Busy Weekend

Since I start my new job on Tuesday, this was officially my last weekend as an unemployed person. I had thought I might just hang out, stocking up some laziness, but that’s not how things worked out. We received a few phone calls Friday night, and my lazy weekend turned into a busy one.

First my friend T called, and convinced me to tag along Saturday to a girls-night-out kind of thing she does with women she works with. They rotate hosting duties amongst the group of women, with one casual dinner a month. For various reasons, there were a few people who couldn’t come this month, so I got to round out the group. T was hosting at her mother-in-law L’s apartment, so she wouldn’t have to kick her husband and young boys out of the house, and requested that SodaBoy come and hang out with D and the boys, for a boys-night-in.

For me, this is the sort of social gathering that can induce a lot of anxiety. I don’t get out much in general. Plus, I know T and L, but the rest of the group would be complete strangers. However, I decided it would be good practice for going back into the work world, when I will have to interact with the humans regularly. So I agreed to attend.

I enjoyed myself the most early in the evening, when it was just T, L, and S. It was the first time I had met S, but I can handle one stranger in a group of familiars, and she was very nice. All of the women actually seemed very nice. But what tends to happen when a bunch of people who work together meet up outside work?

Yeah... they talk about work. So once the whole group arrived, the conversation became more heavily skewed in that direction. Which is fine… L & I aren’t part of their regular group, so there was no reason to cater exclusively to us. And overall I had a really good time. It just made me wish I had more local friends of my own.

The second call came from my stepmother, who wanted to know if she and Dad could stop by today before Hometown University’s basketball game. They wanted me to take some portraits of my Dad for a non-bloggable reason. I agreed, albeit somewhat reluctantly. I do like taking photographs, obviously. Usually I am taking them for myself, though, just for the fun of it. Not for an official use. The pictures didn’t come out as well as I would like. I don’t generally take very many pictures of people, at least not very many good ones. Portraits are tough.

I had forgotten about the bball game, and once reminded, had to watch that on tv. And once I realized I was going to be pretty busy anyway, I decided I should crank out some chores, too. Things that I won’t feel like doing in the evenings after working all day. So I cleaned the bathroom, and did several loads of laundry, and made two loaves of banana bread. I doubled the recipe, because I want to have the banana bread for breakfasts before work, and SodaBoy likes it, too. This way they’ll be enough to go around.