Last night was a good night.

Kevin Smokler was in town from San Francisco and sent a note to a few friends to get together for dinner. The always ready event planner Sooz picked ZuZu for our little gathering. What I loved about it though was that as the seven of us sat down for dinner I only knew two of the people. One was from MIT, another is working on her PHD about photographic representation of poetry. It made for amazing dinner conversation.

It is little moments like this, completely outside of the fishbowl and talking about anything but the usual suspects that I love. I got to hear stories from complete strangers, find out about great new bands and talk about authors I had never heard of. All of this and great food to boot.

This proves that I am getting a bit of cabin fever. Between working in a home office, taking a break from speaking and working around the clock it has been a while since I’ve been able to do this. I haven’t been attending many meetups or other gatherings because the time to drive into Boston and back with everything going on just hasn’t been available.

Sitting on a bench while waiting for the other guests to arrive last night I got so much pleasure out of just watching people and sipping my iced coffee. I smacked myself for not having my camera or my moleskine. One if not both of those are always with me and last night I shouldn’t have changed that.

This weekend is PodCamp Boston 3 and I can’t wait to see old friends and reconnect with people I haven’t seen in a while.

But, I’m more interested in the faces I won’t recognize. The people who I don’t know and I can’t wait to find out why they are there and what they are hoping to get out of it. Three of my scholarships went to students and I can’t wait to sit down and talk with them and meet them in person.

Smaller gatherings. Talking face-to-face with new people. Catching up with friends outside of the masses. All things I want and need to do more of.