I wish I was a better friend

I'm supposed to be writing a travel piece for Thursday, but I don't have anything prepared. With the holidays and holiday things upon us, I'm probably not going to have a lot of time to prepare too much. I might have a travel piece up next week or the week after. But I can't say that with any confidence. Time sucks. Oh, I also didn't really want to write one today, I have other things on my mind.

Last night was hectic. We're having a potluck luncheon thingy in my building at work today. So I was busy getting dinner ready and making a broccoli cashew salad for the event today. An aside: It's a great recipe but the cost and the preparation time is prohibitive. I shan't be taking this dish to any more food events.

So, as I'm busily chopping broccoli, I get a phone call. I should preface this by saying that I'd gotten about 6 phone calls already within the span of an hour and a half or so. My wife does lots of church stuff and her sister calls often. I fielded each call in turn, progressively getting a tad more upset as every time I get ready to do something else the demon phone rings. I was just getting into chopping up some bacon and the phone rings again. DAMMIT!

Wiping off bacon-greased hands, I grab the phone expecting another "Hello is [my wife] there?" but instead get "Hello, Cullen?" Floored me. Unexpected. One of my oldest friends, currently living in the great state of Misery is on the line.

Of course we get the whole "catching up" taken care of, but more importantly I got to reconnect to a pal. At a time that I've been feeling the need to do so. See, I'm a cyclic contact person. My old friends and I go through periods of extreme contact where there will be tons of email and phone messages. We'll plan and plot and create and have fun. This lasts a year or so. And then nothing. Contact doesn't really taper off as much as just ends. Sometimes I initiate the re-connect. Sometimes he. It's odd. What's more odd is that I'm like this with all of my old friends that I am still in contact with.

But to continue ... I wish that I was better in staying in contact with my buds on a more constant basis. I do not phone. I refuse to own a cell phone for a variety of reasons, but that hampers modern-day contact. And at home (given the example stated above) you can tell I'm not a big phone person, regardless of how much I might actually enjoy the conversation (don't take that as a cue not to call me, people who call me. I do appreciate it, I just expect it to be one of the multitude calling for the missus).

What's really cool about it though is that it's nice to know there are people outside of your normal sphere on contact that think about you. There will be more on this in the future, I can assure you. We act as creative inspirations for one another and tend to produce some neat ideas. Hopefully we can actually get something tangible out some day. We'll see.