I had to figure out my email address and password for this site so I could log on again to respond here since it had been a few years.
I remember when I first found the AOL SDMB boards when I was 15 (I am 30 now) and how everyone knew her, whether online or offline. When I think of the SDMB she has always been the first to come to mind. We butt heads sometimes (I was an uber-religious teenager and she was, well, Opalcat) but I always respected her and admired her.
I followed her to Livejournal when she trekked over there in 2000. I later met my husband and many dear friends on Livejournal, so I have her to thank for that.
Just a month ago, I had seen her update on LJ and wished her luck in everything. I’m still in shock over hearing about her passing. I hope that someone with some web-design skills can make a memorial page for her. She’s greatly missed.
As you know, I haven’t been on SDMB in a very long time (absolutely nothing aginst the Board or any Dopers, just lack of time), but I still check on Facebook fairly regularly. Opal is one of my contacts on FB, and seeing her on there made me feel nice with a connection still to the Dope (especially since she was on FB under her Doper name). I appreciated seeing her on there, and always made me think of y’all when I saw her. I guess to me she was the Dope in my period away from the board.
Opal, you were gone too soon, and I, and everyone else, will miss you.
Once again, my condolences to you and your family, **Opal **was great in parodying a guy with a very peculiar moon conspiracy theory in a thread in the Straight Dope, many moons ago.
I later met her in a Phoenix dopefest, we exchanged artwork and she even posted my cartoon dedicated to her work on that thread in her site.
I’m planing on going to the service in Tucson to offer my respects.
I suddenly feel very blessed that I have indeed interacted with her in a more direct manner, despite still only being over the internet.
She sold me my Roomba and Scooba through Google+. She even recontacted me out of the blue to let me know she’d found a box of extra filters for the Roomba when cleaning out her place. I remember feeling special that she even remembered it was me she had sold them to, let alone making the effort to get back in touch with me for the extra filters.
Sigh.
If anyone in New Mexico will be driving to her Tucson memorial, contact me please.
That video clip from Jeopardy sure brings it all home.
The fluid nature of how we all live, where we all live and what we all do has made the Internet a more intense and intimate space than many face to face encounters. I’m not allowing as Internet connections are better than or more intense than face to face. But I’m sure giving them their fair due.
I’ve met some Dopers and have built friendships that have flourished only here as well as off-boards IRL.
We are as good as our words for better or worse. When our words or our actions fail, then we fail. God knows I fail sometimes. So do many of us. Some of us remember maddening battles with OpalCat, and yet here we are now. Mourning a very real human presence in our lives.
Cautionary lesson here to those online who roll their eyes at the reality of the SDMB. It is real, our connections are real. The gains and losses are real. Even if you never met OpalCat, one must admit the tangible nature of the loss.
I mourn for the loss IRL of this Doper much more than on the Boards. She was beloved by her son and husband, parents and friends.
