A Meeting of the Minds

Sometimes I feel bad for my husband. He brought me on all these great business trips all summer long yet I am unable to write that his sweetness and our newfound togetherness was the highlight of my summer. You see, while I was in Inverness, I finally had a chance to meet the amazing Aurenna in person. ‘Ren, as she would tell you, trumps everything!

My second Internet meet-up of the summer (I’ll tell you about the first in another post) was the culmination of almost ten years of online friendship. We met through a Jean M. Auel fan board and despite our age difference we knew we were long lost twins. Our sick and perverted senses of humor have secretly amused (and not so secretly driven crazy) the board moderators and members for years.

I’ve met other people from ecfans over the years but somehow had never managed to hook-up with ‘Ren. Of course, that meant additional stress and nerves at least on my part. What if I’m not as cool in person as I am online? What if she doesn’t like me after she meets the real me? What if come off as old, fat, and stupid and she hates me? What if she finds me so distasteful she tells me to bugger off? Poor Hubby was lucky enough to hear me share these and other worries for weeks while the anticipation built.

The day ‘Ren arrived in Inverness, I was full of nervous energy and anticipation. I sat in the train station barely reading my Kindle and looking up every time a train made a sound. When she finally arrived, I resisted the urge to jump up and down and shriek like some sort of Woo Girl. We hugged like long lost sisters and our conversation immediately fell into the familiar rhythms of our online talks.

‘Ren’s hotel was much better situated than my own (a mere 2.5 mile walk into town) so after dumping her bags, we went to lunch at a local Italian restaurant I had a coupon for. Later, we went book shopping and eventually ended up a pub that had great cider on tap and super tasty chips and curry sauce on their menu. By the time Hubby arrived at the pub after work, we were ready for the second pint.

Numerous pints, nachos, and another pub later we noticed it was far later than any of us had realized. It sounds cheesy but time had literally flown by while we caught up on gossip and goings on in each other’s lives. Aurenna and Hubby even managed to form an alliance and ganged up on me more than once.

The following day, fellow bibliophile ‘Ren and I checked out a used bookstore in town I had heard about. For people who wondered if my love of Betty (my Kindle) had turned me off real books the answer is an unequivocal, “No!” The smell of those old books was like an addictive drug. I kept opening and perusing older and older items simply to enjoy the tactile pleasure of their pages between my fingers.

Eventually we started getting weird looks and left to find another pub restaurant for lunch. We plunked ourselves down and talked for literally hours until her train was scheduled to leave. We weren’t teary eyed as we hugged goodbye on the platform because we knew this time we wouldn’t wait quite so long between visits. Years of anticipation had blossomed into two bloody good days of fun. Just like I knew it would.