A meme I like, for y'all

[jbsegal]

It's been making the rounds. This version of the text taken from Vicka and Very Lightly Modified from there.

Add a comment to this journal telling me what you remember about first meeting me (online most certainly counts; if you have a choice between online and in person, I'll request the most amusing :-) I'll try to respond to each comment with my memories of you.

And, of course, if you like it, try it in your own journal.

Comments

[moominmolly.livejournal.com]

I was with ceelove, visiting town, and she dragged me to Johnny D's to see the Paperboys. You took one look at me and said, "Yup, I understand." :)

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

Yup. You, your long hair, dancing like a peanuts character to great CeltRock...I could totally see it.

[xeger.livejournal.com]

It was wet.

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

Hurricane Bob, wasn't it?

And House Sable Swan was the quest.

I asked for your name. You wrote it for me, illegibly. It took years for me to actually find out what your last name was.

I still love that cape.

[krikket.livejournal.com]

When I first moved to Boston, I was on sensory overload from meeting the sheer numbers of people in the Susboid community in a *very* short time. So I can't be certain when we first met. (For instance, it wouldn't surprise me if we had met at the coffee-house thing on a Tuesday night, or at a party...) Hell, I might have known you by face/name at the point I'm about to mention due to my slipshod memory.

But the first meeting that I can recall, where you didn't fall into the mass of humanity, was at my first Baitcon, when you welcomed me to the site, standing on the lengthy driveway at the previous location.

And I had a wonderful time. 8^)

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

I'm not certain, but I don't think we'd met before then, but I'd seen your name around on elbows.

(I wasn't living up here while Cafe Liberty was open and only went to the downtown one once or twice.)

Glad you had fun.

[exponentialdk.livejournal.com]

The year was 1999, and the Internet industry was in full boom. You had applied for a job at the Kendall Interborg, and it was my turn to interview you.

We didn't have conference rooms or interview rooms. That would have been too "old economy." We were expanding too fast for that sort of thing. So I interviewed you in this windowless stub of a hallway that had doors to us, some other company, and the elevator lobby. There were no chairs, of course. You probably sat on the floor, and I probably tried sitting for a while, then gave up and paced.

I remember nothing about our interview, except exiting that stub of hallway, with a line like: "One more thing. Doesn't anyone confuse you with jailbait@apocalypse.org?"

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

Yup. That's my memory, too. Wasn't onetwolittleb in on that part of the interview, too?

[iamlisabee.livejournal.com]

You showed up at my door step, late one night (after chatting on irc), and took me off to some coffee shop or another. I remember (being the rather monogamous type, myself) feeling somewhat bummed to hear that you had a love (or two.. *grin*). I'm glad to know ya!

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

<blink> Really? Cool. I thought Sonja had introduced us someplace/time...

Same here.

[thespian.livejournal.com]

it was like, a decade ago now, and it was in Maryland soon after my marriage to Steve, and my first thought (which has been repeated from time to time upon seeing you anew) was, "That hair has got to be murder to brush, it's so wavy and wiry."

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

Hm. Any idea where in MD? What were we up to?

And no, it's pretty darned easy to manage...then again, I don't have a tender scalp.

I can't believe it was the first time...

[tulpaspin.livejournal.com]

My first Baitcon I met you coming in and you greeted me as an old friend. You then grabbed the heaviest stuff I was lugging and helped me bring it to where I was camping.

Being rotten with names and faces, I'm used to the "We must have met before and they must remember it better than I do." feeling, but this time I also had an additional helping of "What an incredibly cool welcome regardless!"

You made quite an impression (even if it might have possibly been a second one.

Re: I can't believe it was the first time...

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

This is of course the most popular answer.

And everyone deserves such a greeting at baitcon. :)

See you at Eddy!

[roadnotes.livejournal.com]

Lord, I don't know. A convention, perhaps a Lunacon? I don't think you lived in the city at the time. And yeah, I know it's not funny, but there you have it.

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

Hm. Constellation, Apa-NU collation? Or lunacon after that? Or the ferry party 4 July 84? (where you introduced me to Nora and Dave (and maybe Lenore, but that might have been later...or that might have been Vicki?)

[coraline]

we were standing outside the coffeehouse in the MIT student center and onetwolittleb introduced us. it was either right after mazer's coffeehouse show, or we wwere standing there discussing the upcoming coffeehouse show. and she introduced us and i had the canonical "oh YOU'RE jailbait!" reaction.

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

Wow. I woulda sworn we would have met before that...how time flies. :)

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

It was my first Baitcon, and I wanted to officially meet you in person, since, well, you were the host, after all. As I recall, we curled up on the hammock together and it was nice. I further seem to recall a proposition that followed shortly thereafter :).

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

Was that before or after the Paddles party that you and Sweetie were at that I was also at?

[awfief.livejournal.com]

Uh. . . how to say this?

Summer Flea, 1996. I was 18. You were intrigued. Your hands were all over me. I liked it. :)

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

Can't have been 96. I wasn't living up here or attending fleas til Winter 97...

But yes, the rest sounds about right. :)

[dbang.livejournal.com]

Arisia 1991 in Waltham. In the lounge area. I was feeling a little lost, it being my first con and not knowing anyone, and you spent about an hour talking with me and making me feel at welcome. You were probably flirting with me, too. :-)

Oh my god, that was a long time ago. At least two lives ago, maybe three.

I like this meme, I'll have to put it in my LJ too.

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

And before that, I'd been reading your smut and lusting after your writing. :)

And yeah, other than the fact that I was male and thus had no chance, I almost certainly was flirting with you.

I'm not going to answer this in your journal, you know. :)

[lolitasir.livejournal.com]

I met you at one of the BR events (maybe 2001? or was it 2000?) and you told me that you had wanted to answer my personal ad which had appeared in Prometheus in 1998 but you didn't because you lived in Boston.

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

Yep. You write a great personal.

I had no idea who you were to TES when I read that. It's been great knowing you. We really must hurt each other some day...

[donnad.livejournal.com]

A convention, probably around 1987ish... The first pictures of you show up in my books at Disclave 1988. Which was right before Baitcon I.

Geez I feel old. :)

[donnad.livejournal.com]

Looking back at all the other comments, It seems so far I'm the only one who seems to have known you before the 1990's... (or at least the only one who'll admit it) :)

Now I really feel old!

[ceo]

Like many, it was when you welcomed me to my first Baitcon. 1995, I believe.

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

Give 'em a hearty welcome and they'll work their asses off for you forevermore

Um...glad you came. :)

[ivorjawa.livejournal.com]

There was that Poly Boston meeting.
Which made meeting you at Akamai weirder.
(You're already weird. But you know this.)

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

Oh gods, right. One of the very very few PB meetings I've ever been to.

But from there, the world is, of course, small.

[candle-light.livejournal.com]

You made this easy for me, talking about our meeting in Lyo's journal, though I remembered the event quite well myself. Spring of 1981 at a con. I thought it was Esotericon, but maybe it was Lunacon as you said. 22 years ago. Yikes! That's longer ago than some of the people on your LJ have been alive. It was in a stairwell, you had flutes.

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

i think it was an esotericon too, come to think....

Interview!

[zogathon.livejournal.com]

We met when I was interviewing at Akamai. I met a bewildering number of people that day, but I remembe we went to the Royal East for lunch, I made some (slightly off-color?) comment, and you said "Yup! She can stay.", or something to that effect.

First impressions: Tall! Hair! Sense of humor! Hair! Tall! :)

Re: Interview!

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

It really felt to me like you fit in fabulously with SysEng...and you were a fabulous babe, something we'd been lacking for a while - assuming I'm remembering correctly and you and Cat didn't overlap...

So I think the analagous 1st impressions were: Babe! Fabulous! Funny and Outspoken! Fabulous! Babe!

...more or less...

[anotherjen.livejournal.com]

I remember it as if it were yesterday!

I was a budding teenage Pagan... You were Pan himself, hanging out at the flute-maker's. You must have seen a pentacle or button on me, because you said "blessed be." I was immediately yours.

We smooched by the juggling field until I had to go home with my parents. The rest is history.

Let's spend more time together. (hug)

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

The Great Hudson River Revival.

And it was a green button...

(I still want one of those flutes.)

[scholargipsy.livejournal.com]

I actually knew you first via not one but two indrect sources: stories from infinitehotel about Baitcon, and Camille Bacon Smith's ethnography Science Fiction Culture. Your centrality in both of those sources' accounts made you seem like some vastly important poobah of fandom. *grin*

My biggest surprise upon meeting you was that you were so friendly, down-to-earth, and endearingly zany. I mean, lot of people with their own eponymous con or with a lot of ink in a scholarly treatise might be self-aggrandizing, insufferable jerks. It was very pleasant to discover just the opposite.

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

Heh. The SFC interviews were done Years before the book appeared...I'd forgotten much of what I'd said by the time it finally appeared.

(It's the 2nd of Camille's books I'm in, actually...the 1st being "Enterprising Women" :)

You are too kind in your descriptions of me. I'm not the writer to be able to be equally kind without sounding cheesy...that said, you're a fascinating and talented individual.

[cme]

As I mentioned in passing in my response to dancingdeer's version of the same question, I encountered you first at an English country dance in Harvard Square that Sara dragged me to. (Which would have made it probably November 2001, but possibly December or January of the same winter.) She introduced you as, approximately, "my coworker JB who I've told you a bunch about and who keeps saying he'll come to a Tech Squares Fun Night but who never actually comes".

The other first impressions of you seem overwhelmingly positive, but you managed to irk me immediately by saying a number of aggressively unpleasant things about square dancing and why you didn't want to try it- none of which, I might add, applied to Tech Squares :P

Then you finally showed up for the (Fun Night? First night of class? Were they different that semester? Probably, I guess, since it was IAP...) whatever-it-was at the beginning of the Spring 2003 squares class, and I remembered you (though I don't think I remembered that exact meeting at the time- I just remembered Sara talking about you). Most of our interactions for the duration of that class consisted of "Where the hell is Sara?" "I dunno, I haven't seen her, she never comes anymore, sigh". I spent most of that class trying to dance with and impart clue to the students who were struggling the hardest, and didn't really get to dance with you till the end when most of them had been told they weren't going to graduate and it occurred to me "hey! I could dance with someone I vaguely know, who can dance!"

[coraline]

hey, i think i was there for that ECD where you met!
(i think i was playing that gig, and i remember both of you were there...)

[tb]

Don't remember the first meeting exactly, but it would have been in the late '80's when I was being assimilated into the susboid community. Possibly it was at an SF con (Lunacon, Balticon, or Philcon); I remember your bag of flutes from those days. Other option would have been at a HotCC party, since they were my entry into this morass (even though, ultimately, it was all Siggy's fault). I certainly heard stories about you from them before I actually met you (and they were all true).

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

I /think/ it was at HotCC, but I'm not certian...

Then at cons, and Pennsic and at your wedding!

[quietann.livejournal.com]

I met you at the infamous Disclave (1997), *before* the flood. You and Ted had the room next to the one where I was staying. I don't remember much besides that you and Ted were talking about Kimberly needing to go home.

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

Cool. Honestly, I didn't remember this...

*HUG*

[frotz.livejournal.com]

In person, some meeting in Loeb. (Not sure if it was before or after the "Large Dangerous Bomb: Do Not Defuse" incident, so I couldn't tell you what it was theoretically a meeting of.) You were very friendly, but mostly distracted trying to get it on with some girl who was there. (Carol?)

Possibly chatting on the Big Electric Cat before then. Memories of the time are hazy. They're probably more fun that way, too.

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

Probably the NYU SubGenius Alliance...

Maybe Carol. Maybe Candi?

Didn't you lend me an account at Columbia before I found the Cat?

(I've just discovered that dasys1.(com|net|org) is available. I'm tempted...)

[chadu.livejournal.com]

ctate dragged me to a party on Jaguar Trail. There, I was introduced to you, Kimberly, Ted, and wasabi peas.

CU

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

Camp Alger Ave. but close enough. :)

Mazel tov!