Saturday was a first for me. I met someone who I only knew online.

After sending emails back and forth for the last year and a half, Terry and I went out for lunch at Earl's together.

First impression: Not as tiny as I had thought she would be. After Joel's post-meeting description of her, I was expecting someone who came maybe up to my elbows. So let me take this chance to tell the world that while Terry is small in stature, she isn't quite the far end of the bell curve.

Terry gave me permission to say what I like about her (and she has the same on my behalf), but I still get the impression that she likes her privacy. Therefore, I won't divulge all the gory details about her family life, cats, weird stalkers, et cetera. If you want all the secrets, I suggest writing her yourself and offering to buy her chicken fingers. She's all for the chicken fingers.

I think the lunch went very well. Her eyes didn't glaze over when I talked a bit about gaming, so that's a good sign. She did have to stifle a giggle when I mentioned the Star Trek fan club I used to belong to, but she politely allowed me to correct some of her preconceptions of 'fandom'.

One personal admission: I was nervous meeting her for the first time.

It was partly that my head is all full of horror stories about the divergence between a person's online voice and their real personalities, and how the highly informed, well-spoken writer you admire sometimes turns out to be radically different in person. Online writing usually fails to convey nervous ticks, odd mannerisms or grotesque personal hygiene. Luckily, my mental image of Terry was quite similar to the pleasant reality.

Which brought me to my second a biggest worry. What she thought of ME.

Did she notice that there are periods where I have to clear my throat every twenty seconds or so? (It's asthma related! Really!) Did I chew my thumbnail in front of her? Did she catch me slurping up the noodles in my kung pao chicken like a vacuum cleaner? Did I use my normal laugh, or my oddly-disturbing Grover laugh?

Or, worst of all, was I BORING? (The horror!)

Y'know, it was like meeting a cousin from another city. Someone who you know all about through the gossip of your parents and grandparents, someone who you've read about in Christmas cards and birthday letters. The person who you've seen in family photos but never in person. And then that person needs a couch to sleep on when they pass through town.

Technically, this wasn't really the first time I met someone I only knew online. Back in the pre-Web days, when I frequented local BBS's through my shaky 300-baud modem, I met dozens of people in the city. We chatted, we kibitzed, and made up outrageous lies. Once in a while we'd have a mass 'geek meet' where a hundred of us or so would gather for a picnic or some such nonsense.

Some of them are still my friends today, over a dozen years later. People like Jessica and Phil L. and Scott and Frannie and Mark (Zarq!) and Shawn and Heather. My recently married buddy Paul was a big part of that online community.

So really, meeting Terry wasn't very unusual.

So long as we're still talking when I'm 42, anyway.

Shuffledog's Slacking at the Office Tip #4: Project Estimates. Scotty always doubled his repair estimates when he talked to Captain Kirk. You can do the same. Figure out exactly how much time you need to complete a project, and then add on 50 per cent. Half of that extra time will generally be used for project overruns (especially if you are as bad at estimating as me), but that other half you can use to your heart's content. And if there are no overruns? Well then you can finish early, looking like a miracle worker. Which makes it easier to waste time later.

Mom Rating: 3.5 out of 5. Mom likes it when I make new friends. I should have better self-esteem though.

Funny

Tree Day

Take me home, big fella

A solemn pledge to try to post daily during the month of December, as both a gift to my readers, as well as a thank you for your support.