Lessons Learned This Weekend

1) I need to socialize outside my primary safe group of friends more often. My group of closest-friends are good people, and I enjoy spending time with them, and I love the fact that I see them every week and we know each other well enough to finish one another's sentences, but... they're the people I see every week, and sometimes in doing that I forget other people. And those other people can be incredibly good friends if I give them the chance, and it can be fun sometimes to move outside the commonplace zone and see what happens. Also, people will never become your Dear Companion if you don't give them the opportunity - but if you do, they might.

2) In spite of the fact that I dread having my picture taken, I still find it rather depressing and frustrating to have no pictures of myself. I don't know why; I never used to. But somehow, at some point I internalized my father's belief that somehow, without pictures, you have no proof that you existed and were part of the world and people's lives. Unfortunately, this is deeply at odds with the fact that I photograph horribly (with few miraculous exceptions), and my immediate instinct upon seeing someone with a camera is to duck and cover. I have no idea of how to resolve this conflict of wishes.

3) I'm sure I have more fascinating and deep thoughts to speculate upon here, but dinner is almost ready, and few things in this world are worth postponing indulgence in homemade macaroni and cheese.

Meme-a-riffic

Okay, since everyone else has already jumped on the bandwagon, I guess I'll play along.

Ten Things I've Done That You Probably Haven't:

1) Milked an alpaca.
2) Been hospitalized in the terminal ward with a rare blood disorder.
3) Translated the entirety of Fabritio Caroso's 'Il Balarino' from 16th-century Italian to modern English.
4) Cow surfed.
5) Fended off drunken advances from a Babylon 5 actor who mistook me for a professional dominatrix.
6) Snorkeled with manatees.
7) Posed for portraits at a late-night garden party in Tennesee wearing nothing but a chain mail bikini.
8) Had a major pop star give me an autographed pair of his undershorts.
9) Entered the Pillsbury Bake-off.
10) Jumped backwards down the entire staircase in the Statue of Liberty.

Not nearly as exciting as most of my friends, somehow....