And it took me back to those carefree days in a little Oregon town when all I worried about was making espresso, writing and studying computers. Read on below or you can read the full post online at The RhodesTer Chronicles.
In 1994.. or was it 95?.. coffeesister and I had just moved into a new house in Ashland Oregon. Being the early formative years of the internet, she still hadn’t come up with an appropriate online moniker to use for everything, so we decided to go to a local coffeehouse and have some coffee while trying to come up with something. Our Barista that day was a young lady named Angelea, who was working her way through college at the time and looking forward to becoming a bigshot in the newly developing Internet world.
We finished our coffee and left the coffeehouse without having yet come up with an appropriate username for coffeesister, but Angelea went on to graduate with some kind of fancy degree and promptly went to work for a local Internet firm, which was later bought out by the now defunct Geocities, which in turn was snatched up by a little company that calls itself YAHOO. We didn’t frequent the same social circles that she did, but we’d see her around town and she’d see us, and we’d wave at each other in passing. Once in a while, we’d actually stop and talk, or have a brief hello at The Black Sheep, which was the local pub in town. In Ashland, “The Sheep” is the place to see and be seen, and we’d see Angelea in there a lot. She’d see us too. We’d exchange smiles and friendly glances over fish & chips, beer and spotted dick.
She WAS a “geek girl” in the truest sense, a fact made obvious to the general public every time she took her Beemer out for a spin because her personalized plate announced to all that a “geekgrl” was behind the wheel. We moved out of there in 2000, and I don’t know if she left sometime after that or just before, but leave she did, and I didn’t know of her whereabouts or latests endeavors until now. While simply doing a bit of websurfing yesterday, I happened upon..
HorseGirlTV.com
I think I remember her saying something about a fondness for horses right along with computers way back on that first day at the coffeehouse, so I can’t tell you what an exhilarating surprise it was to stumble upon the fruition of her combined desires in the form of a podcast that’s all about horses this many years down the trail.
I always thought she’d combine her two passions by coming up with a way for computer enthusiasts to stay connected while horseback riding by inventing some sort of saddle-top wireless computer system. But instead, Angelea (pronounced “Angela”), hosts HorseGirlTV, and I’m not sure if she has a hand in the production of it, but I wouldn’t put it past her “geekgrl” abilities – it’s slick and very professional. It’s also WAY more information on horses than I can use personally, but I’ve watched about half of the episodes that have been posted so far and I’m duly impressed. She’s personable, friendly and she knows more about horses than I ever will, which isn’t saying much, but if she keeps on fronting the shows I’ll keep watching them and learning. She’s always been nice to look at, but that’s not the most important thing when we need to know what kind of breeches to wear while riding in the snow, now is it?
And as I recall, she makes a fairly decent cappuccino too.
PS. We finally came up with coffeesister’s perfectly appropriate username over a couple of beers at “The Sheep”.
