All three forms I needed

All three forms I needed to do my taxes came in the mail yesterday, so I did my return last night. I was hoping for a bit of a refund, but it wasn’t meant to be. I owe $96. Yuck.

The other day I got an email from Friendster saying I had a new person requesting to be my friend. Turns out it was Laura, a friend from high school that I haven’t spoken to in years. Through her profile, I also found another high school friend who is apparently a jazz flutist in southern California now. This was most interesting to me because “back in the day” we were always battling it out for the higher chair in band. Our band was fortunate enough to have some pretty good flutists; Becky and I were usually fighting to settle 3rd and 4th chair because 1st and 2nd were taken by Nancy and Laura. By senior year though, if I remember correctly, Becky (or I guess she goes by Rebecca now) was getting more serious and took over 2nd chair while I stuck with 3rd and Laura went to 4th. Becky went on to Illinois to study music, while I headed to Tech and gave up any hope of ever having a music career. There was a time I thought about being a music major, but I don’t think it would have been the right thing for me.

Anyway. Maybe this Friendster thing is useful after all…

Thinking of old high school friends sent me to Google, where I searched for a few people I remember and would be interested in hearing from. It’s was a mostly fruitless process, which made me realize how large the gap still is between those who are “online” and those who aren’t except for occasional email. Search for my name and you’ll get 366 results. Nine of the ten on the first page are me. 8/10 on the second page. 9/10 on the third page. 7/10 on the fourth page. Et cetera.

It’s true that I 1) have a fairly unique name and 2) have not changed my name (i.e. gotten married), which makes it a lot easier than it is to find someone like, say, my friends Andrew Holmes (common name) or Cayce Denton (has her husband’s name now) on the web. (I still keep in touch with them though, so it’s ok.) But the point is that I am an extremely easy person to find, should any of my old high school friends think of me. They, on the other hand, are much harder to track down. I’m tempted to attribute this difference to the fact that I became an engineer and therefore use computers on a daily basis, while none of my other high school friends followed a career path quite as technical.

Then of course there are the people who find me, like Elizabeth, or Eli, who was a friend in middle school that I lost track of when we went to separate high schools. Eli, if you’re reading this, know that I’ve been meaning to email you for more than a year, seriously, but I am just that lazy!!

Anyway. Just thinking.