TGIO party!

Even though I have participated in NaNoWriMo for two years running, I have not attended any of the events. No Kick-Off parties, no Write-Ins and no TGIO party. I was mildly interested, but I'm such a huge introvert that it takes a lot to get me to a gathering of complete strangers.

This year an LT friend, RidgewayGirl, did NaNo for the first time. We've known each other for a few months now and we've hit it off pretty well. She's local here in G'ville and I've wanted to meet her but I didn't want to come across as stalker-ish. I mean, my first impulse when a person on the internet says 'let's meet' is to say N-O. So when the invite to the TGIO party came I thought 'I wonder if RG is going?' so I asked her and she said she was! That was all the push I needed to go.

I've been wanting to try the pizza at the Mellow Mushroom. They've got a terrific menu! We thought the Kosmic Karma (on the left in the pictures below) sounded delicious, with sundried tomatoes, fresh tomatoes, feta, spinach and pesto, but we had already agreed to order the Magical Mystery Tour so we stuck to our original plan. The MMT is a pesto base with two different mushrooms, feta cheese and jalapeno peppers (on the right in the picture below). We intended to order it sans peppers but I forgot (yes, mea culpa). Our waitress came out and told us that they had placed our order wrong and she handed us a Kosmic Karma "until our pizza was ready". So we got both pizzas and only had to pay for one. Is this a fantastic place or what?

So we got to meet RidgewayGirl and her husband. You never know if online people are going to be the same in person but it was fine. I'm so relieved that it went well. Our ML brought goodies for the group, she gave each of us NaNo stickers and a key chain. I enjoyed my evening but I'm definitely not use to eating dinner that late!