It had been my intent to spend this entry
talking about the wonderful lunch I had with Lori, from Swap Bot, this afternoon.
But then I heard the shocking (but not surprising) news of the death
of Robin Williams, apparently by his own hand.
How my heart aches for the pain he must have been in to choose this
permanent solution for what should have been a temporary problem.
What a monumental talent. Maybe it was inevitable that someone
with that degree of talent, that amount of energy would be a such a blazing star that burn
out was inevitable.
Whatever the reasons, we have lost a major star, a major talent, a
major humanitarian.
I've also lost the answer I usually give when asked if I were to
invite any three people to dinner, who would I pick. I invariably say "Robin
Williams."
My heart goes out to those who knew him and loved him in real life,
and especially to his wife and children. I can't begin to imagine their pain.
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There is no easy segue to the mundane, so I won't even try. I
have said here often that I am a member of SwapBot, that site where you exchange things
with people. Letters. PostCards, small gifts, books, craft projects, etc.
Not being crafty, I usually exchange post cards, journals and the occasional thing
that amounts to a collage that Brianna could do. I also participate in a discussion
group for one of the special interest groups. This one is the "Over 50 and
Proud" group and I've been a member for about 3 years. It's not quite as active
as CompuServe used to be, or as Facebook is now, but everybody there is over the age of
50, so more in my age range (even given that our firstborn will turn 50 next year!)
They are a diverse group of women, from flaming liberals to far right
bornagain Christians; from gay to straight; from neatniks to...well...people like me....TV
addicts to "I sometimes watch a little PBS." Not a lot of women active in
the discussion, but over the years, more and more of us have stuck around to share bits of
our day with everybody else. More of those "imaginary friends" that Bob
Mitchell's wife on CompuServe used to complain about.
Today, Lori moved from the range of "imaginary friend" to
"face to face friend." She's a woman with whom my path has crossed
occasionally. She doesn't live in Sacramento, but her family is here and she was
going to be in town visiting, so she asked if I would like to get together for lunch.
I've been on the internet for a long time now. I just found the
very first message I wrote on CompuServe, when I was trying to figure this whole
"internet" thing about and they were written in January of 1993.
Over the course of those 20+ years, I have met many "imaginary
friends" and found them to be "face to face friends," so I'm never nervous
about meeting one of the "invisible ones" in person, Occasionally it's a
"well, that was interesting, but I probably won't see this person again."
But by and large, most of my face to face meetings have gone quite well.
Today was no exception. Lori arrived at Ernesto's Mexican
restaurant, and we started talking and didn't stop for 2-1/2 hours (I was very
lucky, because I was parked in a 1 hour zone, but did not get a ticket). Somewhere
in there I hate a delicious enchilada suisse, which appears to be a house
specialty.
We discussed everything from the other members of our SwapBot group
to vampirs (not really much of a crossover there). We discussed politics and pets
and our personal lives. I truly felt like I'd known her for a very long time by the
time we left and had her sister, who picked us up, take a picture for us.
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