Meeting Monica
So, in a really awesome turn of events and what one could only really call destiny density, I met Monica (she also has a ridiculous blog-to-be) in a chance meeting yesterday. Oooh yeah it was fate and it was meant to be and stuff.
I’ve talked to Monica online for practically a decade. I don’t remember how we first chatted (not really relevant right now), but it was when we both blogged and made silly pixel art or something like that. I barely remember, actually, because we talked about everything but websites. I remember hosting her website at some point, laughing at dumb stuff with her, and just being overall really sarcastic and weird, and talking about Back to the Future. Best movie ever.
But as is the case with a lot of online buddies, we hadn’t actually met. Until yesterday.
Yesterday I waited for James at the station after work, since we catch the same train home. Well, we missed one of the trains since he didn’t arrive in time, but that’s all good. After a stupidly long train ride (James had to answer a really long phone call), we got off, and as we were walking away and I was tapping my transport card, I said, “Hmm there is a girl over there that looks like Monica. I wonder if it’s her.”
“How do you know what she looks like?”
“I just do, man! I’m gonna text her. I’m not going to walk up there and ask, just in case I am wrong.”
Text her I did, and I asked her if she was at the train station. She was very “WTF”, writing in uppercase that she was there and asked where I was. I ran back down the stairs to go and see the girl on the bench, because there was very little chance she was anyone besides the girl on the bench.
We were both really excited and hugged for a long time, in disbelief that we were actually seeing each other in the flesh. Monica puts it quite perfectly:
It’s pretty crazy thinking that if we didn’t miss the train, and she hadn’t been at the station (she normally wouldn’t even have been there!), we wouldn’t have seen each other.
Let the Goode times roll. :D
Comments on this post
Monica
OMG GEORGINA HERE IS A LONG HEARTFELT MESSAGE TO YOU BECAUSE I ACTUALLY LOVE YOU AND AM SO GLAD TO HAVE MET YOU ONLINE AND IRL.
I was thinking of texting you at 3am but then I was like “no Georgina has to sleep for her big girl job in the city”. I just wanted to thank you for running down the steps to see me even after you had already walked up them, ready to leave because you were probably tired from work. Honestly, this is so cheesy but it felt so fucking surreal. I remember when that train arrived it because I was just rocking out to La Dispute on my phone and I was like 75% sure that I had seen a glimpse of your face on the train tbh but I was pretty sure I was just imagining things.
Has it even been ten years? I don’t know, nobody’s counting. I’m pretty sure I met you back before I even had like a subdomain hosted by anyone and I was still on Webs using frames as fake divs with a height set to 5000px because I knew fuck all about html/css and webs didn’t support php LOL.
We did talk about everything BUT websites but I just want you to know how much you’ve impacted me in terms of web design/dev. Firstly, you influenced me to make the jump from CuteNews to FanUpdate (which really isn’t that big of a jump but it was back then). And while you didn’t directly do this to me, I’ve been using WP on and off for years and I’m pretty sure that’s a result of you subconsciously inflicting your love for WP on me. Secondly, I LEARNT PHP INCLUDES FROM YOU! Aka bye bye frames aka biggest improvement in my stylesheets ever. Thirdly, I took your reviews of other sites seriously. They were a helpful guide for me to develop my own style/aesthetic yet still maintain some kind of user friendliness (e.g CENTRED LAYOUTS INSTEAD OF TINY ASS DIVS ON THE LEFT OR RIGHT OF THE PAGE). So if you ever have a job interview in the future and you run out of things to say, you can talk about how you were a good role model to some random filipino girl in Western Sydney who was also interested in the web world.
OMFG THAT BACK TO THE FUTURE REFERENCE. I was laughing so hard at your Instagram post. Crispin Glover will always be a babe. Idk if you caught my Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy reference in my hashtags. /hehe
Also, I want to tell you a bit of my back story and how everything connects in this weird friendship of ours. I started web design in 2004 or 2005 when I moved primary schools. My friend at my new school introduced me to MatMice aka that kid’s pagebuilder. It’s just so funny that I met you at THIS CERTAIN STATION (I don’t want to name it because I don’t want people to stalk you even if I’ve tweeted already yolo) because that suburb is where I moved and discovered web design in the first place. THAT IS THE STRANGEST COINCIDENCE TO ME.
I know we’ve talked about this before but it really is such a fucking small world omg. Like how someone you work with is your friend’s ex (or something like that) and how I just graduated from the same school that the girl who hosted my first subdomain ever graduated from 4 years before. I just never thought that I would bump into you like that at all, at a place that neither of us were supposed to be at that time. /poo
THANK YOU FOR BEING SO COOL, GEORGIE! WE NEED TO GO WATCH A CONCERT TOGETHER AFTER MY HSC. AND SORRY FOR LIKE SQUEALING AND SQUEEZING THE SHIT OUT OF YOU WHEN I SAW YOU I WAS JUST SO EXCITED AND SHOCKED PMSL.
Monica
OMG ALSO
I showed my friends the picture and they know your blog because they used to read mine when I was hosted by you and they were like “she looks our age”. I guess that’s a compliment.