Social events nowadays aren’t quite like they used to be… though some things never change.

Whereas our parents would group up and socialize with a small group of people they knew and with an agenda (bowling, pinochle, or specific celebratory events) we tend to gather just to hang out. #evfn has no agenda. Tweetups for breakfast have no agenda. We just go to hang out with our friends for a while and catch up, tease or whatever. And there’s always new people included.

We don’t seem to have that cattiness or gossipy thing that people used to have. Maybe it’s because the groups now are so transient, you’re not sure who is friends with who like those old fixed groups used to be.

We still mentally label people but not usually in a negative way. I for instance, am probably labeled to most people as mid-40s single (and likely a couple more labels besides) because humans tend to do that. That guy is mid-20s, buff, web designer, and gay. That girl is mid-30s, Realtor, Mom and so on.

But the thing that never changes is observation. Someone is always watching at these group events. I was at a breakfast and someone leaned over and asked me about another woman’s new wedding ring. I hadn’t noticed or heard anything about this couple getting married. Another time I was asked if the woman on a popular person’s lap was his wife. In fact no, but if you knew them all, you’d know it was just to be funny. I was at an event recently when the gentleman sitting next to me was a little over-close and when he went to the bathroom, half the table asked if we were together. People notice things.

But I don’t think it is in a catty or gossipy way anymore. We just cannot seem to shed the need to  label or pigeonhole people. I know I can’t. Seems like everyone I meet I check off a mental checklist so I can put them in the right slot in my mind. Though a lot of times with me it’s available/not. Maybe we’ve been trained to avoid offending people so we gather information to avoid our own faux pas. You don’t want to flirt with the not-so-obviously-gay dude, or make snide anti-Republican comments while chatting with the lady on John McCain’s campaign committee.

So just remember, people are watching and don’t be a dick. Right?

I got new meds in the mail yesterday.

They’ve replaced my open and shut purple disc (bottom) with the three dispensers at the top. It took me a half an hour last night to figure out how to use all these stupid things.

The light blue one is used twice a day. You take the cover off, twist it open, insert a capsule from the blister pack, close it up, squeeze both sides to puncture the capsule and then inhale. Then you open it back up to dump out the empty capsule.

Then the short grey one has about the same number of steps. That’s twice a day, too.

Then the pink one thankfully comes pre-loaded, but I have to remember to only do this one once a day but inhale it twice in a row.

And this is on top of the pills I have to take!

I try to schedule my meds for around 10 in the morning and at night to work around the eating/not eating requirements. When I’m out, I can slip that little purple disc and a small pill holder in my purse and voila! Quick click and inhale and I’m done. WTF am I going to do now? I’m out almost every night until well past midnight! This shit is going to put a serious cramp in my social activities. I can’t carry all this out with me!

“Excuse me loverboy whilst I take 20 minutes to fondle and suck on all these stupid inhalers before I work on you?” (That’s assuming I ever bring a loverboy home again.) Oh yeah, that’s sexy as hell.

Fuck asthma.

The Jonathan Coulton and Paul and Storm concert was MARVELOUS Thursday night. Absolutely and totally worth the bullshit we went through before it actually started. MadCrap MadCap Theaters is THE most horrible venue I’ve ever ever been to. It’s a testament to how much I love JC and the boys, that I’d EVER go back there again.  Why would anyone want to go there? They don’t give a shit about the customers, they have extremely lousy organizational and communication skills, and I’m guessing they spend hours wanking each other off rather than cleaning up the theaters. The whole experience is practically abuse and we’re paying them to do it.

Friday night was the usual #evfn, except E and Sheila weren’t there and neither was the guy they had organizing it in their absence. So of course I take up the slack and try to make sure everyone is taken care of and the newbies are introduced around. I don’t think I did a very good job as certain people walked out. Oh well, there’s always next week.

Kira and I hung out Saturday night and this morning we wandered over to a new (for us) McDonald’s, shopped at WalMart and took the light rail to downtown Tempe (yes, I live here but I’d promised Kira we’d take the train one day) to check out #comiccreate.

And tonight I get a following notification on FourSquare (a social geolocation application) for Earl Newton! Now I’ve met the man at D*C a couple of times, and maybe he would friend me on twitter where you’re getting occasional light-hearted updates/comments from people. And maybe on Facebook which is pretty much the same thing. Likely because of my connection to Evo and less on my own merit I think. Twitter/Myspace/Facebook are places you “friend” anyone you’ve ever met and then some. But wouldn’t you only follow people on a location-based application that you might, maybe, kind of EVER thought you’d actually want to know where they are? Earl Motherfucking Newton wants to know where I am? That’s soooo fucking cool. I feel like somebody now.

And Earl? If you’re a googling fool and come across this post, please don’t explain or get freaked out or delete me or anything. This is me after a couple of drinks – FREAKING THE FUCK OUT because someone of your caliber clicked on me as a connection somewhere, that’s all. Let me have this. Carry on and I’ll never bother you again.

Oh yeah, I got paid for work I did! Actual money instead of possibilities.

What a great weekend.

Every week I go to #evfn and gather with 20-30-40 people. The body count differs every week but there’s a core group. Some people come and go and some come back every time.

The problem is I don’t like every one of them, and I’m sure there are some that don’t like me. For the sake of the social situation we appear friendly at best and civil if there’s a real dislike. I think I can tell when someone doesn’t like me and I give them plenty of space.

The thing is, I really don’t want to hurt your feelings even if we didn’t click. Not every has to like everyone else. We’re not in kindergarten, we’re adults and we should realize and recognize when we aren’t connecting.

There are a couple of people who attend I actively dislike. There’s no hope for a connection or friendship and I can’t even be civil to them, but they still seek me out for conversation. Get a couple of drinks in me and I get downright rude. So far I’ve held my nasty comments, but should I? Are we required (as adults) to be at the very least civil to those who completely irritate or worse, creep us out?

What’s the best way to let someone know they should avoid you without being the real downer in a social group situation? Some people are so obtuse. I could be really nasty (which is my instinct) but then I’m the group bitch. While I’m naturally going to be a bitch, I don’t want to be THE BITCH.

By the way, don’t respond with a bunch of whiny “is it me?” shit. If I talk you you, I like you. If I smile politely and nod for short conversations but don’t hang around, we’re not connecting. If I see you coming and head the other way, duh-you.

Do you prefer Brightkite, Gowalla or FourSquare?

What am I talking about? There are applications to keep track of where your friends are and to let them know where you are. Hey, sometimes you’re  hanging out somewhere and you think, “maybe a friend would drop by and hang out with me if they only knew where I was!” Voila! Or if you’re meeting up with a group they can see who is already there.

I use FourSquare because it let’s you sort of compete with your friends and earn points and mayorship of places, stuff like that. But if a place isn’t already in their database you have to manually enter it, which is a pain in the ass on your phone. Asking a business what their complete address is so you enter it right, and then making sure you spell and get the name perfect? Nope.

So then I turn to Brightkite because it pulls it’s information from google. You can almost always find where you are with few clicks. But there’s no extra incentive.

I’ve noticed people using Gowalla, which seems like a combination of both. A searchable database of locations so you don’t have to enter the information yourself AND points and great icons and it says you get perks from the places you visit. I dunno.

And all these link with your twitter/facebook so you can get the information out instantly. I think they all have regular text access too so you don’t need a fancy phone for them.

So before I sign up for Gowalla I thought I’d check with you. Which do you prefer?

Oh. My. Shit.

I have a ton of stuff to do in November.

• Ignite Phoenix 5 (Tuesday Nov 3 – 6:00pm – 9:00pm)

Tickets, hashtag: #ignitephx
Tempe Center for the Arts – map

• WordCamp Phoenix (Friday Nov 13 – 8:00am – 5:00pm)

Register, hashtag: #wcphx
Arizona Grand Resort – map

• PodCampAz (Sat-Sun Nov 14 – 15)

Register, hashtag: #podcampaz
University of Advancing Technology – map

There’s #evfn every Friday night, recording for Evo @11 every week, Max is due home November 19th at midnight, and Thanksgiving is the 26th. Sometime in there I’m expecting a special guest, too.

I chuckled at a post on How Not to Act Old regarding stalking your adult children on social media sites.

What if you’re more worried about what they’ll learn about you by your posts?

Ginnie’s been my friend on MySpace (I have a lame page there just to keep track of her and her friends back when they were all in High School) for some time. So has Max. I’m pretty sure the only time I was at all parental was when I suggested to my niece that she remove the photos of her using a bong. Ginnie’s also been a friend on Facebook for a while and Max just signed up. It’s fun to look at pictures and some of their comments, but I seldom (if ever) post anything to their sites.

But what do they see from my feed?

Snark about children’s programming, where and what I’m drinking, how horny I am, et.

My twitter feed also posts to Facebook so there are odd comments like this:

I think he said he’ll be leaving there tomorrow and should be back in Hawaii in a week. I think. Or he’s pregnant with cows. I’m not sure.

http://twitpic.com/hno0h – Pool supplies. 1 inch vodka, fill with cherry 7-up.

GirlChild is going with me to friend’s *ahem* party. This is going to be fun.

This weekend someone showed me the ASL sign for horny. I feel empowered to a whole new bunch of menfolk.

I battle with the urge to be discrete considering my audience. I seldom do censor, but I have this whole mental argument before some of my posts. Fuck it, I’m me.

In the immortal and always appropriate words of Bon Jovi,

It’s my life
It’s now or never
I ain’t gonna live forever
I just want to live while I’m alive
(It’s my life)
My heart is like an open highway
Like Frankie said
I did it my way
I just wanna live while I’m alive
It’s my life

I don’t have anything interesting this morning, but I promised myself I’d update more often.

Last night I eschewed (never used that word before) #evfn because #lrfn started it’s adventures at @RulaBula and I love that place. They have had Strongbow on tap and that sounded like a better option for me. Whole Foods (#evfn’s regular final Friday location) never has anything I want to drink.

Turns out Rula Bula has changed out their Strongbow for Magners, the same hard cider I had in Vegas so it’s all good. Had a big honkin’ bowl of clam chowder for dinner and a couple of glasses – and tons of socializing.

Old friends, new friends, acquaintences, a couple of people I don’t care for but you know what? You can just be civil or completely ignore people you don’t like.

#lrfn is light rail Friday night, where they park and ride the light rail from place to place throughout the night. I managed Rula Bula and Monti’s before I had to leave.  I might have carried on had I been alone but I had someone with me. Then again I was really tired by 9 and would have only been tireder by 12 and that’s when the final meetup was scheduled.

Max is supposed to be here tonight.

Finally managed to get my already-paid-for plane tickets changed over so it’s official.

I’m going to Minnesota for 10 days next month to attend CONvergence and get to hang out with my VERY good friends Cara and Heather.  You D*C people know them as the ladies I usually stay with there and they come to the good parties with me. This time I’m going to their neck of the woods to check out… Minnesota.

All my bestest friends have cancelled on Dragon*Con so there’s really no reason to go. Oh sure, there are a few other friends I’ll miss (Cat and Taipa and Loren and A and all my author friends and peeps like that) but this trip sounded like more fun.

And it’s like, three weeks from now and I REALLY NEED to get away from the people I live with NOW and not in September.

So, Cara, specifically:

US Airways Flight 351 arriving July 1 at 5:00 pm

US Airways Flight 35 leaving July 10 at 5:55 pm

I can’t bloody wait!  Anybody else (fans, friends, folks) who want to get together just email spellwight over at gmail and we’ll set up a meetup of some sort.

Must say that since I’ve switched to my own site instead of just livejournal, I’m not as apt to be as open. Feelings schmeelings. I’ve been reading my LJ from the beginning and though 2/3 of it is useless crap, the rest is a decent history of my trials and tribulations.

There’s a certain point where posting my feelings about certain subjects pissed off a few of my “friends” and shows which people are truly friends and which are just shallow contact-counters.  One personal comment about not agreeing with a couple of unnamed friend’s lifestyle choices (which I still maintain I should be allowed to make in my own goddamn journal) blew up into the biggest online battle I’d ever been in. Sides were taken resulting in permanent breaks, and temporary walls happened. But in the long run the people I really consider friends are still around.  And the person I commented about has now discovered I was basically right and has apparently forgiven me and is back to being my friend. But I’m still gun-shy about expressing my feelings, even in my personal space. I’d love to be more supportive about what she’s going through now, but you know… once bitten, twice shy.

My readership has expanded by leaps and bounds over time and the chances that a general comment about someone specific won’t ring as many bells as it once would. Who know.

I even have to be more careful about I say about my own family. This used to be where I could let out all my anger and disgust and work out the thought processes before confronting family with a more calm and supportive face. Now I don’t know who is reading, who is reporting and who won’t understand THIS is where I say what’s impolite, what I really feel and can’t say aloud and this helps me to be nicer to their faces.

Now that I’m more social in real life, people tell me that I’m too brutal and snarky, that though I have a lot of new friends who like that I’m honest and blunt… I still put a lot of people off.

You know what? Tough shit. If your feelings are so easily hurt by the fact that I may not like something you do (or you AT ALL) that’s your problem. Fuck eggshells. I have a circle of friends who appreciate me, my family is used to how I am and the rest of you can take me as I am. I’m not curbing my comments anymore.

Fair warning.