I always love Penny Arcade (this  series on Gabe making a fake Facebook profile for Tycho, culminating in Tycho’s exquisite revenge, made me laugh so hard I spent a lot of time unsuccessfully attempting to explain it to Anne) but today’s comic presents a situation that’s wonderfully familiar to me.

On his blog The Whatever, John Sclazi is doing something called A Month of Authors, which is exactly what it sounds like. He’s featured posts from authors like Charles Stross, Susie Bright, and Patrick Rothfuss.

John invited me to contribute an entry to his month of authors, probably so he can play the "one of these things is not like the other" game at the end of the month. In his introduction to my post, John wrote about the origin of our friendship:

Now, while I was watching Wil, it turns out Wil was also checking me
out, in that bloggy, not-at-all-inspiring-of-Scalzi/Wheaton-slashfic
way, and we started up a friendly correspondence through e-mail, which went on for a couple of
years. Finally, last October, when I went to California for my high
school reunion, he and I met in the real world over dinner with our
mutual friend Mykal, who was deeply amused, to say the least, that two
of his pals had independently become Intarweeb SuperDorks and were now
meeting in the flesh for the very first time.

“So if this restaurant blew up, the Internet would be in mourning over you two,” Mykal said.

“Nah,” Said Wil. “They’d still have FARK.”

See. Wil gets it. I like that I can say I know him. Non-Biblically.

I sent John my entry Blue Light Special, which was rewritten for Happiest Days. It’s my favorite story in the book, and is in my top five favorite things I’ve ever written, so I was thrilled to share it with people who haven’t read it, yet.

Speaking of Happiest Days, I’m taking the final 40 or so international (and two domestic eChecks that snuck into the wrong bin) to the post office as soon as I hit publish. I’m behind on softcover orders, but I’ll be all caught up on those by the weekend.

While at the Child’s Play dinner, I told Twitter:

Without knowing about my message to Twitter, Major Nelson then told Twitter:

Heh. Awesome. We ended up geeking out at each other a whole bunch after dinner was over, and I’ll eventually be on his podcast, which will rule.

The Child’s Play dinner was great. We raised just over $225,000 for the charity, and had a ridiculously good time while we did it. The guys who won the auction to sit with me were really cool, fun to talk to, and totally one of us. I won’t link them, in case they want to remain anonymous, but I do want to publicly thank them for being cool and friendly, and helping bring happiness to a lot of kids.