After my bro in-law's wedding during my two week jaunt I took a side trip up to Maine to meet my long time, online friend Tarnagh and her family.

*STRANGER DANGER*
Do not meet people online ever.
*STRANGER DANGER*

If you do and you are molested make sure to take your cut from the internet sales.

Let me start this off with explaining my friend Tarn. She is a quiet, caring soul who would never say a bad word about...screw it. A picture is worth a thousand words.



Look at the pic again and pay special attention to the sparkle in her eyes. That is the evil trying to escape.

It failed.

After taking the sometimes sideways back roads of Main I am close to my destination. MapQuest delivers for me yet again. I am a few miles from Tarn's place when my cell goes off. I hadn't missed a turn and was spot on for time.

It was Tarn calling. It seems someone with a CRV had looked lost near her place and thought it might be me. She knew it was a different color but called to make sure. Needless to say when Tarn called me to check up on my directions she made me miss a turn on my directions.

I arrive. Tarn gives a hug. I don't think she can half hug anyone. She hugs to kill.

Her son is there. Cool guy. Soft spoken with a sarcastic wit. Even when you try to rattle him he stays on point and sticks to the original topic. If he can get the drive to match his brains he can take over a small country some where. Then he would get bored and the population would starve to death as he watched indifferently on youtube.

We head inside. Tarn's fiance is passed out. He works shift work and it's his time to snooze. Opening chit chat and all. Her two cats are cool.¹ Tarn's guy wakes up. He is the type to sit there and absorb it all before jumping in. Once he does it's like he was there from the get go.

Geek mode on
They are into playing CoV. I played CoH from Beta to just before CoV was released. The logged in to show me some CoV stuff. I call shenanigans. They nerfed the Fire/Fire Controller but the Mastermind on the Villain side is so much more potent it's nasty. I personally don't do nerfs. I think they should restore the F/F Con instead of nerfing the Mastermind.
Geek mode off

Tarn's other kiddo shows up. Teen daughter. She hides a bit of timidity/naivety behind being brash and outgoing. She is a bit CAT ADHD.

Kids go there separate ways, friends and all. While sitting there with Tarn and Tarn Guy (as he is now named) the conversation heads toward the IRC. Tarn and I met on a gaming forum (video games and the like) and spend most evenings in an IRC chatroom. There are a bunch of us regulars that hang out in there. I like to watch TV, surf the web and chat in there.

Anyway, the convo goes to IRC. I log into the channel on her account. I start yelling how screwed up the visit with the Grumps was (yes, I am bitching about myself as her to clear up any confusion) and end with,"WTF DID HE DO TO MY BATHROOM". I then abruptly log out.

Tarn and Tarn Guy just sit there staring at me. Mouths agape and speechless. Now in the years I have known Tarn I didn't think speechless was an option. I was rather proud.

We log back into the channel under a different name through another client so they don't know it's us and we monitor the room off and on the rest of the night. Just to see what they say. We laugh at comments. Tarn and I will eventually take this joke a few more days with each of us logging in on our own accounts to bitch about the fucked up other one. The joke ends one night after she and I were done laughing our asses off. Fun stuff.

We grab some pizza and sodas. Break out the Scrabble and have a good time all around. I really enjoyed the visit. Except for the fact I had to put my clothes in a separate HAZMAT bag to not get the smoke smell on the rest of my stuff (if a cigarette is not burning at any given moment in that house from one of the smokers they must all be outside at once) I'd have no complaints.

Thanks for putting up with me for the day Tarn and Tarn Guy. Hopefully I can figure out a way to do it again in the future.

You all hear the bad things about meeting people online. Bullshit. If you use common sense and do it right you can have a good time. I sure did. The cool part is I now know what her family is like so when we talk about them online I have more then a foggy mental image.


¹ The cat's belong to Tarn's daughter. I'd apologize but she got bored after the first sentence and wandered off.

~The Dad