smonster, remember getting pumpkin ice cream at Graeter's? (Actually, did you get the pumpkin? I know I did, because I'm a whore for all things pumpkin.)

I have never met Steph L, that I can recall, but I tried to when I went to Cincy. But she brushed me off and I sent her a birthday GC from Graeter's!

But she brushed me off

Lies! Lies and falsehoods! Lies and falsehoods and untruths! [insert synonyms]

You were there the one day that we were sending the journal to the printer, which can't happen without me. (That does sound like an I'm-washing-my-hair brush-off, doesn't it? You just happen to visit on the one day out of 30 that I cannot leave the office? But it's true!)

The worst part was that your meeting was in the neighborhood that I lived in at the time -- you would have been 5 minutes away from me, had I not been washing my hair laying out a journal.

I'm just giving you crap. I think it was your birthday and you were having lunch with your dad, too, right?

Vortex, you forgot your drinking abilities.

fixed! although I tried to make it about quality, not quantity :)

Heh. Poor lurkers. Now we are back to being all gang of 14 about everything and "oh well I've stayed at more houses than you have!" and writing 500 posts in a week. We're just impossible aren't we?

Shhh! We're hunting wabbits listening for lurkers!

t sits on the curb, elbows on knees, attempting to be quiet and anxiously await another lurker.

500 a week? We're slipping -- it used to be 500 an hour.

Uphill, in the snow!

like how the original Batman TV series has never been released on VHS or DVD because of complicated legal and rights issues.

Not legally...

I'm just giving you crap.

I know -- I hoped the melodramatic tone of my first line indicated that I was hip to your 'tude.

I think it was your birthday and you were having lunch with your dad, too, right?

I think so! Good memory!

Online fandom stuff generally, whether Buffista or otherwise, mostly has invented contexts. These days I can say 'was talking to someone online about' without it getting too weird. When it comes to actual friends from the internet, though, these were usually met 'through another friend' - including The Girl, whose origin story is still not known to everyone in my life. Although I'm getting better at being honest about it. (Most fun moment ever: a few years ago, when I had a birthday party, and my new flatmate encountered twenty Bronzers descending on his living room. He was very good about it.)

Of course, that hasn't kept me from dropping hints to new kewl people I meet, in wild hopes that they might already be a buffista.

Not quite as good, but back in May, after sitting next to a friend at uni and going out for post-class drinks with her for six months, I learnt she was a fandom type. While her fandom was not my fandom, we knew each other's communities and had online people in common. She's the person who encouraged me to come back here and get posty (I think she herself was once a lurker here). Seriously awesome experience, that, when real life and online worlds collide unexpectedly.