Re: 1st meeting...after a long relationship on net!
I met my first ever online friend after knowing her for 7 years. She was in Canada while I was in the UK for all that time. When my company moved me to Toronto we met during my first week. She was having a gathering of friends at her apartment and invited me over to meet people and make friends. Since we had known each other online for so long it was actually pretty easy to get along with her; though her friends were very guarded and a little freaked when they found that she'd never actually met me before.
Personally, when meeting people I've only ever known online, I'm a lot more safety orientated. I only meet them for the first time in very public places. The first person ever met was a guppy who I knew for 3 months - we met up at a train station in London and spent the day walking around the city.