Heart-warming... and belly-filling.

[eregyrn]

You know what's really cool? When you take the plunge and throw off your natural hermit-like instincts, and meet for dinner someone you've only meet online... and it turns out they're the kind of nerd who's cool and witty and fun to hang out with. The kind of nerd with whom you can have discussions about fandom *and also* discussions about a wide range of other things, because they're the kind of nerd who has one foot in fandom because they love it, and the other foot in the real world. That is TOO COOL.

tafkarfanfic and I went to Dali's for dinner last night (Spanish tapas place devoted to the surrealist master, therefore, delightfully decorated in a way that ought to remind you of Barcelona), where we had a great time being all adventurous, trying things that sounded neat even if we weren't sure about them (verdict: "prunes with goat cheese and bacon" sounds iffy, because of the word "prunes", and yet, when they come and they are wrapped up in the bacon as if they were scallops, and stuffed with the goat cheese, they are simply yummy). And she was off the hook regarding the baby eels, as they weren't on the menu (drat).

In the course of the evening we discovered that we have a mutual friend whom raqs and sazabhadri and I went to college with. It was yet another of those, "you never meet any new people, you only meet people who know the people you know" moments. I mean, what are the odds? Even though fandom is a fairly small world and all.

What's not cool, of course, is when you meet a new cool fabulous person, ONE MONTH BEFORE SHE'S MOVING TO CALIFORNIA. Yeah, we have stupid timing.

Comments

[maxineofarc.livejournal.com]

Prunes are delicious. I don't care what anybody says.

[telepresence.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've always liked prunes just fine.

[eregyrn.livejournal.com]

Apparently. I had no idea, though. I actually had no notion in my head of what a prune should actually *be* -- its taste or its texture. She and I agreed that it's just that the word "prune" has gotten a bad rap.

[telepresence.livejournal.com]

Well, prunes have gotten all conflated with old people, constipation, nursing home smell, Depends, etc. They're not a sexy fruit in our society, no one has written lush love poetry with prune imagery, they don't evoke exotic images of distant lands (as opposed to say, figs or dates).

[katie-m.livejournal.com]

I bought prunes for something recently--a cake or something, I don't remember--and they were carefully advertised as "dried plums." "You aren't fooling me," I cried. "Those are prunes!"

Well, I didn't cry out loud. I was in the grocery store. I might've gotten funny looks.

[eregyrn.livejournal.com]

This is how much of a dip I am -- I didn't even really know that prunes were dried plums.

Although had you challenged me to say what prunes *ARE*, after some thought, I might have guessed that.

But I can't swear to it.

"Why, they're... they're PRUNES. You know. From... prune trees. Or something."

[maxineofarc.livejournal.com]

To the extent that when you see them in the supermarket, they're now labeled "dried plums." Which makes me laugh because it can't be fooling anybody.

I have a great recipe for a Middle Eastern soup with meatballs, rice, apricots and prunes.

[eregyrn.livejournal.com]

Honestly? It probably would have fooled me. Although maybe not if I'd actually *looked* at them.

Except in the case of Hawaiian pizza, I'm not normally down with the whole "blending of fruit and savory dishes" thing.

[allegedly.livejournal.com]

It was yet another of those, "you never meet any new people, you only meet people who know the people you know" moments. I mean, what are the odds?

That actually happens to me all the time. Eerie as all heck!

[eregyrn.livejournal.com]

For me, it's eerier when it's a connection that you weren't necessarily expecting beforehand. Like, you go into certain social circles, and maybe it's not so surprising to find that you know somebody in common, because of what brought you into that social circle in the first place.

And then there's connections that come kind of out of the blue, like this. I mean, the person from college -- I knew in a broad sense that she was into science-fiction/fantasy, but there was absolutely no reason to believe that if I just randomly got together with a person I'd run into in LJ via Stargate fandom, with the main criteria being, "hey, we both work in Cambridge, how about that?", we would find we had a connection in common who was completely unrelated to our fannish experiences. (That is, I knew this woman in college, and the woman is, like, her best friend going back to in high school.)

I'm also finding it freaky because, this woman whom we both know? I really had not heard about her in *years*. (We knew each other in college, we were in the same basic social circle, but we weren't majorly close.) And in the past three months, I've gotten three updates about her from different people. When Tam and Stephen visited in Sept, they reported running into her in Auckland, where she now lives ("newsflash: EC apparently moved to NZ!"). Last month another mutual friend from college turned out to be teaching in the Women's Studies dept. here, which is across the hall from my dept., and we just happened to run into each other and say, "Hey!" and then we had lunch, and updated each other on all the folks we knew from college, one of whom was this woman. And then of course, last night, a completely random person from SG fandom in LJ turns out to know her well. Hmm!

It's wacky.

The world, it's this () big...

[tyellas.livejournal.com]

And the wackiness doesn't stop there because here I am now reading your journal, similarly agog. "Wow, I haven't heard from her in years, except for the update from Tam and Stephen - wonder how she's doing?" and it turns out you're having dinner with my beloved Tafkar. Please do visit my journal and feel free to get in touch!

[telepresence.livejournal.com]

A coworker invited me to lunch today at the nearby Whole Foods market. So right now, as we speak, I am in fact easting prunes that I picked up there. And they were marked "prunes".

[eregyrn.livejournal.com]

You know what really amuses me? If you look over the comments to this post, you realize that my offhand inclusion of the word "prunes" (in relation to cuisine that I ate that I didn't think I'd like, but then, did), has generated more comments to this one post than any other post I have made in the last few months.

Prunes. Who knew there would be a vast, untapped desire amongst people reading my LJ to comment on PRUNES?

[erskine.livejournal.com]

We do "Bacon Dates" which I would imagine to be similar. Yeah, bacon is a spice fer sure...

[eregyrn.livejournal.com]

I believe, in fact, that the precise quote from our dinner-table was, "Wow, there isn't anything that bacon doesn't make better!"

This is so true.

[tafkarfanfic.livejournal.com]

YAY! I had a fantastic time, too. Must do it again, soonest! Although perhaps at a place that is a little cheaper.

[eregyrn.livejournal.com]

Yes. Absolutely. I love going to Dali's. About once a year. (Except when it's on the department's dime! Wheee! I made them all go there last May for the Senior Dinner, because I am slick that way.)

[agentotter.livejournal.com]

That's okay, 'cause then I'll have her all to myself. MWAHAH! Mine is an evil laugh...