People and places and fun things

So, its been a while since I've made a post. Not many people read this I am sure - I think my sister does but she is probably the only one. I decided to post tonight after having spent the entire night not playing DAOC (because Mythic screwed up something and the servers were down) but talking to my French Canadian buddies - here after referred to as simply French. I can't just say Canadian because people with think they are English and they aren't, and there IS a difference between the two.

Web cams are a wonderful thing. I think when people think about web cams they think sex and stuff, unless you are like a mom/dad or girlfriend/boyfriend/husband/wife/family member of someone in military then yea web cam is something different. Well I use a web cam like they would; clean, innocent, putting a face to the person kinda fun. How is this related to the rest of the blog.. well hold your horses you will find out. Not like its really exciting or anything but I wanted to put it down in writing because its fun for me.

First person I used web cam with was Max -



He's a dear sweet guy and hes an incredibly smart man with an amazing sense of humor in both his own language and mine. He has two small children, a job with a telephone company and a serious gaming addiction! We have been communicating regularly for over 6 months. LOL the only time I don't have an msn message from him waiting to be read is when we are both sound asleep - and we spend a fair amount of time using web cam - he is fairly shy about it, I never ask, he always initiates it and I let him do that because of his shy nature. When you begin to see the people on the other side of the camera a whole new world opens up - you become somewhat involved with their life, because all of the sudden it becomes visible. The pictures of their children on the wall behind them, their favorite drawing on the table kind of behind them and even just the color of their furniture starts to just blend with this person who you've been chatting to for sometime.. I ask to see the picture a bit closer, they get it off the wall and show it to me - then I get to know the story behind it. All of this started pretty much with Max.

I have other friends besides him though and tonight I got an insight into another persons life. Stephane was first captured on web cam this weekend while he was visiting Max. Both of these guys had told me what they were up to this weekend and when and all the details - which of course involved 24 hour gaming with the occasional break to fix a network issue - which they never did get resolved because of the gaming part ;)



Those two were just clowns on the web cam - they just left the thing running and went on thier business. I had it open on my secondary machine so I would look over every once in a while to see what was happening. This went on for a few nights and then Steph went home.
Tonight, like I said, DAOC was down -so Steph sent out the invite for web cam and I accepted and turned mine on - Oh yea I look awesome with my messy hair etc but these guys don't seem to care - another reason why I simply adore them all. I got a small look at Steph's life within his house. His kitty - puepue - named because thats the noise he makes, was hamming it up on Stephs desk while he was trying to type lol then runs off making all sorts of wierd noises and crashing onto the furniture much to my delight! That man adores that cat, it was so sweet to watch him interact with that animal. Steph is 6 foot 1 and weighs a lot. He is a big man with this little cat all curled up in his arms! Made me just smile :)
I come to find out this guy has served some 22 years in the Canadian military - because I see a picture of a person in uniform with flags behind him - Oh that was a fun and interesting conversation. He was a medic, loved that part of his life.. lived that life until this past December! What does he do now? he carves tombstones. .What an interesting career change huh? He works with his dad who is training him to take over the buisness. He told me he had to go to bed early because he has to drive a lot tommorow; he makes frequent trips between Ontario and Quebec City.
He showed me his medals, his hat, a close up of that picture - he explained what all the medals were and told me a lot about what he did and why he left. I am really fond of this picture:



These are friendships that will last a lifetime - and will be real life friendships. I have singled out these two fine men because they are both incredibly special to me because of who they are inside. You just never know who you are going to meet on the internet. It really isn't a scary place and there really are REAL people behind the words - I hope everyone that may happen across this page and reads as far as this realizes that fact. And never forget - for all the lousy people in the world there are the same amount of good decent folk, they just don't stand out as well. Sadly the good people don't get the attention the deserve.

Soon, I will meet Max and Stephane in real life. This July will have ONE good memory in it.