Last night, while dining at Macaroni Grill with my wife and kids, I ran into David , Chris , michael , Rachel, and Christie. It was the first time I met Rachel, though we didn't get to talk really, but I suppose you could say we were introduced through each other's weblogs.

What I knew of Rachel, I knew only from her posting -- and (IMHO) she is a fine writer and I enjoy reading her posts. This was the first time I met somebody whom I had not met before but had followed his or her weblog. I was telling my wife Betsy about this, and she thought this very strange, but then I pointed out that we read newspaper columns and editorials written by people we don't know. I would be just as surprised to meet a column or editorial author at Macaroni Grill -- say William Saffire (it's easy to pronounce) -- as I was meeting Rachel.

The difference is that William Saffire (probably) reads little to nothing of what I write, and yet we of the -273 community read each other's blogs. So here are two people who know of each other only through blogs, meeting for the first time.

I like to think of this as a -273 moment, and another such moment was when somebody first responded or told me they read my blog.