I am writing from Washington D.C. to invite myself to dinner with you!

Marcie and Elizabeth

That was the first line of an email from a girl I’d never met before.  For the record, when I was single, girls from around the country weren’t inviting themselves out to dinner with me too often.  Now they are.  Amazing how popular free Home Slice pizza makes you.

I was really curious to meet Elizabeth and her friend Marcie.  It takes cojones to invite strangers out to dinner just because you’ve read their blog.

She was sweet and perky, and this seemed somewhat out of character for her.  She’s an admissions officer with the University of Maryland at College Park, and was in town to recruit at a college fair and visit her friend Marcie who moved here recently.

They were super nice, and they seemed thrilled when I told them of my love of Baltimore.  I’m a big fan of hictchhiking as a means of transportation and adventure, and Baltimore has an ad hoc local hitchhiking ethos.  People just stand on the corner and wave their hand, and anyone with a car and a spare seat can pick you up and take you where you want to go for a small negotiable fee.  Love it!  Marcie said “it’s more of a crack whore thing”, but she’s tried it, and my crack-whore-dar wasn’t beeping too loudly around her.

I forget the toppings because it’s been so long, but they both loved the pizza.  I loved the beer, and we both enjoyed the meeting of fun strangers.

The very next night was an election, so Erin and I were working late running the receving substation for all the machines, paperwork, etc.  We got done and went to Doc’s for Texas beer night, and found Marie and Elizabeth there!  They were playing (and winning) gringo bingo while enjoying some local brews.  Marcie invited me to help her take care of a “$50 worth of free tacos on $1 crispy tacos night”, and we’re still trying to fix our schedules so it works.  Doc’s tacos aren’t very good, but I have a hard time turning down free food, so I hope we work it out soon.

I love meeting random people, but I frankly, I find it hard.  The people on the bus are generally not as excited to converse as I am.  Ditto the airplane.  I’m not a big bar person and think it’s easy to chit chat for five minutes, but hard to actually make plans with them later.

So this whole Elizabeth-out-of-the-blue thing worked real well.  She (and Elizabeth) were cool, the pizza was hot and delicious, the beer was cold and paid-for-by-them, and the conversation was fun.

Cost: $25.00 (I guess)
Total this year: $673