A Real Long-Distance Hug

I showed up at Tim Miller's yoga studio last night for the little full moon celebration he was having in honor of the monkey god named Hanuman. I got there and Tim gave me a hug and said "your friend Margaret says hi."

In this age of digital communication, old-school digital (ie, hands, a hug) felt so good.

So very good, especially since Margaret is on the other coast and I haven't seen her since two weekends before last Thanksgiving, when we shared a Thai dinner at an empty touristy restaurant in Old Town Alexandria.

And it was one of those situations where it was a suprise and not a suprise at the same time. I had been on Tim's Web site earlier that same day, and I had noticed that he had been in Charlottesville, VA that weekend. My brain paused there. I consciously noted that I was making an unconscious note. But that was it. The note never made it beyond the unconscious...until I got the hug and realized what the note was: that Margaret might have driven down from DC to see Tim. She'd made the same trek every other year (and in 2006, I made the trek with her) so why would't she have gone this year? It's so obvious now what the note was...but when I was making the conscious note of the unconsious note, it was not obvious to my conscious self at all.