GeekMom discussion

Here's the questions for this week:

Jenny talks about how her hometown changed over the years after she had gotten married and moved away. She comes to the realization that home is wherever Victor is. What is home for you? Is it a place or is it being with loved ones?

Making friends as an adult can be hard, but the internet makes it a little easier to find friends with similar interests. Jenny finds some great girlfriends through a blogger retreat to Napa Valley but she first made contact via the internet. Has the internet helped you find friends?

Home for us seems to refer to Washington State in general. We've lived in five other states since then, but it's where hubby and I grew up and where we're most comfortable. Of course the current location we live in is also known as "home", but referring to Washington as home reflects our desire to end up back there someday.

From the previous paragraph, you can probably tell that we're a military family. As such, we move every 2-3 years. The internet has been invaluable - not necessarily in meeting NEW friends, but in keeping up with the old. Even before Facebook, I had a family blog so people could keep up with us without waiting for the once-yearly Christmas letter. Now we have friends spread throughout the US and even the world and without Facebook, they'd all be lost!

I grew up in the military but my family has lived in Georgia for generations, so even though I've lived in the Midwest for over 20 years now and my kids were born and raised here, Georgia will always be "home" to me.

Of course home is where my family is. My family has only ever been in CA though, so I always think of CA as my home. I am a 5th gen Northern Californian, I get physically ill when my husband talks about leaving here. I'd go with him, but I'd always want to go back home at some point.

I have a horrible time making friends. I am not even sure I have internet friends. Along those same lines, I met my husband online in '96ish. We met in an AOL chatroom lobby. Definitely the best thing to ever happen to me online.

Home is someplace different depending how I'm feeling. Sometimes it's dependent on the people I'm with, but I can be on vacation with all my extended family, and when I drive back into western PA, where I recognize the landscape and climate, and am hearing familiar radio stations come back in... it definitely feels like coming home. Sometimes when I'm at my house, going home is going to my parents'. When I'm there, going home is back to my house. Just so long as I feel comfortable, maybe that's home.

I wish I could meet my Internet friends in real life. Also, as Bettina said, the Internet is how I keep touch with the people I HAVE known in person, too. But I've met a lot of really kindred spirits online, and it would be so cool to hang out with them in real life. It's so much easier for me to make friends through the written word, because I tend not to talk out loud easily. And you don't have to get through all that boring small talk online-- you jump right into the stuff you're actually interested in! Sometimes when I'm with real-life mommy groups, La Leche League meetings and such, I've been tempted to just say "You know I have a blog? You should read my blog. Then I bet we can actually have an interesting conversation." Gah.

Home is pretty much where my husband and daughter are for me. In some ways, Michigan will be home but the longer I live away from there the less home-like it is.

Pretty much all my friends, I've met online. I met my best friend on a local mommy message board for an example.