It's just like everyone else says: meeting an online friend is great fun. Dreama and I kept missing connections (shall-we-say the motel clerk is not the brightest light on the tree) but finally, this morning, I had her work number and called her away from a meeting (to ask if it was OK if I had peanut butter... no no, that was someone else) and we agreed to meet for coffee at our nearby Denny's at 7 this evening. Rich and I, eager types, were there 15 minutes early, and Dreama got held up by a cautious client. Once we had checked out the restaurant, we sat in the car for awhile, then I sat by the door. Eventually this woman dressed in blue, ("I'm in red and gold", she said) came up and asked "Jan?"

One we got in and ordered our coffee and desserts, we started. We must have hemmed and hawed for all of 10 seconds, and then the floodgates opened. She endeared herself to me instantly by having spent the day looking at Bernadette's page.

The talk was fast and furious. Where we grew up, politics*, religion (yeah, all the forbidden topics!), families, blood donations, home-schooling, all the diary-l gossip, journallers, and back again. Rich's eyes glazed over now and again, mostly in the gossip parts, but he seemed to hit it off with Dreama. This was really a lot of fun, and I will be working more aggressively to meet other journallers now. (I met the BBS crew in 1986, and these are my main social group now. You know, in Real Life.) I've met a few of the Rec.arts.books people: Fido, Sburgfort, Rebecca and a whole group of Bay Area RABble. Then there were the Dorothy-L people I met last year at Bouchercon. Dreama, however, is my first online journaller, and I was hers. Neat!

*A pleasure after being surrounded by Clintonites, or at least knee-jerk Democrats who only believe what they're spun.