Wow!!! Chelsea and I . . . we talked on the telephone for the FIRST. TIME. EVER.
You have to understand how big an event this was for us. I've known Chelsea for four years now -- she was the moderator of the Paranormal People list, an X-Files mailing list/zine where you could mail comments on episodes and get little zines in your inbox. All I knew was that Chelsea was in charge of it, somehow, LOL, and that she was the one who put out the zine. It was pretty sweet, and it introduced me to... gasp... fanfiction and fandom in general. ::maniacal grin::
After the first year or so, I got to know Chelsea, Gav, and Kim the most, especially with Chelsea and Kim's long and involved OT summer posts. Those were freaking INSANE... all about Harry Potter, and coke, and stuff that I had no idea of what they were talking about.... Yeah, those were cool. But it was another year that went by before I joined the OTParaP list, the list for off-topic discussion.
Now, THAT was where I got to know her better. It was mainly just the four of us (with Cindy and Devon showing up occasionally, I think), and while they talked about Buffy a lot of the time (which I wasn't yet into... I must've been mad, really), we also talked about Harry Potter (the fourth book had come out fairly recently) and Lord of the Rings and weirdo dreams and other good stuff of that nature. One day last summer, Chelsea told me for the umpteenth time that I needed to get into BtVS. I said I would do so only if I got some kind of 'sign' -- I was firmly resisting finding a new fandom. However, two nights later I dreamed about Spike (complete with duster, LOL), and then I watched my first two episodes: Becoming I and II. And I thought to myself... "This is good stuff." :-D
So then I became obsessed with Spike, and with BtVS, and many more conversations were had. Then there was the fact that, because I was at college, I was on my computer more during the day, the same time Chelsea was. And so we spawned many a bizarre and rambling and awesome IM, and I started getting all excited and eager every time I saw her name pop up on my buddy list, because I was like, "Dude, she rocks." In fact, when I went to the sci-fi convention in Seattle and met the wonderful James Marsters, I got her an autograph from him. When she sent me the money for the autograph, the envelope was all decorated with Spike quotes. And the envelope wars were born. :-D I figured, hey, I can doodle, so I fired off a doodle-covered envelope to her. She was quite amazed when I sent her two more, and was v. impressed by my mad doodling skills. Then she sent me one that was most gorgeous and pretty and shiny and it even had a medal in it for me! LOL! So then I sent her six little envelopes inside a big envelope... I'll link to the pictures one day, I promise... and lo, it was cool. So that's where we've progressed to -- nifty letters and daily IMs. :)
Well, today, I was walking along to Safeway to buy eyedrops and hairspray, when I was struck with an idea. "Dang," I thought. "School charges me long-distance if I even call to Portland, which is still the same area code as Salem. Also they're charging me thousands of dollars just to come here, which I'm going to be paying off for ages. So... is it really going to make any difference if, say, I put in a call to Wisconsin?"
So when I got back to my room, I ran the idea by Chelsea:
Gina: Oh!!! Guess what. I had an idea.
Chelsa: And idea, eh? An evil one?
Gina: Well, perhaps.... Here's my idea. A phone call to Portland, which has the same area code as Salem, is still long distance. So all my phone calls cost a pretty penny if they're long. But my tuition is something like $18,000 a year after my scholarship, so really, who cares if I incur a pricey long-distance phone call bill every once in a great while?
Gina: Do you see my plan? :-D
Chelsea: !!! Are we gonna talk on the phone now?!
Gina: Yes, Chelsea. It is time to Move Our Relationship to the Next Level.
Chelsea: *rofl*
Gina: Whaddaya think of my fiendish plan, eh?
Chelsea: I think 'tis a good fiendish plan!
Gina: ::feels all nervous and stuff:: This is, like, exciting, dude. LOL... it'll be so weird to hear your voice! You've always just been Chelsea, Maroon 9-pt Arial Font.
Chelsea: I know! Bizarre! Kim has heard my voice, through that old phone-accessible e-mail thing that used to be free ...
Chelsea: I have an odd voice.
Gina: LOL, do you? What, do you sound like a lumberjack or something? Or Beaker off Sesame Street?
Chelsea: No, just odd, lol. I don't think I sound like a lumberjack ...
Gina: My voice always sounds really odd to me, anyway -- it either sounds oddly high or oddly low, depending on however I'm thinking of what it should sound like at the time. Like sometimes I think I have a low voice. Then it sounds high on video. Then I think I have a normal voice. Then it sounds all low! LOL
Chelsea: Hee! I know exactly what you mean. I hate listening to recordings of myself ...So then we pondered the idea some more, and here's an another amusing snippet:
Gina: So... shall we... phone?
Chelsea: O.O Okay
Chelsea: Who you want to call who?
Gina: Erm... well, we could switch off. I was figuring we could do phoney stuff every couple weeks, each of us taking a turn.
Chelsea: Hee! Okay, rofl -- you have a plan.
Gina: Muahahaha, yes. I have been planning this since... um... 1:00. LOL
Chelsea: Holy crap, man.
Gina: *gulps* I just thought of something. What are we going to say instead of 'roflmao', LOL???
Chelsea: I DON'T KNOW!
Chelsea: I was imagining trying to make a O.O face.
Gina: I suppose we could always just laugh, like normal people... LOL! Oh no! We can't do that one either!!!
Chelsea: luh-mao ...
Gina: And what about :-D :-)=-O:-(;-)>:o:-P......
Chelsea: 'Tis frightening and strange, this telephone!
Gina: And we could say "roffle" for rofl....
Gina: 'Tis indeed!
Chelsea: I always say roffle when I type it, lol.
Gina: LOL... my inner IM noises are strange and incomprehensible. Say LOL. Instead of reading it as laugh-out-loud or lots-of-laughs or what have you, I say "Laul-o-laul." Or something like that... LOL
Chelsea: Hee! IM noises so fun.
Chelsea: rofl is my favorite.
Gina: And saying 'hee' at every turn might get confusing... "He who? We weren't talking about any 'he.' Oh, you mean hee...."
Gina: LOL, this will be so confusing. We shall be paralyzed without chatspeak.
Chelsea: LoL, yesh -- v. bizarre. Sometimes I say 'vee'.
Gina: Heheheh. I say "ver". Dunno why. The 'y' must take too much of an effort, or something.
Chelsea: I guess
Chelsea: I am amused by the fact that we just keep talking about hypothetically talking, lol.
Gina: ::takes deep breath:: Okay. I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna CALL CHELSEA.
Chelsea: AAAAAHHHHH!
Gina: And I'm gonna put my away message up so that no one will try and lure me back to the computer (as my phone is across the room and alas, does not stretch to comp. But that's okay because we're going to TALK IN RL!!! OMG!!! ;-)....
Chelsea: Hee! Me too, I have it ready ...
Chelsea: HAve to see what yours says ...
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Auto response from Gina: Talking to Chelsea -- CHELSEA! -- on the telephone -- FELLYTONE! I have never talked to her on the phone before! WE'RE GOING TO THE NEXT STEP IN THE RELATIONSHIP!!! D00D!!! ::passes out::
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Chelsea: AAAHHHHHH
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Auto response from Chelsea: I'm ...*gulp* ON THE PHONE. *deep breathing, now*
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------So yeah. We were totally freaking out. :) It also didn't help that when I called her number, the operator told me it was disconnected! Turned out Chelsea'd typed one number incorrectly. So she gave me the proper number and, my heart going a mile a minute, I picked up the receiver and dialed it. Chelsea picked up halfway on the first ring: "Hello?" she squealed.
"Hello?" I yelped. "Chelsea?"
"Gina?"
"Eeeeeeeeeeeeeee!"
So then there was about ten minutes of nervous crazed giggling, ROFLMAO. Seriously -- we were both majorly freaked out to be actually talking on the telephone, to have reached a REAL LIVE PERSON on the other end... it's weird! It really is! And it was made even weirder by the fact that Chelsea, it transpires, sounds
just like my good friend Sara. AND Chelsea was talking about her roomie, whose name is Wendy, which is the name of the good friend of Sara and I -- so it was superduperalleyooper weird. LOL....
Then we tried to calm down enough to stop the nervous bursts of giggles, but we both kept busting out laughing with sheer amazement. It was great. At last we settled down enough to talk about... um... stuff. LOL, I don't remember all of it, let alone the order! But I know we talked about Snape as Dr. Frank N. Furter, and who the Harry Potter chars would be if they were RHPS chars, and I doodled alarming versions of Snape, and we talked about Harry and Draco and how Chelsea is in love with the pairing and how I'm so not, and how she's trying to convert me and really rather failing, and then I doodled Draco in a mullet and taunted her with the information. I also doodled Draco in a mohawk, in dredlocks (but not pretty spiffy Jack Sparrow dredlocks, oh no), and with an afro. Bwahahaha. And we talked about real-life stuff, too -- her Harry Potter party, my high-school rivalry with a girl who didn't happen to know she was my archrival -- and we talked about "Chosen" and how heartbreaking it was and how we cried and cried and how we really should've watched it together because we both would've been sobbing maniacs, and how we both thought Aragorn looks like a dog in the scene of FotR when the orc pins him to the tree with the shield, and how Aragorn's voice sounds all girly in the Council of Elrond scene, muahahahaha.... Then we talked about the coolness of Trogdor, and the weirdness of dorm life, and penises as is becoming usual with us, alarmingly, and how Harry/Snape and Harry/Dead!James is just freakishly wrong, and how we both like cheese, and how Wisconsin has no beaches but Oregon does cuz we're cool, and how "The Truth" really sucked, and poor Doggett and Reyes and Skinner and Gibson Praise and Kersh, and how we really should've saved all those Paranormal People convos because they rocked socks, and how it was frickin' weird not to be online and able to use acronyms and stuff. And I told her all about Plan 9 from Outer Space, and she told me all about the Hands of Manos, and we laughed and laughed and laughed until our jaws ached and our ears were starting to fuse to the phone. We talked for about an hour-and-a-half, almost two hours, and it was so freaking awesome, and lo, we were glad.
Then we got back online and talked about how awesome we were. :-D
Chelsea: O.O
Chelsea: rofl
Chelsea: lmao
Chelsea: Okay. Feeling more secure.
Gina: ::just sits here laughing like a madman::
Gina: LOL, I know, I was all nervous and stuff!
Chelsea: I know!!
Chelsea: Wow, does my throat hurt though, lol :-)
Gina: I was like, OMG, I've never called anyone from online, and what if we can't think of things to talk about, and what if it's just silence and it sucks and AAAAAAAAA
Chelsea: I'm feeling rather dazed right now ... whaaaa
Gina: LOL, mine too!!! And my EAR! I was holding the phone to my ear with my shoulder the whole time, and my phone doesn't work as well on the right side, so I had to keep it on the left the whole time and now it hurts and stuff and yeah.Oh yeah. We are so doing this again.
Much love to ya, Chelsea. :-D
giddy
ecstatic