Well, I actually started the year off by selling calendars, but I didn't think that was quite spectacular enough to make my first post in 2005 about. =p Today was quite different though...

I had also planned to go down to meet up with Kp again yesterday or today before he goes back for more Army training fun, but I wasn't able to. Yesterday after work, I had dinner plans I had forgotten about (with my family, Allison and Daniel's family, and Mandy's stepfamily without Mandy). Today, the timing just didn't work out.

Ended up starting out later than I wanted today, shoving myself out of the house with only one hour before the 4pm meet-up time. I had planned to give myself at least another half hour to get there. My plans were to drive to either Glenmont or Silver Spring Metro, depending on traffic conditions. (I wanted to park further south because I was planning to head to Chris's house afterwards.) Traffic going towards Silver Spring was kinda iffy, and time was a bit short, so I decided to park at Glenmont.

Naturally, it takes 15 minutes for the train sitting there to leave. I had probably -just- missed a departure. Though I got to the station in 20 minutes, I didn't get to Union Station until 40 minutes later - meaning, I basically got there exactly at 4pm. Somehow, I figured it would happen, since that's exactly what happened the first time I tried to take the Metro into Union Station.

After finally finding the restaurant, I find INCyr, Dasro Kast, and a few others waiting outside. (I'm -really- bad with remembering people's names and even nicknames, so sorry for being brief in this department.) Kristen arrived around 5-10 minutes later. We had a restaurant reservation with a table inside, but we end up asking for one of the tables outside so that latecomers would be able to see us. (CoffeeJedi and his fiancée, and Chappy would arrive later.) And, well, we had dinner.

It was really great meeting Kristen. She remembered everyone personally, and she was honestly interested in talking to all of us, which is basically how these dinner plans got made. I'm particularly surprised she remembered anything about me, considering how limited my involvement with the ARG was. She even commented on how she liked my current Karin avatar, which I also switched to over at unfiction. We talked about a lot of things, from her experiences while doing the live axon calls from her home (phoned into the system, with Elan and Jane connected via IM) to having to take care of her dogs. (There was a particularly amusing story about a puppy that -really- needed to go during a live call...) There were also a couple of red balloon encounters that she shared...

America Restaurant was rather interesting, too. They strived to represent just about every area of the country with a different food dish, resulting in the most varied menu I've ever seen in a sit-down restaurant, aside from sports taverns and diners. The menu even listed originating cities and states for each of the dishes they presented. Kristen seemed to disagree with one of their choices in cities, though. The food was pretty decent; I had a pretty good bowl of New England Clam Chowder, and they got the thickness to just about where I like it. The chicken tenders, however, were -really- dry, and I was quickly wishing I had just gotten a burger instead. I was still hungry, but I just couldn't finish the tenders because they were that unpleasant to eat. =/

At some point, INCyr brought out the joint purchase of the "Melissa" drawing. Kristen would later autograph it, and a couple of the ilovebees DVDs. Of course, I had neglected to bring anything to autograph.

After sitting at the table for almost four hours, CoffeeJedi and Dasro Kast really needed to be heading back home (they both drove in from out of state), so we made a quick stop at the ever-so-familiar Union Station phone bank, with the "Spartan Power" vending machine that Kristen just stared at for a while. Of course, we still have no idea how or why that message got on there. After one last group photo, we all departed for our various destinations, with CoffeeJedi, his fiancée, and I heading to the Metro station. (They had parked their car at Silver Spring Metro, so we were headed in the same direction as I had to get back to Glenmont to get my own car.) So, I got to talk with him for a bit more on the train as well. ^^

Of course, since I got back to Glenmont at 9pm, I figured going to Chris's was out of the question since he has to get back to school in the morning. So, I headed directly home, and uploaded the two pictures. (Thanks to Cortana for cropping and resizing these, as I can't get to the P2 to do my normal image manipulation handiwork at the moment.)

I guess that's about it for today. I'll have to see about somehow keeping in touch with Kristen... I might even have to actually buy Halo 2. =p