It’s been almost six years since I last got to meet up with a blogger friend. I mean, to be fair, I’ve hardly traveled at all since that meetup in autumn 2018. There was a trip to Wisconsin in the summer of 2020, but that was to to a rural area to stay with my in-laws and avoid the first big flare-up of the pandemic in San Antonio. Then there was Jason’s and my roadtrip through Texas and New Mexico in Sept/Oct 2021. But that’s it, that’s all the travel beyond day-trips to nearby cities and parks, that I’ve done in the last 5.5 years. The pandemic also prevented a lot of other folks from traveling for a few years. So it’s no wonder it’s been so long!

Obviously, I was delighted when Jeanne from Necromany Never Pays wrote to tell me she was heading to San Antonio for a vacation with a few friends. We planned an evening to have dinner and drinks, and just hang out for a bit. Jason and I took a Lyft downtown to the restaurant on the Riverwalk, and like it is with so many bloggers, it was as if we’d been IRL friends forever. No awkwardness, no stilted conversation, just a lot of laughter and storytelling and comfortable friendliness. This is one of my favorite things about the book blogging world!

(maybe one day I’ll get better at taking selfies…ha!)

I can’t remember exactly when Jeanne and I met. I’d guess sometime in 2009, if not late 2008, so very early in my blog days. We almost always have exact opposite tastes in books (and weather, for that matter, ha!), with just a small cross-section of books that hit us the same. And I mean opposite – we can practically use each other’s dislike-list as a TBR pile! It has made for some fun discussions over the years. It also highlights just how diverse the book world can range in terms of our preferences, and yet how often our temperaments complement each other.

The entire evening was delightful. Jeanne’s friends were as fab as she is, and just as easy to talk to. I got some really fun photos of the three of them outside the restaurant, but didn’t ask permission to post them online, so I won’t. I do wish we’d managed to get a picture of our whole table, but the restaurant was busy and our waiter had already given us so much attention, and the way things were set up, it would’ve been impossible to selfie all five of us. Oh well! [On another note, shout out to the restaurant, Boudro’s, for their care and attention, especially to food allergies!! It was not a restaurant I would have chosen on my own, but I would definitely go back. Top tier service and very delicious food and drinks.]

Once it was time for us to say goodnight, Jason and I walked up from downtown to the Pearl district, staying along the river. What I expected to be a mile, maybe 1.25 miles, was actually 2.5 miles, heh, but it was a nice walk. The weather was perfect, cooling as the sun died away, with far less humidity than I expected being next to slow-flowing water. It was dark by the time we reached the Pearl and got our next Lyft home.

We couldn’t have asked for a better night. I’m so happy Jeanne reached out!