avocado8

I Met Rittenhouse Guy!

Just realized I left this on Draft rather than Publish, which is why it's showing up suddenly between the pink ribbon post and the one on the vice presidential debate...

This morning I got over my in-person shyness (I'm fine over e-mail, but dialing telephones and meeting people in person sometimes scare the shit out of me) and actually called my new neighbor Jim Capozzolla, of the Rittenhouse Review. Of course, I then went on to embarrass myself completely by ordering a drink that made even the cashier at Startbucks shake her head and laugh (a decaf grande 2-pump 2% mocha, for the record; I like chocolate with my coffee, but not sugar, so I try to split the difference by asking for less than half the usual amount of chocolate syrup). Jim went with a much more straightforward large drip coffee.

We then found a spot near the window and talked about everything from books, politics, and living in Philadelphia to our families, significant others, and employment histories (and several topics in between). It was a pretty wide-ranging conversation, now that I think of it; at the time, I just enjoyed it. So often we feel like we know people because we read their blogs—and actually, I think having read each other's blogs did make it easier to jump into a conversation in mid-stream rather than starting from scratch—but meeting someone in person is an altogether different thing. In this case, a very pleasant thing.

In short: tasty coffee, tasty pastries, tasty conversation. I'll be getting out from behind my keyboard to knock on Jim's door again soon. (And next time, I hope I get to meet Mildred!)