It's April 21st, the day that I will meet some SW.com friends: WifeofVader & DPM_Shadowluker. This is the first time I've ever met friends in real life who I've first met on the internet. I'm anxious, excited, scared, nervous, thrilled, all at once. I can't wait for them to get here. Do I worry about how the day will go or what we will do or talk about? Nope! We've all been talking via internet but especially email for just about a year now. Who's worried? Not me!!


9am Oboe-Wan discovers that she is already way behind in preparations. Must clean house. Difficult to do when a 4 1/2 year old is following her around "uncleaning" what she has just cleaned.

11am: Cookie baking begins. Oboe-Wan eats just a tad bit too much cookie dough and loses her appetite for lunch. Also, mixed with her excitement over her new friends imminent arrival, she has no hope of eating a good meal.

1:30pm: the Sith band arrives at the Jedi house. Turns out, people you meet on the internet are not all brain eating/pink eye spreading zombiees. Some of them are quite normal humans!! WoV & DPM settle in nicely at the Wan house. Padawans instantly form a bond and disappear from grown-up sight.

2:30pm: trip to the training apparatus for the younglings. Grown Force-Users are capable of getting to know each other IRL. Catching up on things talked about on the boards. Swapping stories about families. Getting parenting advice from each other.

4pm: arrival back at the Wan house to finish off the rest of the cookies. Padawans settle into play PS2 Lego Star Wars game. Let the fighting begin! Meltdowns ensue as we await the arrival of nutrients from the delivery guy.

6pm: PIZZA!!! Padawans placated. Grown ups ready for round 2.

7pm: a rousing game of Star Wars DVD Trivial Pursuit begins. Oboe-Wan & the male younglings are on one team, the changeling is on her own team, DPM & WoV on another. Final score: Oboe-Wan + boys 3, WoV + DPM 2, K2 1. Now, I'm using my newly acquired Sith skills to recall this score as the wedges were removed from the playing pieces before putting them away. If anyone wants to fight about it, they know where to find me.

8:30pm: WoV & DPM prepare to embark on their journey home. The boys have different plans, though. They spend then next 45 minutes deciding which toys they are going to trade in order to remember each other by. Padawan-Wan decides to give up one of his 3 "battle action" Anakin figures while Baby-Vader lets go of a lightsaber. Unbelievable. These young ones who just met love each other so much - it's like watching long lost brothers. They talk about seeing each other again, exactly how they are going to return each other's toys. WoV & I are just glad they didn't decide to become blood brothers in that good old fashioned sense of the word!

10pm: All is quiet. My young one is fast asleep. I hit the computer, working on the pictures from the visit, pondering just how cool it was to get to meet people I met on the internet in real life. It wasn't so scary as many of my other internet friends worried. I'd never met people like this before, so yeah, it was strange, but soon I'm moving to Tatooine where, if I want any friends at all, I'm going to have to take some chances and put myself out there to meet people. This was my first step into a larger world.

As ever, making friends takes some sense of adventure, putting yourself out there, willing to get your feeilngs trampled on or ignored. I hope that WoV & DPM are friends that I will have for a long long long long time. I know that if I had originally met them in real life we wouldn't be any different than we are now. It's refreshing to meet people who don't judge me on what job I have or who the rest of my family is. People who don't just tolerate my obsession with Star Wars, but share it.

I'm thankful for my friends no matter how I make them. We shook hands when we first met that afternoon but hugged with gusto when we parted. This is a day I won't soon forget. I'm glad I took a chance and went through with it.