Dance Dance Ybor

I have been in the habit of making random friends for as long as I can remember. In fact, my mom has lovingly told countless stories of when I was young and she would take me to the playground. I would light up like the sun and scream "KIDS!!!" as soon as we got out of the car. Within 5 minutes, I would have some poor child by the hand, dragging them back to introduce my new "friend" to my mommy. It was the first thing I ever collected - friendship.

If you browse my Facebook page, I could tell you a million little stories from the different people I call friends. I think there are maybe 1 or 2 people in my list of 540 that I haven't met in person. But generally, the only people I accept as "friends" are people I actually know. There is the random boy I met at the ocean when I locked my keys in my car 10 months ago; the girl I met at EACYPAA in Kalamazoo 8 years ago. There are people I worked with in London; people I met on a fateful train journey from San Francisco to Chicago in 1999; people that I went to school with (grade school, high school, college in Madison, Milwaukee and London). Friends of friends in Chicago, Philadelphia, LA, NYC - all over. I am proud of the friendships I collect, and I'm always looking to expand my collection.

So lately, I have been using the internet to make more random friends. There is a newspaper here called Creative Loafing and they have a personals site where readers can hook up and find similar personalities through profiles. I got an email from a girl a few months back and we've been emailing and texting for a while now. Yesterday she was supposed to be in town with her friend for a metal show in Ybor. I was exhausted from working, and really just wanted to go to sleep, but I was bewitched by the possibility of meeting some cool new friends. So I changed out of my work clothes and dragged my butt down to Ybor.

I'm so glad I did. Despite the fact that I was freezing my ass off because I decided I didn't need my coat (or gloves), we had a great time. Sarah is my Florida sister now (like Amy is my Chicago twin). We didn't get much time to talk, but I could tell that she's someone cool that I will have lots in common with. Her friend Dayna was also very awesome. We have a metal kinship. Funny enough, Sarah had arranged to meet someone else from the interwebs at the same time - figured she would kill 2 birds with 1 stone. It was a big meet 'n' greet party. We went down to Gameworks and used some of the points left over from my birthday party to play Dance Dance Revolution. Sarah jumped all over in front of me to try to screw me up. I would post the pictures, but she hasn't added them to Facebook yet.

Anyway, it was a successful new friendship and I look forward to many random days with the 2 girls from Ft Myers.

PS This blog is especially for George ;)