Inside and outside the blogosphere

Out of the blogs that I read fairly regularly (and have links to in my sidebar) nine belong to people I either haven't met or didn't know before I started reading their blogs. I began my adventures in the blogosphere by reading Karen's blog (she had a link to it in her email updates), and as I'm a PhD student always in need of procrastination avenues, I started reading other blogs that she linked to. Karen has a fantastic list of blogs - I recommend checking some of them out!

One of the ones that stood out was Craig's, These Infinite Spaces - I liked the title and the Pascal quote in his header. I also started reading Duncan's blog regularly, and then when he posted about his brother, Matt, starting up his own blog, I began to read that as well. And through one of those, I came across Stu's blog. Through Craig's blog I started to read Nixter's, and both Chris and Tim found my blog somehow (still haven't figured out how). Through Craig's blog I also found about about Mike and Christine and their fairytale internet romance, and started reading their blogs regularly.

I've now managed to meet four blog friends in person. I dragged Tim along to a Descartes lecture a couple of years back (I'm impressed that he managed to stay awake!). I met Duncan at a CASE seminar on September 11 in film (though I didn't realise it was Duncan from Drawn From Still Water until the next day, when he blogged about the seminar). Matt and I started emailing at the end of last year after someone insulted me on Matt's blog, then met in person for the first time at a Word by Word dinner in January. A couple of weeks later he suggested we meet up for coffee, and after a bit of a rocky start, we've now been going out for over two months (yay!) And yesterday, I finally got to meet the very lovely Nixter!

I have to give credit for this to Facebook. Fantastic website. I'd been catching up with a few friends from high school and primary school, including Liz D who I hadn't seen in years. Nixter and Craig were both in Liz's friends list, as they all go to church together. Obviously, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to stalk them on Facebook as well as Blogger. After chatting to Nixter a little about England (she's giving me tips about sightseeing), we organised to meet up for hot chocolate - Nixter, Liz and I - and we finally got to do that yesterday afternoon.

The Lindt cafe alone would have been an experience, but it was great to catch up with Liz and to meet Nixter in person. They are both very lovely girls, and I hope we manage to meet up again sometime soon.