Hi folks!
Last night I finally had some time on and despite the fact
that I was typing as fast as I could go (almost the
entire time I was on!) ...when I went to shut-down, the numbers
at the top of my message box were HIGHER than when I started!

Anyways, I was thinking about putting up a new journal titled
"I really know some wonderful people"
...but alas, my and go power funked out way too
early ...so the journal idea lost out in favor
of

Then I signed on today... and since I always check
s first... I had one entitled "Hey Suggester"!!
from Bianca *Biutz telling me about John's DD!!
WHAT A WAY TO START MY DAY!!

You see, I was thinking last night
that I'd start out this journal
telling you about my sweet hubby Bob *TThealer
and me finally getting to meet
our good friend John *Corvidae65
in person, this past Thursday and Friday...
and about how much fun
we had just yakking and yakking and getting to
know each other that much better...

...and I wanted to share this candid capture that I grabbed
of John's wonderful smile (you can tell a lot about the
character of a really great human when there are permanent
laugh lines around the corners of their )



...and I've got to tell you about our Skype Surprise
for John... you see, as soon as we knew for sure that
John was going to come see us, after his trip to Arches
and Canyonlands.... Bia *Biutz and I began
to have a Skype while John was here!

John is very shy and even has a piece of masking
tape over the built-in webcam on his laptop ...so we
knew that we had to be quite sneaky!

Buuuuuuuuuttt, long story short... we managed to pull it off!!
Annnnnnnnnndd, without realizing it (Bob pointed this
out later )... we accomplished something at the same
time We introduced two deviants face-to-face...
...i.e. John *Corvidae65 and Bianca's husband Chris ~childofstar
BEFORE they had ever talked to each other on

Anyways, a good time was had by all on the Skype even
though the video transmission wasn't quite as clear as usual...
and Chris a/k/a "Kiki" learned that John was from the land where the
movie "Dances With Wolves" was filmed

I think Kiki was also amazed to learn that
John had driven 12 hours ONE WAY to come and meet us
in person!! (believe me, we're STILL honored!!)

After the Skype with Bia & Kiki, John allowed
me the devine pleasure of looking through the more than
750 images that he captured at Arches and Canyonlands...
and I kept saying "here's another one that's worthy of
a DD" (btw, I had already suggested
today's before
John's visit... but, with the way that most of my DD
suggestions in the past have been summarily ignored,
by previous GMs... I wasn't about to tell John
that I had suggested his
Canyonlands image
-- so a special thanks to Cory ^shuttermonkey
for featuring today's winner!!! --)
..instead, I just revelled at the
way that John's images caught the true essence of
both places... and I could easily imagine the wind in
my face... and even the grains of sand hitting me
and my What a thrill to be able
to view ALL of John's images!!

Soooooooooo I began a campaign to get him
to share more of his images with all of us here on
I romped so hard on poor
John... that Bob *TThealer finally told me to
back off!

Anyways after two non-stop days of
talking our brains out John headed for
home on Saturday morning... and we were instantly
missing his smile, his company, his wit, and his
wonderful friendship

To console ourselves we've decided that
sometime within the next 3 years (John's been wanting
to meet us in person since 2009 so we've
got 3 years to get this together ) we're gonna
take a long overdue vacation ( what does that
word mean??? ) and go west to Arches, Canyonlands,
Zion National Monument, then north to visit the wonderful
Yellowstone National Park again (it was one of our first
trips together, right after we married almost 34 years ago!)
...then east to Mount Rushmore and the Black Hills... and
to John and Audra's house... and then we're hoping to get
John to give us a personally guided tour of the amazing
Badlands

So, Malcolm *katon241162 if you want to
fly in
and go with us... start making your plans!!

Now I've gotten soooooooooo off track with
what I originally wanted to do with a journal... since
John received his first DD ...I think I'm gonna
save my "I really know some wonderful people"
idea for next time!

In the meantime, know that I DO know alot of wonderful
people that I have met as a direct result of being on
(and you are one of them!! )...
but, right now go congratulate John on winning
his very first and very well deserved DD!!

Thanks for being my friends! Alice