If you knew me in college, you'd know that I was an IRC (internet relay chat) freak for my first couple years. I'd spend all night, chatting away with people all over the US, even in other countries. IRC was the shit back then, it was before AOL, Yahoo and MSN and all those other chatty places. And the cool thing was, I KNEW I was chatting with people around my age, there were no creepy 40 year old me pretending to be hot women. We'd always have a great time, have lots of laughs - just stupid stuff that you do when you really want to procrastinate in school.

Anyway, there was a huge group of IRCers on the West Coast, and they always had their little get togethers. Being out in the cornfield that is Urbana Champaign, I only got to hang out with a handful of my fellow IRC geeks, and maybe meet the ones up in Chicago when I came home for break. But I'd hear about the West Coast parties and I'd feel a tad jealous - they always had such fun there and had lots of pictures!

So finally, after almost a decade, I had my West Coast IRC meet up. It took only a decade, but I did it. Much thanks to Eileen, who invited me to go out while I was in town - to Roscoe's, the place where they've always taken IRC people from out of town. Yes. Chicken AND Waffles. It may seem like a scary combo, but it's actually pretty good. The waffles were nice and fluffy. And, I had my chicken with the gravy which was super yummy. There weren't many of us, but it was nice to meet new people. Especially Eileen, since we've been chatting for a while now and she's always been so sweet and nice - something that didn't change when I met her in person. Also got to meet Arnold, Christian and Ben, who were IRC peeps from long ago.

At first, as I usually am when I meet new people, I was a bit intimidated and pretty nervous. But it was such a great, easygoing bunch that I soon felt comfortable talking and joking around. If anyone ever wants to break the ice with me immediately, talk about the Cubs or comic books. I'll get so chatty you won't be able to stop me. So really, it was a great time, talking about comic conventions, old video games, Hawking's black hole theory and levels of geekness (though we may be geeks, we're still COOL geeks).

So here's a pic outside of Roscoes (courtesy of Leen, who has more in her page):

Here are a couple other pics:

Good times! IRC, it brings people together. Even 10 years later!

Posted by Yano at August 18, 2004 07:34 PM

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