Picture Perfect

Anyone who's known me since about the eighth grade knows that I don't pay much -- if any -- attention to outward appearances. While all the rest of the guys were drooling all over themselves about the latest "all that and a bag of chips", I was looking for conversation about..... anything more meaningful than who was on Ed Sullivan last Sunday.

Every once in a while, though, I've gotten the odd (pleasant) surprise .

And sometimes, things just get... a little weird.

There I was, just sitting there minding my own business, not bothering anybody, just browsing thru stuff on LinkUp, and I get an e-mail. From someone I didn't even know. The subject line said something about "I hear you live in Chattanooga". Well, duh. It's right there on my profile.

So I open it and it's from someone calling herself "Bonfire". I click on the profile and read thru her last few posts and decide she's not too scary, so I read the e-mail. She's in town on business for a few days and wants to know if I want to get together for dinner.

Me? Already, I'm looking around for the little red light that tells me where the candid camera is. Nothing. OK, so I figure she seems harmless, so what the heck? I'm sure I'll recognize her from her picture. We swap a few e-mails and decide to have dinner. She's got no vehicle, so I pop over in the Jahnmobile to pick her up.

Now, there are some things in life you're just not properly prepared for. I was expecting someone with relatively humanoid features who wouldn't make my eyes bleed. So I wasn't really ready when this gal comes out and introduces herself. As near as I can recollect, my first thought was "Whoa. She's a babe." Anything I actually said after that was probably gibberish. She probably thought I was retarded.

Anyway, we piled into the Jahnmobile and headed up the road to Ryan's Steakhouse, where we spent an hour swapping "war stories" from the mission field and laughing ourselves silly. Best Friday night I'd had in quite a while. Afterward, I dropped her off back at the Holiday Inn so she could get back to work, and I headed back to my place. On the way, the thought hit me that I should probably send her an invite on LinkUp to join my list. I get back, fire up the ol' laptop, log on to LinkUp and... there's an invite waiting for me. Great minds think alike.

Nice to have some intelligent conversation once in a while. Everything else is icing on the cake