Day 88 of 96 – I must be about five days behind in my blogging.

I blame the jigsaw puzzles. But I’ve also been traveling. Recently I went out to the west of Germany to see some friends. It was a very successful trip; I managed to visit with eleven different humans. Deutsche Bahn was very helpful too. I love traveling by train. Civilized.

During this trip I got to visit with two couples (that’s four people) and what’s special about all this is: I was the one that introduced them to each other (not the couples to each other but each member of the couple to the other member).

And the bake sale to raise money for the carwash has been cancelled because of confusion.

Note: Due to privacy concerns I’m going to simply call them Couple A and Couple B. I don’t mind posting my shenanigans all over the Internet but I try to keep the exposure of everyone else to a minimum.

Couple A were introduced to each other when I visited New Zealand in October 2005. He was a friend from when we worked at Nortel and she was one of my German friends from the GI in Ottawa. They were both living in Auckland and I was in Australia for work, so I figured I’d drop by and say hello.

Couple B were both friends from Ottawa. He was from out east, working in the nation’s capital and she was from the Netherlands on a two-year contract. I think it was April 2006 when they met.

Note: English is a confusing language. If I’m telling a story and I say “he was a friend from Ottawa” this could be interpreted as “he was a friend” as in “we are no longer friends”. What I mean to say “he was a friend from Ottawa and we are still friends to this day”. I’m going to just keep everything in the past tense for my own sanity.

So Couple B got married in April in the Netherlands (civil ceremony) of which I was able to participate. They had a second proper wedding with family in Iceland in June. And they had a baby born in September of this year.

Couple A got married in Germany at the beginning of July and this was followed by a second wedding in Canada in October. And they are going to have a baby in January sometime.

There’s some crazy parallels here.

and apparently multiple weddings are all the rage these days.

What gets my mind racing about all this, is that I’m responsible for these babies existing. Well, maybe “responsible” is not the right word. Let’s try: without me these exact babies do not exist. I think that’s pretty cool. I’ve helped contribute to the success of the project while having done the absolute minimum amount of work.

And because they all live in Europe I won’t get to see them very often, but the kids will always remember me. Their parents will tell them, “This is our friend Jason. He introduced us to each other”. Kids are pretty smart. Once they’re a few years old they’ll come to the realization that if a time-traveling robot from the future wanted to prevent their birth, I would be a legitimate target for that robot.

That’s some built-in respect right there.

Respect.