fresh

You know, sometimes I forget how much fun it is to spend time with new people. Tonight I went to a bar with some peeps from work. We know each other through polite conversation, the friendly meeting type interactions.

But spending time outside of the office? Not so much.

Over the past three years my evenings have been consumed with training. Two years for the marathon, the balance for the half. This made me very economical about my time. If there were minutes left in the week they were to be spent catching up with the established friends. I owe the people I care about my time. That is the way it works.

So now here I am not on any race program, not running at all thank you to an injury. By god it is time I went out for laughs with any non-regulars.

We went to Rudy's, always a great place. No pretension, and plenty of hot dogs. And by god we laughed a lot. It was so much fun!

There is something to be said for getting to know new people. I think I'm going to work on that some more. How did I ever forget in the first place? When did the comfort of familiar friends replace the joy in discovering new ones?

Do people normally cap off at a certain point with friends? They make all the buddies they will by a certain age, and who they keep in touch with they keep in touch with? Does everyone always shift alliances and meet more people expanding groups, eventually making new ones?

Or maybe as people couple off and get serious-like with marriage and kids they don't have as much time or interest for the casual life, causing me in my resplendent singledom to expand my social horizons. They move on and I move out.

Yeah, I think that may be it.