Deb (or Debbi)

So I had a date tonight.

Debbi is a girl I went to junior high and high school with. I mentioned her obliquely last month. We were in the same homeroom in junior high, but weren't really part of the same social group in high school, although I think we shared a few classes. We got back in touch with each other recently when we received e-mail about plans for our 15-year reunion. Debbi didn't go to the 10-year reunion because the organizers had lost track of her. When I sent mail to the list (after a few other people had done the same) updating people that I'd moved to California to work for Apple, she sent me a line that she lives in the area, too, and we struck up a correspondence.

Well, after a while I asked if she wanted to go to dinner or coffee, and we met up tonight in downtown Mountain View for dinner. (Meeting up turned out to not be difficult at all, and we both recognized each other immediately; I think we each look much as we did back in high school. Although I've ditched the glasses and grown a beard.) We had a fine time chatting over dinner, and walking around Castro Street talking about old times and new.

And while we were having Gellato after walking off some of the Italian food we'd eaten, I said that I hadn't been sure whether this was actually a date-type thing. And she said she hadn't been sure either, but went into it keeping different possibilities in mind. And I said that I thought I'd like it to be a date-type thing. And she said, Okay, that works.

So it became a date, which in a way it had been all along. And we both had a lot of fun and want to get together again!

What to say about Debbi at this juncture? Well, she doesn't work in the computer biz, at present. She works out, she reads (she even reads some science fiction!), she enjoys the ocean and being active, she's close to her family. She's blonde, and funny, and upbeat, and intelligent, and pretty, and has her moments of sarcasm. She dances, she'd forgotten that I tell horrible puns (bwah-hah-hah!), listens to country music (among other styles), and has lived out here a lot longer than I have.

Oh, and I think she mostly goes by Deb these days, but I still think of her as "Debbi" since that's how I knew her in school. I dunno whether I'll gradually change this mindset, given time...

Debbi hasn't read my journal (I think due to lack of time), though she's looked at a handful of pages elsewhere on my Web site. She knows I have a journal, and it doesn't seem to bother her. She seems a little intrigued by it. (Note to everyone: The on-line journalling community is really small. There are hundreds of us. This is really small. Most people in this country - never mind the world at large - don't read on-line journals, don't "get" on-line journals, and probably find the whole concept kind of weird.)

When Monique and I had our first date, we actually ran our entries about the date past each other before posting them. Just a little mutual paranoia, I guess (though truthfully I don't think there's a thing about that date she could have written about that I would have objected to); I think journallers have this strange sensitivity to what's written about them in journals that other people don't have (at least not in the same way). I haven't run this entry past Debbi first (as I didn't run my entry about my first date with Adrienne past her, last summer), but I will let her know about it. I hope it will come across as okay to her. I think I'm essentially pretty sensitive to what other people might not want written about them in my public journal (though I know from experience that I'm not 100% on this score).

Given that, I think this entry says what I want to say. So I'll end by saying I've felt pretty darned happy tonight in the wake of the evening and I'm looking forward to seeing Debbi again!