Blogger Meet Ups

Blogging is funny. You connect with people from all over the world that you would probably never meet otherwise. With my regular visits to Flickr and Blogger I see meet ups for this group or that and I've always been a little weirded out about it. I'm a pretty private person so it took me some time to open up to the whole blogging idea, and once I did, hearing about other bloggers who left the protection of their computers for meet ups at a restaurant or someone's home stressed me out a bit. Not that anyone was asking me to meet up, but still.

However my real-life friend Jason was becoming a force in the blogging world and wanted to go to a meet up last spring. This was not just any old meet up though, it was a MEGA meet up as Bossy was on her acclaimed Road Trip and making a stop in LA. This was Jason's first meet up (he certainly didn't start out small, did he) and he wanted some company. So after just returning the day before from 3 weeks in Africa I accompanied Jason to the Bossy's Road Trip Los Angeles meet up. I had only been blogging for about 3 1/2 minutes at that time so it was a good thing I was jet lagged and not really thinking about how intimidated I was. But it was fine. Everyone was very nice, but also very into their blogging and since I was a newbie I didn't have a lot to say. But overall it was a nice evening and it ended with Jason spending the night with Bossy (a fact that he doesn't ever fail to remind everyone of).

The second meet up I attended was this past summer. The lovely Grandma J and the handsome Hula Hank were both in town at the same time so we met up at The Grove for lunch. Since I was actually in contact with these bloggers, the meet up was much more comfortable and a lot of fun.

Yesterday, there was yet another meet up! Jason and I are in Orange County for a training this week and he has three blogger friends that are from San Diego that he scheduled to meet up with while we are in OC. He asked me to join him and I said that I would. The bloggers we met are not bloggers that I have read in the past, but they are now. We had a wonderful time with Cheri, Katy, and Jamie at dinner last night. They are delightful, fun people and were so comfortable with the meet up that one (and I won't mention any names) spit out their drink right in front of us.

These meets up are somewhat beyond my comfort level. I have no problem meeting new people, but I'm still unsure about the meeting up via the Internet thing. All three of them though have been low key and a lot of fun, and as a bonus, no one has been too crazy either (except of course for the spitting)! Thanks Jason, Cheri, Katy and Jamie for a great meet up!