But let us first rewind a little…
Rewind # 1: Some additions have been made to the POST BEFORE THIS… at least, picture-wise.
Rewind # 2: The following was a voice phone exchange made just before 5 PM.
VOICE ON PHONE: I’m here… are you inside?
ME: We are about 6 or 7 minutes away.
VOICE ON PHONE: OK… I’ll wait outside for you.
ME: See you soon.
We pull into the parking lot of the Deer Head Inn in Delaware Water Gap. It’s drizzling but I am buzzing in anticipation as I get out of the car. We get into view of the generous front porch… and at the top of the stairs she stands all smiles. I climb the stairs and am greeted with a big warm hug.
House Of Lime was a regular stop for me in the early frenzied days of blogging. It was one of a handful of blogs I visited every morning to start my day… and here she was at the top of the stairs, Lime, of the House Of Lime. (Yes, I will refer to her as Lime because… that was her blogging name… and well… this is a blog.)
After lots of smiles and happy hellos we went in. There was a cover charge that she sneakily paid for all three of us. It was Lime who suggested we meet here after reading about this episode of my current adventure. And now our meeting face to face for the first time after knowing each other through our blogs would be soundtracked by the excellent jazz stylings of Russ Kassoff & Gene Bertoncini.
From the moment we sat down at our table by the window we were jabbering away in hushed tones like a couple of excited teenagers. Drinks had been ordered (pinot noir all around) and with menus in our hands we just kept jabbering away to where the waitress had to come by twice before we were ready to order our food. (Crab cakes and a sample platter.)
The conversation flowed easily on this, that and the other. Yes, mutual blogger friends… we talked about you too. Lisa, who sat witnessing this meet-up was amazed (and dare I say, a little dumbfounded) at how spontaneous and familiar Lime and I were with each other’s lives… and especially how there was not a whit of hesitation or awkwardness to wade through at this first meeting between us.
Then there were pictures. Lisa would be the designated “paparazzi” for the next two days and stage-managed the first two shots of us. The first one being the meeting between Janita & Jimmy… then followed by the owners of the aforementioned named appendages. You’d have to scour Lime’s blog to find out what that was all about… as any attempt to explain it here will just break the flow of this posting. Clue: search for ‘zipline’ in her blog.
Lime is everything she reveals through her blog and more. Charming, warm, intelligent, quick witted, open and beautiful. She is a handful of bloggers I’ve always wanted to meet in person… and here I was… this was happening!
Of course, we also had to stage a fun silly shot… and here it is.
Although we did not drink ourselves into a stupor… we were definitely drunk with the actuality of this meeting. It was more than I expected… and my expectations were already high at that. We chatted, laughed, and shared until we looked up to see the wait staff clearing the place putting chairs up on the tables. (This now clarifies the picture at the top of this post.)
She did call me a “stinker” at one point in the night because I nipped around the corner and paid for dinner. This was in retaliation for her paying for our cover charge earlier. We laughed (we did that a lot) over it as we were wont to do that evening… partly over the funnys that were bandied about in conversation but mostly because we were there actually conversing face to face.
So, yeah… we caught the clue and decided to call it a night as we had plans for the next day. If this meeting was any indication… the next day was going to be totally grand. Of course, there would be more pictures outside as we left. We tried not to make it a long “see ya tomorrow” of it but more snippets of conversation kept popping up in the parking lot.
Finally, we did say our “good-nights” with quick promises of “see ya in the morning” and went our separate ways out into the Pocono night… filled and smiling wider than the man in the moon.