Hi I'm Jaine, not Jaine Torres.

Do you say Melissa or Melissa Anelli? Alex or Alex Carpenter? Does it depend on who you are talking to? Does it matter if you are friends?

I've been thinking about types of friendships a lot lately. I've personally had the fortune to be able to travel a lot lately and see a lot of my friends and make new ones, some more known than others. Yesterday, when I posted about my trip to LA, I refereed to Alex Carpenter as both Alex and Alex Carpenter in the same paragraph.

Alex Carpenter played an awesome set, possible one of the best I've seen...

That's right, I got invited to my first hotel party. There were a couple locals, us Final Battle people and one of the Quiddtch teams for a while. Later Alex and "Katniss" came.

What's interesting to me is why I used each name. In the first sentence I used his full name as a way to recognize his musician status. In that situation he was a star and I was a fan. In the second sentence, I refer to him as just Alex to show that in this situation we were equals. I think it's important to remember that no matter who you are talking to, be yourself. For me that's an intellectual with original ideas. How can I expect to be respected if all I see is the star not the human.