Sometimes You Just Stay Friends

Many people I've met via the internet have come and gone in my life. I think it's the nature of the beast. The connection is somewhat tenuous anyway, and then since you don't always live nearby, you aren't able to spend time together and make your friendships work.

However, when it works, it works. And I've always found it so funny the people who stick close through the years, how we've managed to make it work. Particularly since I am often better "on paper" than in real life.

One such person is Jer, pictured above with the General and me. We first met in person exactly 10 years ago this month in his hometown of Marion, OH. He and my mom had been chatting on line and when I made the ill-fated move to Utah, we stopped on our way to meet him and his mom. When Mom, Judy, and I traveled to Indiana for her birthday, we stopped on our way home to see him, and the last time we've seen each other was when I moved to Arkansas in 1999. Now, you must understand, we are still friends mainly due to his tenacity in keeping in touch with me. He somehow finds my phone numbers, maintains my email addresses, and has kept me on his Yahoo Messenger despite the fact I only log onto Messenger about once every 3 months any more. We always have real pleasant chats, and then swap emails for a couple weeks, and then he contacts me six months later and I hear, "What's up, crackhead?" on the phone and know it can only be one person, and we're off and running again.

So, here we are, 2007, and Jer got married. And he and his wife were coming to DC and wanted to see if we could all meet up. The timing was perfect, and so yesterday, he and Mike finally met, and I got to meet his wife, Kathy.

We wound up spending yesterday together on the National Mall. We ate lunch at the Pavilion Cafe in the sculpture garden, and then decided to do all the monuments since there wasn't time to do the Smithsonian. It was a beautiful day on the Mall-no humidity, low 80's, so we parked at the WWII memorial, and walked from there to the Lincoln Memorial and back again. Kathy, a Candian emigree, declared everything "awesome". :-) She and I are very similar and I think Jer and Mike have some similarities, so it was a very entertaining day together.

After the Mall, we dined at Union Station, where we went through sodas and lemonades as fast as the waitress could bring them (unfortunately she was quite slow). Then Kathy and I made a beeline for Godiva Chocolates and then I took them to the FDR Memorial for an evening tour.

It was fun to be on the Mall, great to see Jer, great to meet his wife, and nice to spend time with my husband out of the house. Thanks, Jer, for a great 10 years! Let's do it again sometime, and not take so long :-)