Meeting the friends

One of the downfalls of dating someone who originates from another state is the very real possibility you might marry them...without getting the approval of their friends. Take the Goose & I, for example...I first met her Mom and step-Dad about 2 years ago when she did her first marathon. Did not talk to them much. Have met her Mom a couple other times on her visits here but have not talked to her super much. Of her friends I have really only ever met Courtney and Natalie...and them only because they lived here in Oregon at the time. They both moved away so very, very few of the people instrumental to her development have ever met me.

The reverse of course is far from true. She knows my brothers and their wives quite well, has met all the guys except Billy that I grew up with and hung out with, my Dad thinks she is outstanding, she knows all the church people, and she knows even my "short time" friends such as Jr. Woodchuckette...a good friend I have known for less than 30 years :-). She knows them all.

Well, I was a bit nervous about meeting her friends and family. I have heard a great deal about them but never really met them. And I often find myself obnoxious...I can be loud, opinionated, disagreeable, argumentative, and tell way too many bad jokes. A few good ones, many bad ones. I often annoy even myself.

The flight took off at some horrendously early hour. This is doubly bad for me. I am at my most unpleasant in the mornings. "Morning person" goes with "Drew" much like "oil" goes with "water"...very poorly. I am often cranky and peckish in the morning. Add to that my extreme discomofort in airline seats. I swear when they sat down to design airline seats the conversation went something like this:

"Well, we could do something like arena seats. They crowd a lot of people in with relative comfort."
"Yeah, that would work. Or maybe we could make a few small adjustments and use theatre style seats. Again, you can cram a number of people into a relatively small space."
"Hey, wait a second...what are we thinking? If they are flying it isn't like they have a choice...so let's figure out the most ergonomically, comfortable seat possible to cram 200 people into space designed for 20...and then take all those elements, remove them, and build a seat from what is left over."

So early in the morning I am in one of the anti-ergonomic back breakers known as airline seating trying to read a book. It was a pretty smooth flight, albeit a bit longish. When we got to Denver we had only like a half hour to get on the other flight.

Now, if you have ever been to Denver you know about their moving walkways. These are long conveyor belts that pass about 3 gates each. Since we were running short on time we were barrelling along those. As we got on the second one we looked for the gate we needed. Some people would argue we should have checked BEFORE getting on the conveyor. Those people have never experienced the joy of being on a conveyor belt and watching the gate you are looking for roll by about half way down.

By this time I was awake enough to have a good laugh about it. The trip to Omaha was smooth and uneventful. We met John & Nancy (her step-dad and Mom) for the ride back to Lincoln. On the way there we got one of the planned events dealt with; we ate at Runzos.

Runzo is a small chain of restaraunts that makes...well, for lack of a better word I will say calzones. Pretty popular little chain, a nice break from the burger and taco fast-food type restaraunts. I do not understand why "fast food" and "bland clones of each other" seem to be synonymous. Seriously, does anyone NOT see the overwhelming similarities between McDonalds, Burger King, Wendys, Carls's Jr, Jack in the Box, etc? And certainly Taco Bell, Muchas Gracias and Taco Time fool nobody with their differences? Their similarities are more numerous than their disparities. Dairy Queen sort of stands out from the field with some menu variations...corn dogs, shrimp baskets, a wide variety of ice creams...but hey, you can get burgers there too. So having a fresh take was kind of cool in a KFC type of way.

That night her friends started rolling in for her little party. Now, for those of you who know me, the next line will strain the bounds of reason and believability. I went into shy mode. As each new person arrived they would be brought out into the little enclosed porch where John & I were hanging out. I would be given their name, respond with a head bob, maybe a "Nice to meet you". On the bright side, this prevents me from making some of my stupider comments. On the dark side...well, I come across as stand-offish.

Fortunately I redeemed myself from the stand-offish approach with a series of comments. On the dark side...they were some of the worst jokes I have told in quite some time. For example, Nancy gave Em a little statuette...a Precious Memories type thing with a nice comment on time together or something. Hard to say what it was...Nancy told her to read it, and before she could I said "In case of boredom in marriage, to be used as a murder weapon." On the dark side, that was a really, really stupid thing to say. On the bright side...it broke the ice and got a nice laugh. On the darker side...it also opened the floodgates and a great number of comments followed.

Later a few of us went to hear some live music as sort of a bachelorette thing...I know, I was part of it, so how did that work out? Quite well, actually, it was a lot of fun and they saw another side of me, so that was cool. And I got to chat with them a bit and get to know them a little bit, so that was cool too.

Otherwise the main thing I remember was being introduced to a card game called 500. John & Nancy are huge proponents of it and we played a series of games. It was the guys versus the girls. It was a lot of fun and it was good because it gave us time to hang out as a family, so to speak. So that was outstanding.

How is that for random moments?