Let's be friends

I have recently noticed that despite having the world's most amazing girlfriend, interesting classes and a wonderful blogging audience (it never hurts to butter you all up a little) that I have a recent deficit of male friends. Growing up in a close family with mostly girls in it gives you a rather unique perspective as a guy and some of my best friends in the world have been girls (my best friend in the world is the girl I'm going to marry in a few years). Now the great guy friend shortage of 2009 isn't the crisis that was predicted however. I'm mostly realizing this now due to a few events over the last few weeks.

1. My sister Chelsea, who I swear I've been pressuring to blog lately, has been having a wonderful time in Seattle. She has told me I should make friends with the guys she finds cute so I can say "by the way, my sister's available." Although from talking to my sister lately this may not be something I need to worry about too much anymore. We have a long running joke between the two of us involving the name 'the smoothenator' and she has informed me that if I make her a connection she will call me that...

2. When we've talked about getting married recently I've realized that I have less people to ask to be my groomsmen than Alexandra has to be bridesmaids. It makes me realize now that everytime I make a new male friend I'm going to ask myself: Is he groomsmen material? "I've had a great time hanging out tonight, Johnny, but if we continue being friends I'm going to need more of a commitment. I need to know that you are going to be wedding material"

3. I spend a lot of time talking to Alexandra on-line, which is as it should be. On Saturday I spent most of the afternoon working on my statement of purpose for the University of Alberta and the rest of the afternoon helping her with her homework for her classes. Then she went out to dinner with a friend of hers and I had dinner and showered. Then we talked some more, we ended up spending about 11 hours talking that day between the homeworm and the conversation in the evening. Contrast that to yesterday. It was Canadian Thanksgiving yesterday, weird I know, and she went to a friend's house for Thanksgiving dinner. Her friend is unexperienced in the ways of turkey cooking and didn't realize how much time it would talk. The dinner that was supposed to start at 5:30 didn't get going until after 9:00. We still managed to talk in the night though.

So I guess I've been thinking about friendship a lot this weekend. I do have quite a few good friends that I can think of. But if you have a good friend make sure you take the time to appreciate everything they mean to you. This weekend has been a good chance for me to reflect on how lucky I am to have all of you in my life (again with the flattery. See you read my blog and leave it feeling good)