few weeks and he is now in possession of a code. He knows what to do, and I think that secretly, deep down, he want to journal. He's such a natural.

Trust me, you will all be the first to know when he gets one.