wench

Thinking about all of what just happened in the last three and a half-ish day is a bit crazy.  The premise is pretty simple: a large group of 20sb-ers descended upon the city for a weekend of good times.  And overall, that’s exactly what my weekend was.

Though I had met a small handful of these amazing people before, most of them were just text and pixels to me.  Some of them I hadn’t seen or even heard of their blogs.  But with our shared connection in 20sb, and the few interactions we’ve had (okay, some more than others), there was a distinct trust that was built and we completely ignored the fact the we were really meeting these people for the first time.  Now, I am a person that will make connections quickly.  I can make a best friend in a matter of hours — in fact, Chrizzle and I became besties rather quickly, and I definitely don’t regret it.  I think more so than ever, you don’t necessarily need that long shared history to really connect with a person.  If you click, you click, and then you run with it full force, completely ignoring the fact that you may have only known this person for two hours or only online.  I love that bond.  Don’t get me wrong, I love shared pasts too — but to just decide, “yes, you are indeed awesome, I approve” after a short while just great.

So many things happened this weekend.  And yeah, while I knew I was going to be hanging out with great people, I didn’t really go into this weekend thinking that when the weekend was over I’d be missing these people like crazy.  We spent so many hours together drinking, talking, joking around, dancing, eating, getting sun burnt, and twittering together that those few days felt more like a few months.  Maybe some of that was from the long hours together, but some of that feeling might also be from that connection of being in 20sb together and having read blogs and tweets from various people in the groups.  It’s as if we already knew them…

Leah Christine and I

I generally think of myself as someone who’s quiet and shy.  Anyone from this weekend will probably say otherwise.  And I’m glad.  Being able to be in such a great group as this and just be myself — all of myself — was fantastic.  Everything from sort of quiet awkward Rini, to OMG what is she on awkward Rini…  And I loved it all.

Dino Nico and Dini Rini (aka T-Rex v. Velociraptor)

And being able to just feel comfortable enough to express my more… touchy-feely side.  Being able to hug people, lean on them, poke them, or…

… yeah, don’t let his face fool you.  Mr. McBastard loved it.

This weekend was about connecting with new-old friends:

Look! We found DShan!

Awesome Face and I

And of course, creating memories and doing crazy stuff with new friends:

Lovely Anomaly, aka my new BFF neighbor

Tall glass of Phampants anyone?

Oats really isn’t evil. I promise.

Anyway.  I got to meet a ton of people.  And there’s so many little detaily stories I could try to include (like getting mani-pedi’s with Awesome Face, Doniree, and Katie — or various Nico quotes “What does 70 pairs of underwear sound like?” “How did you know I drive a Scion?” — or dancing with the coolest 4-year-old ever at the Pride Parade, see below — or acknowledging that yes, Mom In Real Life does indeed Own my phone..)

So… how do you say good-bye to all of these amazing people?  Well, outside of a hug, you don’t.  Within a few minutes we’ve connected again through our usual means — 20sb, facebook, and twitter.

Anyway.  I rounded out my weekend with a great phone call in which, well, I’ll give you details later.  But it was good.

okay.  So some of these photos are mine, some aren’t.. but to get the full weekend go to our Flickr group.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 29th, 2009 at 12:47 pm and is filed under dancing, drunken misadventures, my so-called social life, nerdy love, shiny. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.