People I would like to meet in RL

I've just been skimming through Chris Sessums's blogroll, and I spotted Kathy Sierra's name there. Like me, he is obviously hoping that the day will come when Kathy feels able to rejoin the blogosphere (Kathy - if you're still checking tags, and come across this post - we miss you, girl!)

Kathy is one of those people I would like to meet in person. I started writing a post about that subject, trying to come up with a list of 5 (living) people, not on the list of people I read (that would be too obvious) that I would like to meet face to face. I got as far as (well duh!) Nelson Mandela and then stumbled.

There are many people whose achievements I admire without feeling the need to meet them as people - few people live up to their public personae anyway. In fact, I could probably come up with a pretty impressive list of people I would NOT want to meet and get myself nicely sued for libel for my trouble. I tried to change tack and explain why this is so, but got horribly entangled.

I realise that the people I really want to meet can't be linked to, because they don't appear on a Google search. People like my sister's fiance, my niece's not-yet-born-baby, a couple called Rob and Joan Sharpe, that no-one's ever heard of... Suffice it to say, that I realised that I would far rather meet you rather than any pop, movie or sports star, and I find that realisation quite liberating.