get your bowl on

i'll admit it - my reaction when seeing the words "department outing" on the meeting invitation was to let out a little sigh.  no, little whimper is more like it.  it's not like i don't like the people i work with - i think they're great.  i just haven't fully developed into one of those people who can just make small talk and be the life of the party yet.  i'm working on it.  i hesitated as i pushed the "accept" button.  i don't think you're actually given a choice there - if you don't go to the department outing you are considered to be a social deviant and you will probably not have your job a year from now.  but i guess i was considering the pros and cons of the situation.

pros:
you do not have to work for the afternoon
free lunch
you get to leave work early

cons:
you have to talk to people you barely know for 3-4 hours

obviously there are more pros than cons in the lists above.  however, the weight afforded to the cons makes the two categories almost equal.  let's just say that i have a crippling fear of slight aversion to talking to people i barely know.  i'm pretty much an idiot and i say the wrong thing all the time.
but in the end i decided that it would be worth it to keep my job and get out of work three hours early.
we went to this place that was (for lack of a better description) embarrassing to stand in.  the alley had been recently remodeled to be some sort of upscale "club" or something.  there were a lot of swankiness attempts, but it just felt wrong.  just because you have new carpet and a full service bar doesn't mean you're not a bowling alley.  and what's with the manager wearing an eighties suit (complete with mock turtleneck)?  the atmosphere of the alley only compounded the awkwardness i was already feeling just being around all those people.  i had a mantra going in my head "you only have to do this for three hours...then you get an afternoon all to yourself...three hours...you can do this".
i managed to make some small talk with a few members of my team (randomly assigned) and even ventured over to the lane beside me, where a girl from my row of cubicles was bowling.  i talked about basketball (everyone watches the ncaa tournament, right?) and the weather.  i was no social butterfly, but i endured it.

and then, even though we got to leave early, i was still stuck in traffic on the way home.

our thing

a few weeks months (because it takes me forever to finish a blog post, apparently) ago,  i needed to get my car inspected (since it was embarrassingly illegally overdue), and since there were still two feet of snow on the ground (remember the great blizzard of '09?  and then '10?) we decided to make it our "trip of the day", if you will.  we dropped the civic off at the car place and headed over to one of the fine arlington county libraries.  he serached out a few detective novels (he has read all of the pattersons, grishams, and theotherguywhoican'trememberrightnows) and i gathered some photography books.  i managed to score a chair next to the window and sat turning the pages and drooling over talented photos until andy was ready to leave.  it felt so good to get out, and it sort of felt like i was participating in the elusive thing they call "the community".
in the weeks since, we've loosely made it our habit. i'll be the first to admit that he is more likely to go than me (shocking because i'm more the bookworm type - or so i thought) and sometimes i find it hard to muster up the strength to walk all that way if the weather is not 72 degrees and sunny.  we've also added breakfast/coffee to the mix, and occasionally a stop at cvs. 
i've always wanted a routine.  i didn't want to force it upon anyone, because i'm not sure at what age people start adopting routines (i've always been all too eager to grow up).  i always just hoped that one day i would be one of those happy people who does things like go to the library and get coffee on weekend mornings.
and while sometimes i let my laziness get the best of me, on the mornings that i do drag myself out of bed and put clothes on before 10 a.m, i'm glad that i'm finally at least a little closer to having a normal life.