All Rileyed Up

I don’t exactly recall when I first started reading Mary-LUE, though I knew I’d like her as soon as I visited her blog and saw in her a fellow Douglas Adams fan.

Over the past couple years, we’ve read each other’s blogs, I lived vicariously through her grad school studies, and at some point, we became friends on Facebook. After spotting a status update that she was attending some classes at Saddleback College, I mentioned it was close to me, and next thing you know, I was looking forward to my very first blogger meet up (and it turns out, hers as well).

We agreed on the Ruby’s Diner at the Shops at Mission Viejo. It was a strong possibility I’d be bringing the kids and Ruby’s is a wonderfully distracting restaurant, in part due to the toy train that rides above our heads and the kids menus that fold into machines (often classic cars, with the occasional vintage military aircrafts or boat).

In the end all, the kids wound up staying with a friend while I met with Mary-LUE, giving us the opportunity to have a nice long conversation so enjoyable that I lost track of the time and had to call my friend who was watching my kids. Over burgers and a milkshake, we talked about reading, our good husbands, children and child-rearing, our mutual disdain for Babywise, our mutual interest in one day meeting Beck, and the hows and whys of our respective blogs.

We parted ways by taking a photograph with Miss Ruby herself, who is tossing her head back so cavalierly as if to say “In my day, we didn’t have blogs, but I bet I’d have written a great one!”:

It occurred to me once I was driving home, though, that we never did get around to discussing Douglas Adams.

How improbable.