Look what I got for my blogaversary

I got an in home visit from the one and only, the semi famous, the soon to be notorious, the lovely and talented Flannery Alden! Yay me! She's in town on business and she had an evening free and she chose to spend it here at Monkey Central. How cool is that? It's way cool. She's the first out of town blog friend that Sparky and I got to meet face to face, so you can say she took our blog friend meeting cherry.

Not only is the lovely Ms. Alden smart, funny, witty, and fun, she's also cute as a button. I was going to use a photo I took of her while she was here but they did not do her justice so I'm using her profile picture from Facebook. Isn't she adorable? Yes, she is. She's the cutest thing evah, the queen of Ohio I tell ya, and she's heading to Chicago on her next work related road trip so maybe you Chicago folks like Bubs, Johnny Yen, Johnny Yen's wife Kim (who still has not friended me on Facebook by the way, what's up with that Kim?), Splotchy, and Grant Miller can meet up with her when she hits your city.

I picked up Flannery at her swanky hotel and I spirited her to our place for supper and a few beers. We sat around talking, laughing, and getting to know one another. She's now like one of the family to us, from a part of the family we like that is. I kept her visit to our house under wraps because once news got out that she was in town and coming over then every poseur, fame whore, and hipster would have been on our front doorstep clamoring for face time with her and we had wanted her sweet sweet Midwestern goodness all to ourselves.

Our visit with her was enhanced by two things. The first was the swag she brought us: It's a cool book that contains all the stuff it says it does on the cover and also has arcane facts about well known products in it as well, which is waaaaaay too to a trivia geek and insufferable know it all like me. The second things that enhanced her visit to our place was we got to chat briefly with her husband Doc. She let me speak with him when she called him to let him know she was all right and that we were normal enough. Sadly Doc couldn't talk too long because he was somewhat indisposed, he was in service to his Oriental master Poo Ping when we called. All in all we loved meeting Flannery and spending time with her.

Flannery, it was a pleasure meeting you and having you over to our place. Maybe one of these days you and Doc and the kids will make that trip to Dollywood and you can all spend the night here while you're in the area again.