neighbors via email

Our kitty-corner across-the-street neighbors were out of town when we moved in. Then "real life" started back up and nobody has been talking to anybody across the hedge, etc. They have two teenagers, and my life has been ridiculously crazy since the start of the school year. Bob and our other neighbor across the street seem to be the only people home during the day. He accepts her flower deliveries, she gives him the poop on the neighborhood - it could work out to be a beautiful friendship! But I digress.....  So a colleague of mine from work knows the aforementioned neighbor and insists that we must get together. Again, real life intervenes, nobody meets nobody. (Is that something like a null set in math???) But now it's looking like we're going to replace our roof and the neighbors across the street have a very similar slope, style of house, etc. AND their roof is really new. So I send up an electronic flare. I get my colleague to give me the neighbor's email address. Seems easier than walking across the street and knocking on the door. Lo and behold, I get a response! All is well in the neighborhood. It seems that when they moved here, nobody did any sort of baked good welcoming committee thing and then when they tried to do that for newer neighbors it was greeted with a sort of awkward politeness. So now they think they've landed on Mars. And I am so very much, "BRING ON THE BAKED GOODS." Because my pants aren't fitting so good already - might as well go all the way......  In a funny way I think this is all going to work out.