Just What I Needed

Posted: February 5, 2011 at 8:02 pm

Before my good friend Mandy left this morning, we made sure to fit in a girls’ dinner out. It was just what I needed!

mandy and tina dinner

I love doing the mommy thing, but going out with a good girlfriend sans kids is necessary at times. We had to dine somewhere close, so I knew just the place. Where else than my favorite Mexican joint? Cheeky!

The restaurant had a 45 minute wait, but we didn’t mind. It gave us plenty of time to chat and catch up. And to get hungry. Chips and salsa were consumed…

cheeky chips salsa

I opted for 3 of their little tacos for my dinner. One pork; one fish; one crab cake.

cheeky

cheeky three tacos

Yum! It had been too long, Cheeky. It had been too long. And I certainly hope it doesn’t have to be too long for me to see Mandy again!

Here’s a little interesting fact some of you may not know. Mandy & I are great friends…and we met online in a fitness forum. The first time we ever met in person, she and her family came to stay with our family for a long weekend. We instantly hit it off in person, just as we had been for a couple years online. Our husbands said we were basically the same person…and we laugh at our husbands’ numerous similarities. Also, Makenzie & her daughter love all the same things. It was a friendship meant to be. It just goes to show that our relationships and friendships we develop via the Internet (hello…so many fabulous bloggers!!), are just as real as any friendship elsewhere.

I certainly value my friendships with people like my sister, my pals from church, and friends I went to school with…but those people I have grown close to online still mean just as much. In all honesty, you all probably know more about my life than others since I’m sharing here twice a day, almost every day. In short. I love you guys and you are very real friends to me. And thank goodness for Mandy, because if not for her Peter might still think its all “so weird to have friends online”.Then I would have missed out on meeting so many awesome people!

Question of the Evening – When & how did you start building relationships online? Summer 2007 when I joined the Oxygen Magazine’s fitness forum.

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42 Comments to “Just What I Needed”
  1. I started doing Weight Watcher’s online in 2004. And then in 2006 started blogging and meeting other bloggy friends. So I guess since then I’ve relied on online friends for support. It’s been a really great blessing too! I love my blogger gals! 🙂 Going to meet some in person finally this summer at BlogHer!

  2. Coco says:

    I have “IRL” friends that started out as e-friends in 2000, on eDiets.com. Some of us have been posting together daily for 10+ years, and now we try to plan girlfriend weekends.

    I think with our busy lives, it is easier to stay connected on-line. Its great to reinforce that with meet-ups, but you can really forge strong relationships on-line.

    A few years ago there was a Gray’s Anatomy story line, about a patient with e-friends from an orchid growers (?) group. They flew accross the country to support him in his surgery even though they hadn’t met face-to-face before. It had me in tears because I know the same would be true for many of my on-line friends.

    When you hear so much about on-line stalkers, etc., it’s nice to hear the positive too!

  3. Becca says:

    Okay, now I want Mexican food. Haha! I just ate… Although what we ate had some salsa in it. That’ll have to work. 😛

    Hmmm… Blogworld, it was … last summer, I think? I started my blog in July, but I’d been reading blogs before that. Maybe winter of 2009? Sometime after i found Operation Beautiful.

    I joined Neopets in like 7th grade… Hahaha. But because of Neopets, I have a friend from Louisiana! We’ve never met in person, but we’re friends on Facebook. 🙂

    I have a couple of other people I know through a couple of other sites (that I joined several years ago). Never met them in person, but would love to! One person I email on a semi-regular basis. Kinda fun.
    At first I worried about online friendships, but hearing (reading!) you share about yours (and Heather about hers, etc) makes me feel a little better about it. Haha. And now that I’m Facebook friends with a couple of online friends, I feel a little better, too–it’s not just some random person, and I actually get to put a face to a name. 🙂

  4. Kathleen says:

    Sounds like a great time, Ive been craving Mexican food all day. As for Internet relationships, I started on the Weight Watcher message boards back in 2003. I also started a weight loss blog back then (I lost 83lbs. and made lifetime at WW) and then got married for the second time after tragically losing my first husband. I met so many wonderful people through my old blog and a young widows online group. One of the girls I met has become my best friend. She lived with my husband and I while going through her divorce. This past year. I’ve met people in 4 different states and remain daily email friends with them all. I shut down my old weight loss blog and started my new food one almost a year ago. 8 years of blogging = many online friends. I love it!

  5. How fun! 🙂 It’s so great that you have a great friend like Mandy! 🙂

    I’m new to this blogging world (October 2010), but already I have formed so many great friendships. I honestly feel more comfortable opening up to my “blends” than the people I go to school with! I feel like relate better to all the bloggers. 😉

  6. Man, those tacos look delish! And I love my blog friends oh so very much… I can’t wait to meet as many in person as I can someday! 🙂

  7. Mexican food is the best! I just made healthy meatloaf which I was craving for forever and it was so good.

  8. Ooooh, now I want some Mexican food! I’m dealing with congestion right now and trying to fight this cold – maybe some spicy food would help clear everything out!

  9. Rach says:

    Looove girls’ dinners out! 🙂

  10. What a fun dinner out! I am just starting to build friendships online; it’s still pretty new to me. I’m learning that the blogging community is pretty amazing.

  11. I frequented the bodybuilding.com female bb journaling section religiously!

    I met some great friends on there from all over the world!

    I still pop in to say hello and see what there up to, but blogging is more of my style for sure 🙂

  12. Sometimes it’s nice to have a longer wait isn’t it? So glad you guys had a great time. Before blogging, I never would have believed that you could make true friends online. Now I have some friends that I have still not met, but I consider them to be better than some in real life friends.

  13. Definitely when I started blogging…and those have been some of the most real and loving friendships I’ve ever experienced!

  14. I love what you said about online friends, Mandy, the whole thing…that online friends mean just as much as in the flesh friends. I would not know what to do w/ myself if it werent for some of my “online” friends and our emails. they are very much 1 million percent REAL to me!

  15. Heather says:

    I met my two best friends online through Disney message boards and now we all have running blogs! We vacation together, meet up for fun weekends, etc. even though we live hours away! We also text/talk almost every day. 🙂

  16. I met one of my closest friends in the WW chat rooms a very long time ago. We just met in person for the first time this summer. She is like a sister to me, and we mostly talk via email. I honestly feel like she is another me who happens to live on the West Coast. Then as you know, I met wonderful friends like you on O2. Internet friendships are real, and I am so thankful for them!

    • Tina says:

      I love how so many of us left O2 and started blogs. We can still keep up with each other without visiting that crazy place. LOL

  17. I used to do MyFitnessPal online in 2007-2008. Since then I have stopped (calorie counting = bad for Chelsey) but I have to say I truly have built some great relationships just in the last 8 months I’ve been blogging! Like my friendship with you!

  18. Lauren says:

    That’s such a cool story! I’ve never met bloggers, but I just started my blog a few months ago, and I haven’t seen any bloggers in my area. I still love having online blogger friends!

  19. Drooling over your dinner 😛

  20. Crabcake taco?! Yum!! And now I am craving Mexican…

    I love that about our little blogging community — honestly, I think we all have so much in common. Now if only we ALL lived in the same place! 🙂

  21. sophia says:

    Of course I totally HAD to comment on this uber-sweet post. I agree!!! Beautiful, lasting friendships can be found anywhere. I have my fair share of close-knit blogger friends, some whom I still have yet to meet.

  22. Lee says:

    I first started doing it probably in 2005 when I was an active participant on the shape.com forums. I think we had a small rivalry with the oxygen.com forum people. Lol.

  23. Funnily enough, my best friend and I met online at an eating disorders support forum (her name is Mandy too, how weird is that?). The first time I met her in person was when I flew down to Alabama right after she had her baby. Its a really good thing we got along! 🙂

  24. I “met” Mandy on the oxygen forums as well, along with Krystal.

  25. Mellissa says:

    I think its funny to think about people you see as good friends that you’ve never met in person! I have so many online friends that I forget sometimes that they are in person friends.

    I am on vacation for my bday staying with a blog friend, we have only meet in person once but she invited me out to stay for 5 days. Crazy!

    And you and I have been friend for at least 3-4 years!

  26. Mandy says:

    Love you guys!! So glad I was able to come see you even if it was too short. I am so grateful for the internet, and that I had that time on the 02 forum. I think I knew right away that you and I had a special connection…we are pretty much the same person except for my Jewish husband and living in the midwest, haaha! 🙂

    You can build special friendships wherever you are, and the internet to me is just like the phone. It helps us stay in touch except you can do it without missing calls 🙂

    Can’t wait to see you all again. Big hugs to the kiddos and to Peter too. I woke up this morning missing you guys already!

  27. i met my bestie online seven years ago via the iamtan’s forum. Love her to pieces! I also met several other very extremely close friends of mine via a fitness forum seven years ago also. we call ourselves the fit chicks. Like your’s, my husband thought it was weird at first also.

  28. What a cool story on how you guys met! Sounds like a great night 🙂

  29. Wonderful post and so true about real friends/Internet friends – I completely agree that you all know me more, know what’s up with me, etc. more than in-person friends who don’t read my blog! For SURE! And those tacos look wonderful – glad you had a yummy meal sans kiddos!

  30. I’ve only been in the blog world a short time, but I love how many supportive ppl I have already met 🙂

  31. I actually met my fiance online in the summer of 2007. (o: And so far I have done 3 blogger meet ups. I love it! I cannot wait to meet more people!

  32. Aw I remember Mandy from 02—still gorgeous.

    I’ve met three ladies from the internet—all wonderful.

    Marlo–from 02. Becca–from 02. We all met up in NYC for a fabulous vacation together.

    And then Kacy–a blogger who I found out lives in the same city! I think the net is a great way to meet friends with similiar interests and passions. Plus, all of these ladies are absolutely wonderful.

  33. Stephanie says:

    I have been reading healthy living blogs at work for awhile but only just recently started blogging. It’s been a true blessing so far!

  34. First off, those chips + salsa look so good I could cry right now. Moving on. I’ve never actually met anyone online, but it is one of the reasons I started blogging. My best friends all live a plane ride away, so although I have my incredible boyfriend (without whom I would most definitely go crazy), I do feel very lonely sometimes. I have read lots of people’s blogs saying that they made friends this way, and I am hoping it works for me too!

  35. i’ve been reading healthy living blogs for about a year now, and i’ve felt from the beginning like i really know some of the bloggers, but after starting my blog a month ago, i have already made some great connections with new bloggers! it’s a great community and i feel so lucky to be part of it! 🙂

  36. […] Just What I Needed – girls’ night with my friend Mandy […]

  37. […] Week Ago: I was hanging out and having a girls’ night with my friend Mandy. I guess that means I can’t complain about Peter having a boys’ night tonight? […]

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