{"id":1169,"date":"2010-12-20T19:55:59","date_gmt":"2010-12-21T01:55:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/?p=1169"},"modified":"2012-02-09T22:13:30","modified_gmt":"2012-02-10T04:13:30","slug":"friends-potluck-cleaning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/2010\/12\/friends-potluck-cleaning\/","title":{"rendered":"Friends – Potluck – Cleaning"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thursday, 16 December 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

Today, Jennifer and I were talking about friends. Among other things, we were discussing the difficulty (sometimes) in maintaining friendships. In some cases, actually, it\u2019s easy \u2013 especially if you and your friend are \u2018thrown together\u2019 (for lack of better words) for an outside reason. This is often why it\u2019s easy to be friends with family members: your gonna be in contact with them anyways.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve noticed the same thing with co-workers. I am with them every weekday, so I start to become their friends. It\u2019s interesting to notice how quickly a co-worker can drop from one\u2019s circle of friends once they quit the company \u2013 or even just transfer to a different department.<\/p>\n

Jennifer and I have had friends in the past that, we claimed, liked us better than we liked them. Of course, I can\u2019t be certain if this is fact or just our perception. Indeed, I am not even sure how something like this would be measured. But it certainly \u2018seemed\u2019 that way. Let\u2019s just go ahead and assign numbers to these friendships, because that sounds like an extremely shallow and arbitrary thing to do:<\/p>\n

My friend, Clarence, says I\u2019m a 9. I say he\u2019s a 7. This is probably okay, because, even though I have other friends I like better than him (or maybe I just have some idealized friendship that he does not, quite, attain), he is actively seeking me out \u2013 he calls me, emails me, looks for activities and events for us to join in together. And that\u2019s just great. Of course, I reciprocate sometimes, too.<\/p>\n

Now my friend Guenther says I\u2019m a 10. I say he\u2019s a 3. This isn\u2019t any good, because even though Guenther thinks I am awesome and wants to be with me all the time, I easily grow weary of him. I get sick of the fact that he\u2019s always hanging around and I wish he\u2019d give me space.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s my friend Sinbad, who says I\u2019m a 5. I think he\u2019s a 9. This is how Jennifer and I feel a lot, especially since there\u2019s not as much to \u2018throw us together\u2019 with friends like there used to be.<\/p>\n

Friday, 17 December 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

Today my department (where I work) had a potluck. Which does not mean, I was sad to learn a long time ago, that everyone brings pot and we see who gets lucky.<\/p>\n

Here are some take-away lessons for the next potluck: I really only need to bring, like, three or four servings of food. Yep, it\u2019s true. Here\u2019s why: everyone in the group (and this group consisted of about 15 people, but any potluck involving over 5 people holds true for this) thinks that they need to make enough for everybody. If they\u2019re making chili, they\u2019ll make enough for everyone to have a bowl. If they\u2019re bringing a fruit tray, they\u2019ll bring one large enough so that everyone can have a serving spoonful. In my case, I brought cookies, and my wife prepared about 30 cookies \u2013 enough for everyone to have two.<\/p>\n

But \u2013 and here\u2019s the point \u2013 no one can eat all that food. See, if 15 people each bring something to eat, there\u2019s no way I can consume 15 servings of food. So, I need to leave out some stuff. This brings me to my second point\u2026<\/p>\n

Since attendees at a potluck have to discriminate about what they\u2019re eating, unless you bring one of the two or three best-tasting items in any given category, you\u2019re going home with a lot of leftovers. For example, if you bring in soup, no one\u2019s gonna eat your soup if there are two other soups there that taste better \u2013 or at least look more promising. So, you know cookies? Booooring.<\/p>\n

Anyway, we have some extra cookies here.<\/p>\n

Saturday, 18 December 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

My sister and her husband are coming over tomorrow for a my-side-of-the-family family Christmas celebration. And, yes, it is sure to be the biggest, funnest, most extravagant Christmas gathering in our entire family.<\/p>\n

So we cleaned cleaned cleaned. Dishes, laundry, vacuuming, dusting, organizing. I also spent some time today working on little gifts for Isla and her cousin Asa, but I can\u2019t give any details here in case any of them read this blog. When you run a blog that gets read \u2013 literally \u2013 by ones and ones of people everyday, you have to be careful what you say.<\/p>\n

This was yet another day in which I did not get into one of our cars and drive somewhere. I\u2019ve had a lot of these days lately, and I cannot emphasize enough (well, I probably could) that I absolutely love going an entire day without getting into a car.<\/p>\n

We also wached Jurassic Park tonight. That’s a fun movie to watch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thursday, 16 December 2010 Today, Jennifer and I were talking about friends. Among other things, we were discussing the difficulty (sometimes) in maintaining friendships. In some cases, actually, it\u2019s easy \u2013 especially if you and your friend are \u2018thrown together\u2019 (for lack of better words) for an outside reason. This is often why it\u2019s easy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1169"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2833,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1169\/revisions\/2833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}