Which Came First???

...meeting face to face, or the blog?
Mrs. TBF and I have decided to take a day trip to Strasbourg this Saturday. Why? I don't know. I guess, just because it's there. We're going to have lunch at a restaurant that specializes in cheese, and we'll just walk around and take in the sights.
This will be our first weekend in three weeks without face to face contact (we think) with our fellow bloggers.

THE BLOG: Here's a picture of the Expatters from a couple of Saturdays ago (I stole it from their blog...just ignore the couple sucking face in the background!), when they were at our house for dinner. I just realized that we met the Expatters face to face for the first time one year ago this past Saturday (January 21, 2005) when we met for a drink at Basel's Campari Bar.
I'm not really sure when it was exactly, but I came across the Expatter's blog during the first half of 2004. I sent them an e-mail to tell them that I was enjoying reading their blog, I received a response asking how I had found the blog, etc. We exchanged a couple of e-mails, and that was it for awhile.
Then, one day I was watering the garden of friends who were on vacation. These friends, unbeknownst to me at the time, live right around the block from the Expatters (who actually only live a couple of kilometers or so away from us!). After arriving back at home, I saw that Kirk had sent me an e-mail something to the effect of: "This may be a strange question, but were you watering a garden in the ---- neighborhood earlier this afternoon? I saw somebody watering a garden while I was out walking our dog who looked just like the pictures of you on your website..." As it turns out, it was me. So we kind of e-mailed back and forth, and then the four of us eventually got together a few months later at the Campari Bar.
Yes, we met over the internet (...sounds kind of sleazy, doesn't it?). The blog came first.

Face to face: Here's a picture of yours truly and Canadian-Swiss making an Orange-X sandwich this past Friday evening during an impromptu get together at our place. You can read all about it at The CanadianSwiss Blog!
We used to live two doors away from C.S. and O.X. They moved into their place around August, 2004. Just before they moved in, our dryer broke. The apartment complex caretaker gave me a key to an empty apartment and told me to just go ahead and use the dryer until our dryer was repaired. One Saturday or Sunday, I walked into what I thought was an empty apartment to throw a load of laundry into the dryer. Suddenly, I heard somebody saying something in German. I looked upstairs, and there stood C.S. and O.X. I stuttered and stammered something in incomprehensible German, and fortunately for me, C.S. said "...we speak English!"
So that was the first meeting with C.S. and O.X. - the two of them standing there wondering who was breaking into their apartment, and me standing there with a laundry basket in my hand. Was I even wearing a shirt? I can't remember for sure. In this case, face to face came first.
Maybe we'll have to have a "Bloggers' Convention" one of these days.