the origins of VALF

I have been inspired to start a blog. It's 50% due to the cool blogs my friends and my sister keep up, and 50% due to the supreme boredom I reside in for most of the time I'm in front of a computer (at work) and my desperate attempts to spice up my computer life.

You may be wondering where the "Valf" title of this site came from.
Isn't it obvious?
Valf rhymes with Alf.
Need I say more?

To be entirely correct, it's actually written VALF, and there's more involved than my likeness to a cuddly 1980s alien. (Though here's an Alf site for you nostalgic Alf-lovers out there).

Yesterday I clicked on the "create a login" to start my own blog, and then I had to choose a user name and a password. Like every other login name I've had to create, every one I tried was already taken, even my AOL screen name (created in 8th grade), DanserVal.
I decided it was time to take VALF public.

At the end of my senior year of high school, I was part of a small posse of girls, like any good high schooler. (See the recent movies "Mean Girls" or "Saved" for a better understanding of this phenomenon). My posse consisted of myself and my two friends Hannah and Karen. Amongst a myriad of other talents, Hannah has a knack for making up nicknames that are not only ridiculous but also tend to stick for a long time. (To this day, we still call Karen "Kar-ren".) She deserves the bulk of the credit for VALF.

One particular night, our conversation turned to my initials and my nickname. Having the first name of Valerie and initials that spell VAL (Valerie Anne Lewis), I've gotten used to this being a topic of discussion. We started debating what would happen when I got married. I couldn't very well change my last name and ruin the great initials acronym. This has prompted several people to suggest I should only consider marrying a guy with a last name beginning with the letter "L". We came up with a far superior solution: simply adding another last name at the end, and another letter onto my initials. It wouldn't be pure "VAL" anymore, but it would keep the spirit of it.

We came to a consensus that the most amusing new set of initials I could get was VALF. This was not quite as cool as Kar-ren would become were she to marry her KEW to someone with an L and become KEWL. But hey, Kar-ren already had a nickname.

Thus began the era of VALF.