friendster questions for Miss Manners

How formal or casual is the process of asking an aquaintance to be your friendster? If you exchange a few emails with someone in your friendster network and then meet in person is that adequate or should a more personal connection exist?

My car is fixed

I get it back tomorrow. Then i can rejoin the human race (... the daytona 500??....) and seem less flaky to the natives of CT. I hate driving, but I don't like bumming rides. But really, it took the scorn of my peers to incite me to repair.