Meme: How I met my friends

khalidz0r asked (in a locked post) how we met our best friends. I'm not a great believer in creating hierarchies of friendships, so I've just listed some people who are very important in my life. I've probably forgotten someone (precisely because I don't have a formal list of "best" friends). There are lots of other people I care about but maybe I don't know well enough or don't spent enough time with to feel as strong a connection to them. (And there's one person I've left out altogether in order to protect her anonymity). Anyway, these are in (roughly) chronological order, not order of precedence!

( lots of happy stories )

Wow, that's a really long list, actually. I'm incredibly blessed to have this many people in my life who really enrich it.