was she the first person i ever met from the internet?

i think so.

life is such a weird and wonderful thing that i dont know what advice id have for my kids if i had them.

i would say try thing, pray a lot, and learn how to judge people by their hearts.

we can get distracted a lot by how pretty some people are, or how fancy their cars are, or how well they speak foreign languages

but one thing they teach you in little league football is “if youre trying to tackle someone, aim at their belly button, dont get faked out by their arms or head or eyes.”

ashley and i chatted a lot on the now ancient AOL instant messenger and the good thing about that is you can learn a lot about someone simply by their words. hours and hours of words.

to me thats the same as looking into their hearts, which is why i think people fall in love with writers and authors and poets and songwriters. words are the highways to the soul. and on a thing like AIM it’s hard to fake. nowadays everyone has text messages or snapchats and you could show a picture of your infinity pool or your sixpack and if your emoji game is on point who knows what nonsense you can make others believe you are all about.

but words on a blank screen, live, while you’re living, that’s pretty much you.

and so when we met it was, oh yes, hi, oh your accent is funny. oh your eyes are that blue.

oh you really do wear a cubs hat everywhere.

ashley is pretty active on the social medias and its nice to see her be such a great mom to her little angel. it’s so nice to see that her family and extended family are just as close and happy as they seemed to be decades ago. it makes me happy because it couldn’t have happened to a nicer person. and today i hope she has a great birthday.