Extroversion is my copilot

File this with what I'm sure is the long, long line of recaps from the Gazuza HH Friday night.

First of all, it was well worth my showing up before I even got to the bar. In fact, what helped me find the place at all made it worth the trip, and got the evening off to a very good start:

I walked to DuPont with a vague idea of where Gazuza was. DuPont Circle is about 6 blocks from my office. I Google-mapped the bar (never been before), so I knew it was in the vicinity of Connecticut and Q but that was as specific as I got. But hey, it's an intersection, it can't be hard to spot, I thought. Those of you familiar with that part of the Circle might chuckle at that, and rightly so. I probably will the next time I hear it, too. Long story short: I may not have found the bar at all had I not randomly run into my client from a recent project. And I do mean randomly. I was standing at the metro station, checking my cell voicemail and thinking about what to next, and he literally came walking by, with his twin brother. So we stopped and caught up for 15 or 20 minutes, which was great, and he pointed me in the right direction to find the happy hour (also great). And I got to meet his longtime partner, about whom I had heard many stories while I was on that contract. So it was awesome to catch up with him, since we'd been out of touch since the spring, and it put me in a pretty good mood going into the happy hour (this guy just sort of does that; it would make perfect sense if you met him). And, you know, I actually knew where I was going now. Big plus there.

The happy hour itself was way cool. It took all of about ten seconds to find and recognize Kathryn, who is at least as charming and delightful in three dimensions as she comes across in two. The same goes for Cookie, whom I met right afterwards. Many introductions and conversations followed, and pretty much all of them with engaging, interesting people.

The whole thing was somewhat surreal, because it was the first time I had introduced myself to anyone as a blogger, and moreso because some people actually recognized the reference (this was a little strange for me. In a good way, to be sure, but I just haven't quite gotten used to it yet). And meeting people in that environment is particularly interesting, because there are a couple of parts of the introduction: you cover name, blogger/commenter/reader/other, and Blogger handle, just to get a starting point. This is old hat for a lot of people, I'm sure, but it was a bunch of firsts for me.

All in all, I had a great time, and will definitely try to make it to the next one. Big ups to Cookie and Kathryn for playing hostess(es), and for making a newbie feel welcome.

One of the things that struck me as I looked around the room:
- consider for a second the traditional image of the person/people who spend(s) significant amounts of time online (going back to MMORPGs, chatrooms, etc). Now consider that the group at HH was almost overwhelmingly female, and hot. I'll leave it to the English majors to say for sure, but I think that qualifies as 'irony.' Wonderful, wonderful irony.

More later, but beddy-bye time for now. If you're having trouble sleeping, may I suggest this lullaby. Always works for me.