People meeting people

Recently I was flipping through a People magazine and read an article about how celebrities were decorating room for their new babies. In the caption by singer/host Mark McGrath’s photo, I saw the name "Wendy Kjorness," who was the designer for McGrath’s twin babies’ bedroom.

I couldn’t believe my eyes. Kjorness is an uncommon name and the name I was born with.

I Googled “Wendy Kjorness” and clicked on the website for her design firm. I e-mailed her and she immediately replied. The subject line in my e-mail was “I’m a Kjorness too” which probably got her attention because she doesn’t meet too many Kjornesses. We quickly figured out that our dads were cousins.

How cool that, through the Internet, I was able to read her name in a magazine and quickly satisfy my curiousity about if we were related.

I told her that my dad and her dad and her uncle spent a winter together in Mazatlan, Mexico, in the 1980s and there are photos of the three Norwegians in sombreros and serapes to prove it.