There’s been a bit of challenge/suggestion going round the internet in the last few weeks that we should all do something different, something away from the norm on Wednesday 29 February, it being a day that only comes once every four years. I didn’t actively go out to seek something to do, and what I did do was more down to the coming together of schedules, but I like the way that it does fit the brief.
Also, a the iStockphoto stand at yesterday’s TFM&A fair I picked up this cute badge which seems oddly appropriate for the occasion…
So what with Emma doing the twilight shift this week, straight after work today I headed down off The Hill into Oxford and met up with rachel2205. I’ve known Rachel for nine years now, and yet we have never met. She was one of my first LiveJournal friends. If I recall correctly there was some LJ Text messaging feature that I was looking into and I was browsing the a support board, and so was she and her Princess Bride icon caught my eye – she was a writer too, and somehow we got chatting… At the time she was doing her undergraduate degree in York and in the intervening time she’s done her masters, got a PhD worked in Paris, and now has ended up in Oxford. One of the things that I like about LiveJournal is the way that you can filter what you right to ever tighter groups of friends and Rachel has been on some of my most tightly locked friends groups. I felt that since we were in the same city it was time that we met.
There’s always a risk, I guess, that people that you come across online are not who they seem when you meet them in real life. Oddly, considering how I can be in social situatons, I don’t seem to have that problem with judging people online. After all, that’s how I met Emma and look where that led! 🙂 Anyway Rachel is as lovely, friendly, clever and interesting a person in real life as she she has been through the medium of livejournal, and latterly facebook and twitter. I feel blessed to have such good friends.
Next up, and this may take some planning considering Rachel’s schedule and Emma’s work rota, but I feel that we need to all meet up one weekend (with Rachel’s boyfriend Keiran), maybe on an occasion when when Emma and I can introduce them to the magic that Creation Threatre present…?
So I ask you, this 29 February, It’s 29 February, what one thing have you done that you’ve never done before?
It was lovely to meet you at last! 🙂
Meeting Shepline
I’m so pleased that you met!
It’s certainly been my experience that when you meet people you’ve got to know online they almost always turn out to be pretty much exactly as you thought they were. Some of my online-turned-RL friends and I have discussed this and we think it’s because people tend to, perhaps unintuitively, be more “themselves” online, as you don’t worry so much about what people might think of you. Plus, by the time you do meet, you’re far from strangers 🙂