We Met On The Net

The picture is us in Hawaii eating at Postcards, where all the tony people eat, but they let dorks from Carolina eat there too.

1994 visit to old law office

"So how is Danielle doing?" I ask the paralegal. Danielle replaced me as manager of the Legal Aid Office in Georgetown, SC.

"Oh, she's living in California with her new husband," Lavonne says. "She met him on this computer thing where you can talk to people."

"A computer thing where you talk to people?" I ask. "Fuh-reeky."

Julianna posted in November about meeting me last spring. Thanks Julianna! Julianna, like me, is both Gorgeous and Divine, as Tertia likes to say. We hardly paused to take a breath the whole evening. We met downtown in separate cars, but her ride was sick and left so Julianna bravely climbed into my filthy, cluttered 1992 Nissan Sentra and I gave her a lift home, stopping by the house to visit the family. Of course I had been gone for over 10 minutes and the house was a holy mess, but Julianna was most gracious. Julianna, can't wait to see you again this spring.

I have had the best luck meeting people on the Net.

The first one I met personally was a lady on a poodle list I used to frequent. C and I met downtown for dinner and hit it off like crazy. If we had been computer matched, we couldn't have had more in common. We both had 2 poodles and wanted babies. C adopted from China and we've been bestest friends for eight years now.

I met this lady on an email list in 2000 who lived in Hawaii and knew lots of celebrities. Supposedly. Yeah, right. She & her husband operated a restaurant, Postcards, and she talked a lot about being best friends with several celebrities and meeting a slew of them who dined at her restaurant. Meryl Streep, Robert Redford, David Schwimmer, members of Journey, Calista Flockhart, etc. mmmhmmm.

The punch line: It's all true. As a matter of fact, Bill Clinton dined at her restaurant last year. People on the email list from all over the country posted that they had eaten there, so I figured it wasn't a scam (unless it was a terribly elaborate multimillion dollar scam to get our $50.00 tab)

I decided to fly to Hawaii in 2000 with my family and meet her. We had 2 free tickets round trip anywhere in the US and Mad was still under 2 and flew free. So we flew to San Francisco and stayed at the home of another poodle listserve member. They couldn't have been more gracious (come on, poodle lovers are ALL cool except for the Silence of the Lamb dude).

Then off to Hawaii, where we had a blast. Marti fixed us up with another friend of hers that owned the cutest cottage we could rent. Marti is just wonderful and I cannot wait to take the kids back. I want to wait until they're at least 8 and 10 first so they'll remember the trip.

2 years ago I meet another Chinamom in Greenville, where she was visiting her mom. We had great fun together, and I hope to visit her near DC in the next couple of years.

I met a local chinamom who posted on APC, a listserve with 16 thousand members. Her office is within shouting distance of my house and her co-worker used to room with Roger. We're good friends now. Another chinamom used to live here in Columbia and now lives in Jersey. We get together every year when she comes home to visit her family and 2 years ago we stayed with her when we visited New York.

Without exception, my "E friends" have been just incredible in person. I've read that some people are fabulously articulate on the net and shy in person, but I haven't found that to be the case at all. Me, I talk just as fast as I write.

So if you ever visit SC, drop me a line...