The truth be told I was a little nervous on approaching the Courthouse Hotel for tonight’s GLBTI Bloggers Meetup. First, I’d realised we’d forgotten the Q, and was half-expecting a protest on behalf of Queer Bloggers, incensed they had been left off the invite. Second, it had been raining for much of the day. Thankfully, The Other Andrew, had booked an undercover table in the beer garden, so all was fine there. And third, because I’m instinctively a shy person (despite my job and my bravado), I was worried I would have to be the outgoing one who would need to identify and welcome people. Thankfully, TOA who is much better than me in those regards arrived right on time. In fact, everyone seemed to arrive quite early which I thought was pretty amazing.

After Andrew, the first to arrive was Michael who delighted everyone with tales of travelling overseas with his dog for the last few years. He must have been asked the question about how he got his dog through quarantine a thousand times. In fact, he said, the only problems he had was coming back into Australia. He also offered some handy advice about the advantages of travelling overseas with your car, except in the UK. He also turned out to be a knitter, which delighted both TOA and The Witty Knitter who I had not realised was a NZer by birth. Having read her blog for about a year now, it was really great to meet her, and to hear her observations about life, the universe and everything. As well as knitting, she also blogs about blogging, as she is doing her PHd about people doing PHds, and part of that is to encourage people doing PHds to blog about their PHd. It is actually not that confusing when she explains it all.

Marcellous was also an early arrival, entertaining us with tales from the courtroom, and tales from the films he had seen at the Mardi Gras Film Festival, in common with A Girl Called Dusty.

I had to smile when Panther arrived around 6pm, as he and I had been on the same history walk two days earlier. I later recounted to Therin Of Andor the historical inaccuracies surrounding Number 96 which had been featured on the tour.

My near neighbour, Ninglun was also there, explaining NInglun was actually his name in Mandarin, and telling us that Kevin Rudd also has a name that converts to Mandarin, though I can no longer recall exatly what it was. It was great too, to see Dancing about Architecture (Riayn) who I had met at a non-GLBTI Bloggers Meetup a few weeks ago. She is such a lovely person and along with TOA she was one of the stayers after most people left at about 7.30pm to go home to have dinner etc.

So thanks to all those who attended. It was lots of fun and it was great to meet such a nice bunch of people.