On Making New Friends

First off, I apologize. I had 2ish somewhat "regular" posts and then nothing for two weeks. Anyway, I'm back now and have a few life-changing concepts staring me in the face, so hopefully I'll get my act together one of these days, and hopefully one of the positive offshoots of these life-changing concepts will be regular blog posts. You best keep your fingers crossed.

Anyway...

Have you ever thought of how you actually made friends? Like what moment or common appreciation bonded you with another being? I have been thinking about this a lot lately:

1. I had the one-year anniversary of meeting a now very dear friend of mine at Bastille Days a few weeks ago. I remember the exact moment I first saw her come into my line of sight (and the day about 6 months earlier when she warned me not to go into a treacherous closet). We now have regular discussions of cat-lady-ness and trips to Target, not to mention a shared love of Buffalo Mac (mac and cheese spirals + buffalo sauce + some variation of meltey gooey cheese product).

2. I distinctly remember the first time I met a second now-dear friend, which was supposedly the same night that I met the friend listed in #1 above, though neither he nor I can remember meeting on night #1. Instead, we both remember meeting a week later at The Garage, where I attempted to cast him in a movie, but he refused to take off of work.

3. I told the story earlier tonight of how I should have been serial killed (yes, this is a verb) by a third now very close friend whom I met on twitter. Please note that I am not currently, nor have I ever been a zombie. Buy me a beer sometime, I'll tell you the story.

So what brought all of these thoughts and memories about tonight? I was invited to a very lovely Girls' Night by a great person who had decided to plan a monthly get-together as one of her New Years' resolutions. She knows a lot of people, and thinks they're all awesome, and decided to get them all together and rock out. It was awesome.

You know how you meet new people, and you go through the formalities, like where do you work, and are you originally from here, and strain to find some common ground? I did not strain a single bit to find conversation topics with these folks. They were all AWESOME. I'm really glad that I had the opportunity to hang out with them tonight, and will be patiently waiting for the next 29 days until the next Girls Night. yay.

As far as updates on the rest of my life, here goes:

Vegas is HOT. It's a desert. Yes, really. I was there during an "Excessive Heat Warning." That meant that it was hotter than normal in the desert. Why people willingly go here in the middle of summer (which is fairly pleasant in most other parts of our great nation) is beyond me. I liked it, but I will not go back until November, when it is palatable (and the overnight low is less than 89 degrees).

Goals: I'm bringing these up again. Not so much to bore you all, but more to nag myself. I had my wellness assessment today (annual health screening that my company gives us for free) and I'm not terribly thrilled with the results. The diet [re]starts tomorrow. Seriously. Monroe Cheese Days might get skipped this year. I have 1.5 bottles of ranch dressing that might find a new home in the garbage. Deep fried cheese, I love you, but we may have to take a break. This week/end is a wash (mostly because of that ugly pile of wash that keeps growing), but next week I will make my triumphant (?) return to the Downtown Y. (If you want to see something funny, watch how red my face gets after I work out...). I'll also be attempting to do at least a few push-ups every day. Today I did 15. Yes, they were the girlie ones.

Other than that, all seems pretty good for right now. Bridgi touched down at O'Hare today from Deutschland and I'm more than a little excited to see her. I bought hazelnut coffee and Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce to welcome the ex-pat and her bf back to The Good Land.

Speaking of The Good Land, I'm still pretty much infatuated with this city. Are two Milwaukee tattoos too many? I'm beginning to get a very vague idea of what my next tattoo will be, and kind of want to incorporate "The Good Land" into it somehow. Maybe. Putting that one back into the circular file.

Looking forward, I'm going to be in DC for the weekend. I'm pretty excited to see my friend Joe and to (finally) check out the Newseum, and may also have an impromptu reunion with my old car dealership boss from 2004. That's a looong time ago. Still looking forward to it.

As for now, I need to go to bed. I hope I don't have any crazy dreams about trippy 90s triangle carpeting like I had last week.

Any ideas on how to avoid deep fried cheese and ranch dressing are welcome, as are any thoughts/memories on making new friends.

May Day, a little late

And so, again I find myself here, staring at the New Blog Post screen, tapping out some resolutions for what I have somehow calculated to be the next step in my life. And so, on my last Monday of unemployment, here is what I intend to change for the next however long this stage lasts:

1. Go to the gym. No, really. I went and talked to one of their peeps and got my rate reduced (even though theoretically I would go more if I was paying more... or something).

2. Start (and this time actually finish) Couch to 5k. I know 8 people who have done it, so I can do it too, right?

3. Have a routine. Starting the new job will help with this, which will in turn help with #1 and therefore #2.

4. Discard. I've been doing pretty good at going through my closet and donating stuff I haven't worn in a while, but I need to keep up on it, as there is still a lot of stuff that I don't really need.

5. Eat better. Less stuff that comes in a box, more home cooking. Jason has a really great recipe for this super simple beef/noodle/bok choi dish that I need to get from him when he comes back from his month-long South American adventure. I need to be more mindful of bar food (and my weakness, buffalo anything), and make a better effort to plan when/where I'm going to eat so I can avoid convenience food. And maybe I can finally get to work on seasoning and using my cast iron skillet and dutch oven. Sounds easy, right?

6. Read more. I WILL read for 30 mins a day at least 3 times a week. I have a whole mess of books that I really want to read but haven't touched. I keep collecting them. They look so inviting, with their covers and their word-filled pages. But do I open them? No. That will change.

That's all I've got for now. Anybody have any tips on actually accomplishing stuff?

The Power of Positive Thinking

Ok, so as you may or may not know, my life has been changing majorly this summer (which is a story when I'm running off of a decent night's sleep instead of excessive coffee).

Anyway, I've been working on a movie set for the last few weeks, and a lot of the people I meet have high hopes of making it big in Hollywood. One common conversation piece is, "What do you want to do when you grow up?"

Most folks answer this question with something along the lines of "I want to be a director" or "I want to be a producer" or similar rhetoric.

One young man named Randall answers the question, "I'm going to be a director." The very concept of 'want to be' and 'going to be' that this 22-year-old has established in his life simply blows me away. The more I think about it, the more inspired I am to move on to the next phase of my own life.