Put kids in charge

Decades back, the Indian government came up with “Project Tiger”- a way to protect the environment by putting the national animal at the apex of the ecosystem. Unfortunately, today, even the big cat faces extinction.

"If tigers are so important, why don’t we just keep them in zoos”, a kid asked.

Before the teacher could reply, my kid piped up, "but Project Tiger is not about the tiger. It is about all the animals. The tiger is the symbol, because big people don't think rabbits and butterflies are important."

Right he was. Why can’t we just put kids in charge?

“If the bee disappeared off the face of the earth, man would only have four years left to live.”
― Albert Einstein

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This is the fourth year that I am going to be a part of NaBloWriM. The Plan is to elaborate on a quote that touched my heart- let's see how far this takes me. If I can tie it in with the writing prompt, so much the better!

Never argue

I have always believed in healthy discussions. I state my point, listen to the other person, have a heated argument, and often call it quits by agreeing to disagree.

But how do you have a meaningful discussion with someone who doesn’t have anything to say, but still wants to say it? With someone who latches onto a peripheral part of your argument, and refutes it in long laborious statements, while ignoring the main thing that you were trying to convey.

Guess I should stop being so generous with my time. Not everyone has something to say. Why listen to them?

Never argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level, then knock you down with experience.

~ Bumper sticker

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This is the fourth year that I am going to be a part of NaBloWriM. The Plan is to elaborate (in 100 words) on a quote that touched my heart- let's see how far this takes me. If I can tie it in with the writing prompt, so much the better!

Discovering cooking

I am a strictly utilitarian cook- I enter the kitchen only when I absolutely have to. Not for me hours spent pouring over recipe books; experimenting with flavours; playing with textures. I’d eat the same boring stuff at home, and indulge when we went out.

Till I discovered an on-line community of enthusiastic cooks. Suddenly, good food became accessible. Boring vegetables could be cooked in new ways. Cereals I never knew existed turned out to be as delicious as they were healthy. My spice rack expanded, I bought new implements.

Suddenly, cooking has become almost as much fun as eating!

_________

Bajra/ pearl millet was a name I'd only encountered in geography texts, 

till I found this recipe that seemed easy enough even for me to attempt. 

Verdict- yummy!!!!

Happy Pi Day

"How I need a drink, alcoholic of course."

Yes, I know it is the middle of the week, and an alcoholic drink should be the last thing on my mind. But without this ‘piem’, how do you expect me to remember Three-Point-One-Four-One-Five-Nine-Two-Six, the first seven decimal places of the irrational number better known as “Pi”?

There was a time when I used “Pi” everyday, often several times everyday. When I could rattle off “Pi” to several decimal places. Those days are long gone. But even now, when I think of “Pi”, a smile springs to my lips.

Happy Pi Day.
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A drabble is a story told in exactly 100 words.

Random Musings

Around midnight, last night, after I got off a telecon with two of my collegues in the US, ironed the school uniform of the older one, and hunted down the missing white sock of the younger one, I realised a Random Wednesday post was due at Burrowers, Books & Balderdash. Since we post at noon GMT, technically, I had 17 1/2 hours to dash out a post, but today promised to be yet another day which could be called rhythmic only if cacophony is a rhythm, and I did not trust myself to find time to write anything reasonably coherent.

I then thought I would get away by posting a couple of truly random photographs. But the very first one set in motion a train of really random thoughts, which I penned down in the 'compose post' window. So head across to Burrowers, Books & Balderdash to see if the post does justice to this photograph.

A few moments of peace

The mail that should have been sent off an hour ago mocking me.
"Mamma, he is kicking me." "No, Mamma, HE is kicking ME."
A friend on the phone- it has been 43 minutes and still no sign of hanging up.
The TV blaring in the living room- a spider and two ants watching.
Beeps on the phone- is that a client or a telemarketer? You can't check, because you haven't yet figured out how to use call waiting yet.
"Mamma, potty." Will they ever lean to clean up?

What would I not do for a few moments of peace?
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A drabble is a story told in exactly 100 words.

And as a perfect counterpoint to this mad rant, I also have a Delusional Thursday post up at Burrowers, Books & Balderdash. Hop across if you are sure you want to find out whether or not Lord Voldemort was a Virgin.

Punctuality is Dead

I was to meet his lady at a coffee shop. It was a job interview- I was interviewing her to potentially offer her a job.
She'd called an hour back to take directions. "If you are running late", I had told her, "let me know. I come a bit later in that case."  "I'll be there in half an hour," she had assured me.
She kept me waiting for over half an hour. No phone call. No text message. Nothing. I expected an apology; what I got was an explanation- "Traffic was horrible."

Punctuality is dead. Must courtesy die too?


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A drabble is a story told in exactly 100 words.

If handwriting were a mirror to the soul.....

When Jessica Bell of The Alliterative Allomorph tagged me on the writing thingie a couple of weeks back, I intended honouring it but couldn't find a pen anywhere in the house, so forgot about it. Then yesterday, Cruella Collett of The Giraffability of Digressions tagged me again, and since I could lay my hands on a pen, here it is.

Handwritten answers to nine questions -

1. Name/Blog Name

2. Right handed, left handed, or both?

3. Favorite letters to write

4. Least favorite letters to write

5. Write out "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"

6. Write in CAPS:
BABOON
SPLENDOR
ONOMATOPOEIA
FLIP-FLOPS
HUZZAH!

7. Favorite song lyrics

8. Tag 7 people

9. Whatever else strikes your fancy


Here you are-

Hard to make out from how rusty my handwriting has gotten, but I still do hand-write a lot of stuff (and not just shopping lists- come to think of it, when did I last make a shopping list?). This is how I love to write when I have the luxury- curled up on the rug, with a cup of tea next to me-

I have tagged seven people, but pick it up if you like even if I haven't tagged you. Barbara, I didn't tag you because I remember you saying you didn't want to be tagged.

To the Down

"Mamma, can I go to down to play", asked my four-year old.
"You cannot go to down to play, but you may go down to play", I replied. In his hurry to rush off I am sure he didn't hear me, but hopefully some internal component will process it and commit it to memory.

It is complicated when an adjective gets pressed into usage as a noun. If I go to the gym, why shouldn't my son go to the down, since that is what we call the place where he plays?

How do non-native speakers manage to speak English?

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A drabble is a story told in exactly 100 words.

Seven Colours in the Rainbow

Seven Colours in the Rainbow, which is your favourite one?

Red? The hot Red of fire, the juicy Red of Apples.

Orange? The tangy Orange of oranges, the blazing Orange of sunset.

Yellow? The soothing Yellow of buttercups, the challenging Yellow of sunshine.

Green? The peaceful Green of forests, the flashing Green of parrots.

Blue? The all-encompassing Blue of the sky, the comfortable Blue of my favourite pair of jeans.

Indigo? The proud Indigo of peacocks, the exquisite Indigo of twilight.

Violet? The sweet Violet of jamun fruits, the fragrant Violet of lavendar.

Seven Colours! Can I take them all?

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A drabble is a story told in exactly 100 words.

Not the Grammar Police, but......

I’m hiring for a position that was advertised as requiring 'excellent written communication skills'. Excellent is obviously subjective, but I was definitely not prepared for a e-mail like this-

“I m Preparing reply for u u u u u u only, Patience to look / see my

Reply, Thanking u for sanded Ur message.

Sowing Seeds of Positive Change

i give to u reply shortly

thanking u”

I admit I am a near extinct species that resists using chat-speak even while texting or chatting, but try as I will, I cannot bring myself to accept that a message such as this is in anyway acceptable while applying for a job.

Will it really kill the person to type ‘you’ instead of ‘u’.Doesn’t ‘u u u u u u’ take up far more keystrokes than a simple ‘you’? And what’s with the capitalized ‘Ur’- is that to indicate that since the pronoun applies to me, it deserves to be capitalised (proper pronoun, as my six year old might say)? But if that is the case, why is 'I' not capitalised- does he not give himself the same importance as he does me?

‘Sanded?’ I thought of carpenter shops, and desert dunes, before realising he probably meant ‘sended’- like many Indians not familiar with the language, he probably assumes that the past tense of any verb can be created by adding an ‘-ed’ as the suffix.

‘Sowing Seeds of Positive Change?’ Now that is the scariest bit- is he looking for Grammar World Domination? Perhaps I do need to make that down payment on the tropical island to retreat to.

And in case you are wondering, I did not even open the CV. I am definitely not the Grammar Police, but however brilliant he may be, I am pretty sure I would not be able to work with him.

Drabble Dare, and an Award

That temple is not native to Bombay- it has been patiently put together by immigrants in a bid to create a home away from home.

Those brightly-coloured statues would feel more at home on a busy Madras street, where they could hear people conversing in Tamil, not Marathi.
The only person comfortable in her surroundings is the cat- she will feel at in home anywhere.

There are stories waiting to be told, but somehow, I never got down to telling them. And now I have passed the challenge onto you. Tell the story behind the picture in exactly 100 words.

Once you are done with the story, you could mail it to theburrow360 (at) gmail dot com by Thursday (July 22, 2010) midnight GMT. Hurry!!!

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A drabble is a story told in exactly 100 words.

Laura Eno from A Shift in Dimensions awarded me the Fabulous Flash Award. In case you haven't visited Lauras' blog, you should. She writes the most amazing stories, and she writes them in 1,000 words or less. The amount of tension and humour she compresses into just thousand words is more than what a lesser writer would do in a complete novella.
Coming from Laura, the Award is equivalent to an Oscar for me. The only difference is that nobody is compelling me to make a speech!
I am supposed to pass the award onto four people, but I do not know of that many people who publish their Flash Fiction and/ or drabbles. So, I reserve the right keep the Award with me for now, and only pass it on when I find a sufficient number of worthy recipients.

Why Holland?

Toto arrived on my second birthday. She was pearly white, with the softest fur, shiny eyes and a cute red nose. It was love at first sight, and we soon became inseparable. She once got left behind at a friend’s place, and a rescue party had to be launched, before I could be convinced to go to bed.

Over the years, her fur was rubbed off, and despite numerous baths, she settled on a darkish shade of grey. But she never stopped being my best friend.

Her family history placed her in Amsterdam. Is it any wonder I support Holland?

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A drabble is a story told in exactly 100 words.

[Toto doesn’t like being photographed. This is a picture of their Toto’s to be, taken by my then five year old.]

A watery encounter

Normally, my workout consists of running and a little bit of weight training when I want to feel extra virtuous. But when, in April, the temperature soared so high, the mercury threatened to push its way out of the thermometer, I re-discovered the swimming pool. There is something almost therapeutic about water- things which otherwise seem so complicated become really simple when you are in the water. I stopped running and started swimming.
Last summer, I had been able to push myself to 20 laps, so I started at that level this year. In a week, I was able to increase it to 30 laps, and then I started doing it without pushing myself too hard. My timings were erratic, so on some days I had the pool virtually to myself, and on other days I had to share it with dozens of school kids. While I preferred the solitude of an empty pool, I made sure I completed my quota of laps everytime I entered.
Then the rains came, and everyone abandoned the pool. No matter what time I went, the pool was deserted. I loved it. One day, when I was in the water, it started raining. It was almost magical swimming in the azure pool with the rain pouring around you. I told myself I would continue visiting the pool every day till it got too cold to enter the water.
I had completed 10 laps in my personal pool today, when out of the corner of my eye, I saw a frog.

He wasn't doing anything. He was just sitting at the edge of the pool contemplating this strange creature moving in the water. He wasn't doing any harm, but I couldn't help it. I let out a yell before swimming away.
He's just a harmless creature, I told myself. And he has more reasons to be scared of you than you have to be scared of him. I continued swimming, and when I returned to that end of the pool, I was relieved to see that he hadn't moved from his position.
Embolded, to swam another lap. When I came close to the edge, I was relieved to see that the frog had disappeared. I was relieved. But not for too long. Just as I was about to touch the wall, he hopped onto the very place where my hand would have been a couple of moments later.
I let out another scream and swam away as fast as I could. The frog continued staring at the strange creature.

I should have climbed out and gone home, but I couldn't bring myself to abandon a workout midway. Since I didn't have the courage to continue swimming, I decided to jog in the water for a couple of minutes.
I had barely started when I saw this large, crinkled, brown leaf floating towards me. Something about it looked not quite right, and when I looked again, I saw it was another frog swimming towards me.

I didn't wait to see if he was friendly or not. I rushed out of the pool and ran all the way home.

I know a frog cannot really harm me. But close encounters with two frogs is more than I can be expected to handle.

Tomorrow, I hit the gym again. If the pool is abandoned in the monsoons, it is not without reason.

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No frogs were harmed in writing this post. If the frogs suffered trauma because of the encounter with the mysterious creature bearing down on them and letting out high pitched yells, it was nothing compared to the trauma inflicted by their sheer presence on said creature.

Photographs of frogs not taken by me - photo credits: Frog on bough, Frog swimming

5 Times the Fun

Though I have seen her comments all over blogsphere, Jemi Fraser and I met only very recently. She's tagged me on this Fun Game where you get to answer 5 questions 5 times-

Question 1 - Where were you five years ago?
1. Pregnant with my younger son, but not aware of it yet
2. Stay-at-home mom of a 18 month old
3. Making my first forays into fan-fiction
4. A few weeks away from writing my first original short story
5. Meeting the first of the people who eventually became very close on-line friends

Question 2 - Where would you like to be five years from now?
1. Mother of two kids who perhaps know more than I
2. In a meaningful day job
3. Running at least two marathons a year
4. A published author
5. Doing and loving at least one thing I haven't yet discovered

Question 3 - What is (was) on your to do list today?
1. Finish a grant proposal
2. Make a To-Do List, and share with boss
3. Go to the gym (done)
4. Make and feed my kids lunch and dinner
5. Teach the kids to play hopscotch

Question 4 - What 5 snacks do you enjoy?
1. Chocolate
2. Frozen yoghurt
3. Grilled sandwich with dollops of cheese
4. Mango
5. Roasted peanuts

Question 5 - What would you do if you were a billionaire?
1. Endow a foundation to provide educational scholarships for disadvantaged youth, and provide seed capital for young needy entrepreneurs
2. Set up a chain of daycare centres in Bombay, so mothers don't have to stay at home unless they choose to

3. Set up book and toy libraries for children from disadvantaged backgrounds

4. Have one exotic adventure/ outdoors holiday a year

5. Fill my walls with original art that speaks to me

Thanks Jemi for tagging me on this. It was nice to find out that money can't really buy me too much that I don't already have. If you hadn't checked her blog out yet, do - Just Jemi.

I'm going to pass the tag game along to five bloggers I've met recently. I'm looking forward to finding out more about you!

Raquel Byrnes - Edge of your Seat Romance

Yvonne Lewis - Welcome to my World of Poetry

Niki - Wool 'n' Nuts

Ellie - Ella's Edge

Mary - Mary McDonald has the Write Stuff

I wanted to keep the number to five, and I tried not to tag people who have already done it. But if you would like to pick it up, I would love to know more about you.

R for ... eRm, eR, eRm... well, R for a lot of things

Monday morning on the way to work, I had my R post written in my head- R for Religion, and the post was supposed to be about the religious intolerance that some schools dig into their student's heads in the name of religious instruction.

But by the time I got down to writing it, my six year old was reading out something to his younger brother, who was laughing hysterically at it. I found that my son was going "lada lada lada" over the words he did not know, and I wanted to blog about it. R for Reading it was going to be.

But before that happened, I got thinking about my poor right knee, and about how I decided to rest it for a few weeks to give it a chance to recover from the battering it has been receiving recently. R for Running it could have been, but I realised I have blogged about that very often in the past.


When I woke up in the morning, I knew I had to write my R post, but I just couldn't make up my mind what to blog about. Any of the above, all of them, or none of them.

So finally I decided to make it "R for the 3 Rs". Reading, wRiting and 'Rithmetic are supposed to be the three things that constitute an education. Strangely, I am passionate about all three. As my facebook profile says, "I read because I do not know what else to do in the spare time that I do not have. I write to get those pesky characters out of my head." And 'rithmetic because I can't dream of a life when I did not have numbers to play with.

Hopefully tomorrow's post would make a little more sense than this one did.

G for Glamour

When the Indian tennis player, Sania Mirza, burst into the third round of the Australian Open in 2005, she began attracting mass publicity and not just in India. She came like a breath of fresh air in a world ruled by the Williams sisters- stunningly attractive, immensely talented, and with a great future ahead of her.

Not as strong as the current lot of players, she brought in the crowds like few of them could. Long before she was seeding in any Grand Slam tournament, her growing popularity ensured that her matches were being scheduled on Centre Court.

She was the darling of a nation with few sporting icons to look upto, and her combination of raw talent and stunning looks ensured she had an equally large fan following outside the country.

Great things were expected to Sania Mirza, but somehow she never quite lived upto the promise she displayed. One of the first endorsement deals she signed was for a manufacturer of gold jewellery- that turned out to be prophetic. After the initial few months, she started generating more column inches for her lifestyle than for her game. Link-ups with Bollywood stars, controversies over her sartorial choices.

Suddenly, the Golden Girl could do no right. She was the brand ambassador for a campaign to save the girl child, but generated more column inches when Muslim clerics criticised her for wearing "un-Islamic" clothes on the court. Instead of being projected as a role model for girls in the sub-continent, people chose to stir up unnecessary controversy when, at a press conference, she inadvertently put up her feet on a table which had the national flag.

A different person may have fought back and silenced her critics with her performance, but the Glamour Girl didn't. Five years after she hit the limelight, her second serve remains as weak as ever. On a good day, she is still one of the best players around, but there is no consistency in her performance. All these years later, she is still a mine of talent, but perhaps it is now too late to extract the gold.

She is now making headlines of a different kind. She's getting married to the equally controversial Pakistani cricketer, Shoaib Malik, and speculation is rift about whether she will continue to play after marriage, and if so, for which country. There are also the people who question if she is marrying for love, or into a betting syndicate. And I am not even getting into the soap-operaish saga of the alleged previous marriage of Shoaib's - the truth of which may never be known.

To me, those conversations are purely academic- all that matters is that she is unlikely to ever become the player she could have been. She's gone on record saying that the only thing she is currently bothered about is whether her hair looks good on her wedding day or not. She seems to have completely forgotten about the hard court season that is currently going on, and the amount of tennis she is missing.

And while I wish the couple well, I can't help wondering. Had Sania Mirza not been as attractive and glamourous as she is, would she have achieved her full potential as a tennis player?

The things they say

This forward has been doing the rounds ever since e-mail was invented, but this was the first time it was sent to me after my kids became verbal. It was an amusing read then, but now I know all of them could well be true.

Enjoy! I know you will.

1) NUDITY

I was driving with my three young children one warm summer evening when a woman in the convertible ahead of us stood up and waved. She was stark naked! As I was reeling from the shock, I heard my 5-year-old shout from the back seat, 'Mom, that lady isn't wearing a seat belt!'

My older one has seen the picture of a lingerie model, and commented the flowers in her hair.

2) OPINIONS

On the first day of school, a first-grader handed his teacher a note from his mother. The note read, 'The opinions expressed by this child are not necessarily those of his parents.'

I am so taking this advice!

3) KETCHUP

A woman was trying hard to get the ketchup out of the jar. During her struggle, the phone rang so she asked her 4-year-old daughter to answer the phone. 'Mommy can't come to the phone to talk to you right now. She's hitting the bottle.'

Yup! This has been relayed to me once as something their Papa was doing.

4) MORE NUDITY

A little boy got lost at the YMCA and found himself in the womens' locker room. When he was spotted, the room burst into shrieks, with ladies grabbing towels and running for cover. The little boy watched in amazement and then asked, 'What's the matter, haven't you ever seen a little boy before?'

I can picture my younger one in a similar situation.

5) POLICE # 1

While taking a routine vandalism report at an elementary school, I was interrupted by a little girl about 6 years old. Looking up and down at my uniform, she asked, 'Are you a cop? 'Yes,' I answered and continued writing the report. 'My mother said if I ever needed help I should ask the police. Is that right?' 'Yes, that's right,' I told her. 'Well, then,' she said as she extended her foot toward me, 'would you please tie my shoe?'

My kids has asked assorted people for help in doing things like this - can definitely happen with mine.

6) POLICE # 2

It was the end of the day when I parked my police van in front of the station. As I gathered my equipment, my K-9 partner, Jake, was barking, and I saw a little boy staring in at me. 'Is that a dog you got back there?' he asked.

'It sure is,' I replied.

Puzzled, the boy looked at me and then towards the back of the van. Finally he said, 'What did he do?'

Been there, done that!

7) ELDERLY

While working for an organization that delivers lunches to elderly shut-ins, I used to take my 4-year-old daughter on my afternoon rounds. She was unfailingly intrigued by the various appliances of old age, particularly the canes, walkers and wheelchairs. One day I found her staring at a pair of false teeth soaking in a glass. As I braced myself for the inevitable barrage of questions, she merely turned and whispered, 'The tooth fairy will never believe this!'

Kids haven't met the Tooth Fairy yet :-(

8) DRESS-UP

A little girl was watching her parents dress for a party. When she saw her dad donning his tuxedo, she warned, 'Daddy, you shouldn't wear that suit.'

'And why not, darling?'

'You know that it always gives you a headache the next morning.'

Neither of us really gets a hangover, so the connection hasn't been made yet.

9) DEATH

While walking along the sidewalk in front of his church, our minister heard the intoning of a prayer that nearly made his collar wilt. Apparently, his 5-year-old son and his playmates had found a dead robin. Feeling that proper burial should be performed, they had secured a small box and cotton batting, then dug a hole and made ready for the disposal of the deceased.

The ministers' son was chosen to say the appropriate prayers and with sonorous dignity intoned his version of what he thought his father always said: 'Glory be unto the Father, and unto the Son, and into the hole he goes.' (I want this line used at my funeral!)

;-)

10) SCHOOL

A little girl had just finished her first week of school. 'I'm just wasting my time,' she said to her mother. 'I can't read, I can't write, and they won't let me talk!'

Both my kids have told me exactly this.

11) BIBLE

A little boy opened the big family Bible. He was fascinated as he fingered through the old pages. Suddenly, something fell out of the Bible. He picked up the object and looked at it. What he saw was an old leaf that had been pressed in between the pages.

'Mama, look what I found,' the boy called out.

'What have you got there, dear?'

With astonishment in the young boys' voice, he answered, 'I think it's Adams' underwear!'

Adam is not a part of their cultural make up, but if he were, this would definitely have happened.

Putting it together

My older one has always had a flair for jigsaw puzzles. From the time he put together his first three piece puzzle a couple of months before his third birthday, he's consistantly been doing puzzles meant for an older age group. How he puts the puzzles together is a constant mystery to me. He doesn't follow any of the conventional techniques that I am familiar with, and neither does he ever refer to the main picture. He just puts them together.

The younger one couldn't be more different. He started working independently on jigsaw puzzles only a month or two before his fourth birthday, but made up for lost time by rapidly advancing in the level of complexity. Yesterday, I saw him working on a 24 piece puzzle. He constantly referred to the picture, and kept at it dilligently till the it was done. After celebrating, he took it apart piece by piece and put it together, then did it again, and again. By today morning, he was doing that particular puzzle much faster than I remember his brother doing at the same age.

Two kids. Same activity. Two radically different approaches. Same result.

No, this is not a thesis on which of the two is the better approach, it is merely my musings on how there are multiple ways of approaching the same thing. Music can have the rigour of a classical piece or the spontanity of jazz. A painter can have the attention to detail of a Michealngelo or indicate form like a Monet. A writer can go into excruciating detail, or indicate things and leave the rest to the imagination of the reader.

It was Ann's post on Action in the white space that got me thinking about various ways to approach the same thing. As a listener/ viewer/ reader, which do I prefer? I think the answer to that question depends on how I am feeling at a particular point of time.

I am not fussy. There are times when I want the details. There I times when I want white space. The only thing I am consitant about wanting is quality. What about you?

My online friends

Sarah and I met four and a half years back on a Harry Potter fan site. She was Professora Blake, I was Lily Lives On. We didn't have faces, we had avatars- I'm not sure what mine was, but her's was a painting of a lady.

We discussed all things Harry Potter, then graduated to writing and discussing fan-fiction, and somewhere along the way started sharing and discovering more personal things about each other. We did a lot of crazy stuff, like being invovled in the online trial of a fictional character, and creating complicated theories about how the Harry Potter series would end.

About three years back, some of us started an online forum for writers, with the intention of motivating each other to keep writing. That met with limited success (only book has come out of the community, and only one other person has completed a book), but somewhere along the line, we became really good friends.

It wasn't just Sarah - it was a whole lot of others, who I first encoutered as an avatar, then got to know as a person, and over time started trusting as a friend. But Sarah was the first of them that I got to meet.

She finally made it to India for a series of lectures, and we met for lunch. Strangely, I wasn't at all apprehensive about meeting her. I knew that the problem would not be what to talk about, but how to stop and pull away. And it was just that- the hours melted away, and if I didn't have to get back to work, I am not sure I would have wanted the afternoon to end.

Someday, I know I will meet all the friends I have made online, but even if I don't, I'm not going to fret. If Sarah's any indication, the people I know online are exactly the same people they are in real life, so knowing them online is enough too.