My first Tweet-Up!

I would like to think that I am pretty open minded to meeting new people. I am active on social networking sites like Twitter (yes, I’m a Twitter addict, I admit it!) and I used to belong to a social group called The Miami Minglers. We’d meet for coffee, happy hours, take bike trips out to Shark Valley, try out new restaurants, etc. So I am no stranger to meeting new people.

Sunday evening, I received a direct message from a friend on Twitter, something along the lines of “hey, I’m going to be in Naples for a few days, do you want to grab a bite to eat?” and I was like, “sure!”

Does that strike you as odd? I thought nothing of it! This is a woman who, while I have never met her in person, I have tweeted with her for over a year. I know about her family, she knows about mine. We talk about our dogs, our hobbies, and our love of travel. I felt that I knew her well enough to run across Alligator Alley to meet her for dinner. I was excited about it. Imagine meeting a pen-pal for the first time! Meeting a friend from the Twitterverse for the first time is the equivalent of meeting a pen-pal.

And my dear, sweet husband? He had no issue with it either. I think it may have been different if it had been a man, but in that case, I probably wouldn’t have been comfortable doing it without my husband coming along, anyway. That’s just the old-fashioned girl in me…I’m a married woman and it would have been inappropriate to drive 2 hours across the state to meet a man that I spoke to online. Sounds a lot more suspect than going to meet a girl, right?

So, off I went!

I made it there in about 2 hours, despite the incredible rainstorm that lasted half the trip! I was a little nervous as I walked up the door to pick her up (she didn’t have a car since she was only in town for a few days), but mostly, I was just excited.

It was fun! I picked her up, we sort of caught up about the stuff that had gone on during the weekend, and then we headed out to her friend’s restaurant for dinner.

Dinner? OMG. Delicious! I ordered a steak sandwich, which was smothered in roasted green peppers, onions and melted mozzarella cheese. But that is besides the point.

I was a little nervous that the energy would be off during our dinner, seeing as how we had never physically met before. But it wasn’t awkward at all! We’ve known each other for a little over a year online, and that friendship that we have cultivated online easily carried over into “real life.”

The drive home? Yuck. Long. Dark. Boring. I cranked the radio and tried my best to stick close to the speed limit and made it home safely by midnight. And it didn’t rain a drop on the way home!

So, I consider my first “tweet up” to have been a smashing success. Who’s next?