I stayed up until almost one with Winter last night.

I know, I know. Bad Maggie.

We started with him establishing what a personal ad would look like for me, if, of course, I'm 95 and Rice has peacefully died in his sleep and I'm looking for, evidently, a quick fling.

This is what he came up with (I'm sure you'll all find this particularly funny):

"A possibly androgynous pale and scrawny brit male who sings and still has most of his hair (dark preferred, but blonde okay), a potential past substance abuse problem, and a magnetic sexual personality."

Part of me believes I really should clarify some of that, but we'll just leave it be for now ... unless, of course, someone gets worried about me having a desire to be with a man who has a substance abuse problem...

And once we had that established, we shared music. Back and forth we sent links for the music we were listening to during the 1998 to 2000 period. And we would watch the videos and talk about them. Mostly I got a lot of pale angsty Germans, and he got a bizarre assortment of strange things. You know, like Catatonia, Placebo, Moby, and Bob Dylan. During the breaks I wrote.

It's sad, I know. Pitiful, really, that these two people who live maybe five minutes apart from each other (not counting the process of getting out of the house and into the car and so on, particularly with children) spent a great time together over the IM.

But the other thing to remember is that the kids were in bed, it was convenient, I got some writing done, and we are both introverts. We can have perfectly nice conversations IRL, and we can carry on a perfectly wonderful conversation this way (especially if Winter is a wee bit inebriated, but he kind of has cut that out), but we have the best conversations, the most honest conversations, via IM. And that was even true when he lived here.

So, has the internet created a barrier between people, or has it created a bridge for some people, particularly those like Winter, who wouldn't have had a connection to some people otherwise?

Well, it's a bit of both, I think.

And I had a really great evening.