Yes, if my friends jumped off a bridge, I would do it to.

I tend to watch a lot of Seinfield and Friends episodes these days. Which I find amusing since I never watched Seinfield when it was on network TV during the first run episodes, And Friends was sporadic a best due to my job at the time But I do enjoy those episodes. After this past weekend's shopping expedition and following extravaganza at the TanJoe Manor, I kind of felt I was living in some bizarre mix of these two shows, only without having crammed days worth of time into 30 minutes. Not that we didn't try.

A lot of the things that we end up doing either gravitate around chilling around one persons apartment or result from a random phone call, or more often text message, that beings "Hey, whatcha doing?" And from there it can either be a 5 person shopping trip, for what I still don't know, or being made to pretend I'm Santa Claus in the hopes of inspiring good behavior in 1st graders.

So, I wonder if I'm the only one in the world who gets to be part of a odd and eclectic group of people like I have accumulated as friends. We all seem to have some minor neurosis and odd behavioral quirks, and how we don't break down into fights and/or tears more often I don't know. But I do know I have a hell of a lot of fun with them. Even if it's only proving I have masterful knowledge of useless stuff in an obviously biased battle of the sexes trivia game, though I must acknowledge Kats incredible wealth of useless information.

UNfortunately, this period of my life will end, and I'll grow further form this group, as with other groups of miscreants i once associated with, hopefully only to join another group of random people who for some reason just seem to click in that time and place. Luckily we have Myspace and email to keep people apprised of whats happening in our lives long after our group has been spread in the wind to the 4 corners of the earth. And we can occasionally reminisce with each other over the distnce about the random events and adventures that we may have shared... trekking the streets of Allentown PA looking for a liquor store (at the age of 16) and skunk encounters, trips to PI with Jose Cuervo, playing randomly invented card games in steerage, french fry fights in the living room, playing catch in the back of an empty MD-11 while cruising over the North Atlantic, and seriously, who drinks the Gold Rush out of Corona's???

So, if the the writers of those sitcoms we tend to hover around had ever hung out with me, we'd have a hell of a show in production. ANd I could not work chasing down phone numbers for fire fighters in Madras, India or trying to determine the difference between a RAIL and SFL. I plan to keep in touch no matter where we all end up, to the best of my abilities.

On a more mundane note, for the first time in a long while, I flew into some really crappy weather coming home last night. Low clouds and about 3/4 mile visibility. After a 45 minute wait to get the paperwork to say the dent in the wing was OK, we experienced an airborne tour of Southern Indiana for 25 minutes, not that it mattered, we couldn't see through the clouds. Only to burst out of said clouds 300 feet or so about the ground in rain and mist. And the most interesting part, it was one of the smoothest landing I've ever experienced. Of course, that could have been because the pilots didn't touch controls (figuratively speaking, their hands were on them but they weren't manipulating them) but let the plane do the landing all by itself.

If you've never watched a plane fly itself, its kewl... I recommend it. I've also started Christmas shopping, yes I know.. way early. And I got my mom's gift, which is usually the hardest thing to come up with. This year's challenge... Susan.

And just so its clear Susan, I love you more!

Time to find track down some dinner.