What? Cool people LOVE me!

I've been writing this blog for over 2 1/2 years, and I hold no delusions that it's read by a great number of people. Most of my readers are either related to me or see me often enough that they'd hear most of the stories in person, so reading here just saves them the time. Every once in a while, though, I find out that someone's reading that I don't know very well, or even at all. This thrills me to pieces--it feeds my ego and my love of knowing anyone new all at once.

Some time ago, in the last year or so, I got a comment on my blog from someone named Cameron (some of my friends who read the blog even asked me who he was, since it was apparently inconceivable that anyone besides them would read what I wrote.)(Come to think of it, I'm still not entirely sure how Cameron found this thing. Cameron?). I clicked on his name to check out his blog, and discovered he's a college student from Bentonville and quite the clever writer. We continued to read each other's blogs regularly. This is how I came to know that he's a musician and audiovisual genius, that he has an adorable girlfriend named Aubrey that he regularly raves about (SMART boy) and that he's in general a cool guy. That's why, when I needed someone to do video for a wedding I have coming up, he popped right into my mind. I sent him a message, and he ended up getting hired. Then when I needed to find the perfect piece of photography equipment last week, I knew he'd be just the person to ask.

It was funny actually talking, because we'd never met but knew all sorts of stuff about each other. This guy who I had never seen face to face knew that I have a drama queen daughter and a wild child son and a sweet, if blog-shy, husband. He knew about our summer vacations and saw our back to school pictures. I know that he's an avid Mac user and what classes he took last semester and where his girlfriend worked this summer. It may seem strange, but in this case I got wedding and photography help and he got a video job, so it was pretty handy.

Then last night, Matt and I went to Van Buren with Chad and Marla to see the concert of one of my favorite singers, Travis Cottrell**. I knew that Cameron was also a fan, and at some point read on his blog that he actually knew Travis. Cameron was at the concert too, and afterwards Matt and I got to meet him. It was so fun! And a little surreal, I suppose. We recognized each other right away (neither of us is exactly camera shy or hesitant about putting our pictures on our blogs). Matt is thrilled that Cameron is willing to talk to me for 30 minutes about the finer points of choosing the perfect auxiliary camera flash, so he was very eager to shake hands. We chatted for a few minutes, and then Cameron introduced us to Travis. I decided that meeting both of them at the same time was worth visually memorializing, so I made Matt take a picture of us (a bigger deal than you might think, since taking a picture with people you don't know is not exactly Matt's thing). Travis is on the left, Cameron on the right. (That's me in the middle).

Pretty fun, right? Thanks to this blog, I now have a hip college student with lots of helpful knowledge for a friend. And look at what Cameron got out of the deal! He's now pals with a wordy, over-enthusiastic thirty-something stay at home mom. Lucky, lucky boy.

**The concert was ridiculous. I'm not kidding. Incredible. Insanely fantastic.