In the spring of 2006 I found a link to a live eagle's nest webcam on the Coast to Coast AM website, a radio show that I have listened to since 1995. I started watching the eagles and found a chat room called #Infotec_Forum, a gal whose nickname is Playful had founded the #Infotec_Forum chat room where all the eagle watchers could chat and watch the live cam at the same time. I met a lot of very nice people there and made friends with all of them, we all learned from each other all about the eagles, their habits, etc. then slowly ventured off into other rooms once I was introduced to this (Mystical_Unicorns) script made by a gal named Chicca.

Sometime in fall time around October 2006 I met a man in #Mystical_Unicorns chat room whose nickname is makkie he is from Holland, we chatted along with everyone else in and out of the room and around December he had some bad news, he found out he would have to move out of his apartment because they had to tear whole building down for new renovations. He wasn't very happy about that and made him feel kinda down and out, I am always trying to cheer people up so I re-assured him that there prolly was another reason (something he didn't know about yet - maybe a blessing in disguise) why he would have to move, he moved to his parents temporarily until he could find a new place, he was on a long waiting list and felt like it would take forever to get a place. One night I told him about the number 8 story that i had heard on this radio show (CoasttoCoastam) It brings people prosperity etc. I convinced him to put a number eight on a piece of paper and put it in his wallet.

I at the time worked for a hotel in Anchorage Alaska and was in a very long complicated 'very bad' relationship, I didn't talk much about it in chat (nothing to brag about) I worked 7 nights a week there for over a year and this new chat thing was very nice to have to keep me company while doing my night shifts at the hotel. We kept chatting day after day and joking with each other about dates and what he might bring me from the supermarket when he would have leave chat to attend to real life matters. In December of 2006 i wrote to a bunch of the chat people to ask for real snail mail address's so that i could send out Christmas cards. I sent one to makkie to even though he wasn't one of the real 'eagle watchers' .... he sent one back to me :) We started sending each other songs etc, chatting more and more, we ended up in private chats alot because he was building a 'bot' (Polybear) for me for the infotec chatroom and all its users. Because we had lost our "Eaglebot" and I thought everyone in #Infotec_Forum might like that.

Sometime at the beginning of January 2007 we both had some kind of very strong butterflies from each other and since that moment in chat we decided that we would have to meet each other in person. It was really amazing being so far away from each other, we asked 'how could this be'? But we decided we would quit questioning it and take it from there. We have so many of the same interests it is truly amazing. One night in January i made a huge banner out of a sheet from the hotel and spray painted makkie on it, then took it over to the live Anchorage Web Cam and held it up while a few chatters watched and he got screen shots of it. makkie said no one had ever done anything like this for him before, and well i had never done anything like it before either, but it was a lot of fun :) I did a few other things to amaze him *lol* i was missing him one night and it was snowing in Anchorage so i went out in the parking lot of the hotel and wrote a message in the snow to him, he loved that to.

Meanwhile he got a letter (way sooner than he ever thought) to go look at a new apartment and within a few days after that also got a check in the mail from some money that was owed to him for awhile. The number 8? Well from that time on everything went pretty smooth for him, he did however work on his apartment for a very long time, made it look very beautiful. I was missing him dearly in chat though, because he had to work on his new place and since it was empty (no computer) we couldn't chat while he had to work. I even had him on my notify list with one of our favorite songs so that when he would come online i would hear it. I wanted to meet him in person so bad and just to be with him because he was such a nice, caring person. Alot of people in chat were worried for me, going that far away from home etc.... but i knew deep in my heart that i would be just fine, I really felt great inside knowing I had so many people that really cared and worried about me.

I had troubles with people at work so I ended up quitting my job at the hotel and moved back down to Kenai Peninsula. makkie was going to come to Alaska to see me, but he still had work on his apartment and other things to take care of there in Rotterdam, and I just couldn't wait any longer, so i decided to go there first to meet him in person. Once i did decide to go we joked about things such as ... i would sneak upon him at the airport, and what we would do when we finally met. It wasn't a scary feeling but an exciting one. Did i mention "I couldn't wait!!!"

Well I didn't have a copy of my birth certificate for my passport so i had to send for one, I had it on the table ... and I was cutting card board pieces for my masks that I make and had accidentally put the scraps for the fire on top of my birth certificate and when I took the scraps out to burn them, (we were burning sawdust from my brothers furniture that he was building from the garage etc that day) "I cried and cried about this” I had accidentally grabbed that to and put it in the fire ...well my son Jeremy was going to take me to the Post Office in Kenai to get my passport and I looked down on the table .. and OMG there was no birth certificate envelope ... then I realized I had thrown it in the fire ... so I 'RAN' out there as fast as I could and grabbed it out of there and what i had left of it wasn't good enough to get my passport so i had to send for another finally got the new one and my passport and off i went.

We met in Germany at the Frankfurt Airport ( I DID sneak up on him) *lol* there were two spots where the passengers were getting off well he was facing one way but I ended up going out the other side, I recognized him from the pictures he had sent and there he was standing with a rose in his hand *Smiles*, we stayed in a hotel our first night and took the train to Rotterdam, Netherlands the next day. He took me all over to markets, to the beach , we went on holiday for two weeks to south eastern Netherlands with all of his family (some of the nicest and most accepting people I have ever met), we went on walks, biking, attraction park, swimming, out to dinner, went to bingo at the lodge and won 3 games! *lol* I was having the best time of my life with my new found love. I feel so very blessed to have met him, and it was quite a circle of events for us to finally get together.