Living my life working via the Web, why shouldn’t I have friends the same way?  I have met two folks via the vast Internet who are thousands of miles apart.  I’ve known both for many years and visiting either would make an ideal vacation.

I met Jon Watson via a help desk request at my company, Virtual Bridges.  He was living in Calgary, Alberta at the time.  He’s a Linux techie, he’s written about our software products in the tech press, he’s a blogger – he once had a network of Linux blogs for which I wrote.  He and I keep in touch via Facebook, Linkedin and email. I once had a plan to hire him and move him to our offices in Austin but he had other ideas.  He and his wife, Kelly, wanted to move 5000 miles to Canada’s Atlantic provinces and start a Bed and Breakfast in Nova Scotia.  They did.

I could visit them at their Phoenix Hollow B&B in Windsor, Nova Scotia.

“Built circa 1873, the “Lion House” has undergone extensive renovations in order to offer the modern amenities of today while keeping the stately grace of yesteryear.

The Phoenix Hollow began life as a personal residence for ship owner and merchant Mark Curry and is now a Canada Select 4-star rated B&B.

The Hollow has also served its community well as both a boarding house and a refuge for the homeless after The Great Windsor fire of 1897.

Jon and Kelly are proud to be the 14th owners of this wonderful home and enjoy inviting people into our beautiful house.”  From phoenixhollow.com.

I think the whole family would enjoy that vacation, except maybe the dog.  Jon has pups of his own so doesn’t have facilities for visiting pups.

If I wanted more of an urban vacation I could visit another friend and engage in one of my favorite past times – eating.

I’m Dan Perlman, but it seems not the only Dan Perlman.  If you Google the name you would probably find me, but also several other “Dan Perlman”s.  One once contacted me because he kept a web page of “Dan Perlman”s and wanted to see if I had any interest in giving up the domain name danperlman.com for his Dan-Perlman collection.  I didn’t, but we kept in contact.  As Facebook became more popular we both connected on the site — constantly confusing our friends with wall posts from multiple “Dan Perlman”s.

Dan writes about food and wine and is Chef at his “closed door” restaurant Casa Salt Shaker in Buenos Aires.  While Jon is a mere 3000 miles from me in California, Dan is a bit further at about 6500 miles.

Having read Dan’s SaltShaker.net blog about food and about Casa Salt Shaker on its Facebook page and seen his food pictures on his Flickr pages, I know I could spend some very pleasant time exploring Buenos and enjoying eating and drinking wine at Dan’s restaurant.

Here’s how they describe Casa SaltShaker, the closed door restaurant:

“Welcome to Casa SaltShaker. We offer a unique dining experience in Barrio Norte. In essence, you are being invited to a dinner party in our home, where you will be seated at one of our two communal tables, with other guests. The setting is casual, the food eclectic, the conversation lively – and generally in a mix of languages. We consider our food “fancy home cooking” – we’re not trying for a multi-star experience – it’s about good food and wine, and meeting new friends.” From casasaltshaker.com

Here’s this weekend’s menu, celebrating Sunthorn Phu Day in Thailand,

• Egg Net with Shrimp Salad
• Tom Kha (peanut-tomato based soup)
• Vegetable Pad Thai
• Mussel Curry
• Banana Springrolls in Coconut Caramel

Anyway, that’s how I would spend my vacation.

Off topic:  Since Dan and I keep in contact via Facebook, I recently had the mischievous pleasure of beating Dan to the Facebook “vanity” URL of our name and in doing so met another Dan Perlman who is studying for the Bar in Boston.