Social Scene

This is a busy week for me. I got back from NJ on Sunday and had a little down time on Monday night after work, but pretty much every other night this week I have plans. Last night I went running with my friend Kelly. I met her in my running group. She lives downtown in a condo with her boyfriend a few times she's asked me if I wanted to run with her. It's nice because I can just stay after work and then meet her at her place. We do a run through the city then go back to the condo, shower, change, and go for dinner. So far our thing has been sushi at a couple different places. The place we went last night was called Press. It's kind of a wine bar with food. The sushi was actually really good. We ordered the Hisshimo rolls (I think that's what they were called), and the Venom rolls and shared a mini bottle of Shiraz. The Hisshimo rolls had baked scallops in some kind of sauce on top. It was funny because when it came out it looked like sushi rolls with mac and cheese on top because the color of the sauce was the color of cheese in mac and cheese. Anyway, it was good.
Tonight I have a sorority alumni gathering after work. Tomorrow I have my Thursday night running group. We run four miles then drink beer after.
My social life in Charlotte has been an interesting thing. At times it's been kind of drama filled, which I'm really not used to, or into. Initially, when I moved to Charlotte, I was about the third youngest person in my whole office. Greg and I quickly realized we were the youngest people in our immediate area of the neighborhood. Basically, for the first time in a while, I realized it was going to be kind of difficult to meet people to hang out with. I ended up becoming really close friends with a girl in my office who was a couple years older than me. We really didn't have a lot in common other than that we worked at the same place and lived in the same town, but for a while the friendship just kind of worked. I was warned about her from some people in the office, but wanted to make up my own mind. In hind sight I probably should have heeded the warnings. Basically, she ended up burning me big time. It's kind of sad, because it's honestly changed how I approach friendships and how close I let people get. I only have a few friends that I really feel like I want to let my guard down with. After my friendship with her ended, there was about 6 months to a year, where I was really pretty miserable about things in respect to my social life. Around the beginning of 2009 I finally started to come out of it a little more and decided to take some initiative in meeting some new people. I joined my sorority alumni association and met some nice girls. In the spring my friend Gibson started at our office and we became friends. Gibson didn't know many people here at all and started doing Meetup.com groups and told me about the running group and encouraged me to come to it. I'm really glad he did, because I met Kelly, and a bunch of other cool people. I also met a newer guy named Brent and he introduced me to his wife Becky, who is also a friend.
I'm a friendly and relatively outgoing person. I really enjoy being out with people. It's one thing that is kind of different about Greg and I. He likes people too, but likes more alone time and more home time than I do. I have to prod him to go out.
I've lived all over and Charlotte has been the most difficult place I've lived socially so far. I have theories that it is because I'm a Northern girl at heart and a lot of Southern women are different from me. They are into the sugar-coating of everything and will go out of their way to be sweet to you and then stab you in the back. I don't like that. If I don't like someone, I wouldn't go out of my way to be nice to them, but I also wouldn't be mean. I'd just be neutral.
Anyway, things are pretty good right now socially, so I'm happy about that. It makes a big difference to at least have stability there when everything else is in upheaval.