the internet is better than m&m's for making friends

i always kind of thought that not going to college really kind of screwed me in the way of having girlfriends.  i know lots of folks whose best buddies are from their days of debauchery during their quest for higher education.  i have a few really good friends from jobs i've had in years past, but not really anyone i have super duper OG memories with.

but then when we were planning our wedding about five years ago, i stumbled upon the message boards on the knot.  i bypassed the local board as we weren't really looking for a lot of tips for l.a. area wedding vendors, but found lots of great tips and ideas from the plethora of national boards. 

and then i discovered the snarky, clique-y boards and was hooked immediately.  i chatted with chicks all across the country, talking a bunch of shit and poking fun at some really ridiculous stuff (like ribbon wands and tears-of-joy packets...a handful of you will remember those well).  i got to know a handful of them who were fairly local, and we planned get-togethers (GTGs, y'know) as often as our schedules allowed.  a couple of them even attended the reception we threw locally.

i miss these girls - we haven't spoken much aside from random facebook comments here and there. 

and then we had the mass WW banning of march '06.  the powers-that-be at the knot had gotten lots and lots of complaints from whiners (dubbed "beebee brides") about us, and started yanking board access from "knotties" left and right.  girls i spoke to on a daily basis suddenly got cut off, and it sucked.  i was still working full-time in an office with lots of time for screwing around, and after being addicted to the boards for the last year, it was like missing a limb.  a bunch of them started their own spinoff board, but it wasn't nearly as fun.  and so i finally turned to my local board.

there were a few of them who recognized me as a total meanie, and although i wasn't shunned, i had to work for my welcome.  heh.  anyway, as time went on, i got to know a lot of the girls (well, as much as you can get to know someone online), and then we planned a local GTG. 

damn, was i nervous.  i felt like a kid on the first day of school at a new school.  but after the initial weirdness, we got to talking and laughing and it was really fun to actually hang out with these girls live and in person.

that led to more GTGs, sometimes with the same group, sometimes with newbies.

here's a couple that will make a few folks chortle merrily.

a lot of these girls have come and gone, and what we have left is what we all call the SFAMily - "sista from anotha mista," coined by the monkey and trish ages and ages ago.

i never would have thought that spending all that time on the knot would hand some of my very dearest friends on the face of this earth to me on a silver platter.  the hub used to totally make fun of me, but as we spent more time together, marking important events and holidays as a tight-knit little group, he realized that they weren't "internet friends" anymore - these are wonderful women whom i love lots and lots.

some of us ended up taking the next logical step (well, logical to us, i guess) and moved on to the nest, which is the knot's sister site geared towards married folks.  doing so introduced us to a whole crew of other fun friends, from the OC:

so yeah, i admit it.  i owe almost my entire social life to a website.  one that we often make fun of, despite our obvious addiction to it.  sadly, i haven't been able to spend much time on it since i don't work in an office anymore, but that's okay.  the friendships i've made through the knot and the nest will last foh-evah.  we're BFFs, yo!