Reflections on Texas

I remember when my mom was pregnant with my littlest sister, she composed an email to our extended family to tell them the news, with the subject, 'The Beauty of Written Communication'. She doesn't remember this, I don't think, but for some reason I recall it quite distinctly.

It's fair to say that I like written communication. I prefer email to phone, and I spend a lot of time on MSN. Written communication is my thing. I think that nothing illustrates the power of it like August 14-18.

I really like the saying that friendship is when someone knows all about you but likes you anyway. It's easy to laugh at, but it's true. In two and a half years of MSN conversations, you learn a lot about each other. You can't just discuss the weather over and over again. It's not as though we have deep philosophical discussions every time we talk, but it's impossible not to learn things. It's surprisingly hard to hide who you are, even over the internet, and even just with written communication.

I think I expected our first meeting to be a little bit awkward. I was reasonably sure it wouldn't be TOO awkward, but I was surprised when it wasn't awkward or weird in the least. It was like we'd always been able to hang out like we did, and to a certain extent, we had always been able to. All we lacked was the bonus of being face-to-face.

I'm pretty awed by this.

In case you couldn't extrapolate from the above, I had a phenomenal time. It's been hard to come up with the words to describe it (and I don't think I've succeeded very well). Two and a half years of talking almost every day made meeting feel pretty normal.

Texas and Alberta are way too far apart.