NikkiB #17

[NikB]

Hi everyone - just catching up!

Donna and ST, thanks for checking in.

Donna
Glad you found some meetups! Sorry they're so far away, but might make for a nice weekend drive sometime. I'd definitely keep an eye on their calendars (especially the "reviews" after the events, which show how many people showed up and some of their comments on it). That way you can see which ones are really active and have a number of people show up. It's kind of a bummer to show up for one and no one else showed or only a couple of you, especially with such a long drive.

The "alerts" are basically for interests that don't have a group started yet (or, I'm finding, that you just didn't necessarily see the existing group). So for example if you sign up as being interested in "Night life" but there's no group for you to join yet, you'll get an alert every time anyone else signs up for "Night life." Pretty soon you'll be able to go look and see all 200 people who are interested in "Night Life" - and of course meetup keeps suggesting that you start a group of your own. That one group I just found was more by accident though, I never even got the "There's a new night life group" alert, so I'm not sure what happened there. But that's a rough idea.

Thanks for asking about my doggie. She is doing GREAT!! She acts younger than she has in YEARS. We have a friend who got a pup around the same time we found my dog, and found out he had to put her to sleep this week (just basically old age). That was a bit of a shock, they always played together as puppies/young dogs... but the other dog's a Boxer where mine's a mixed breed and small (approx 20 lb) dog, so her life expectancy should be longer. Made me realize even more that I need to appreciate these days where she wants to run and play. Glad your pup's doing so well! I'm a sucker who let my girlie sleep on the bed too... dog trainers said I shouldn't but... I don't regret it.

ST
Yeah it's a bummer that you have to pay to set up the meetup groups. The ones that do really well typically end up charging people a dollar or two per meetup, just to cover the cost of the group, and people are usually fine with it. But it's always a risk in case it doesn't take off.

Hey for both of you guys - if you want to email me with what cities you're in I'd be glad to see if I can find some meetups that you might like (I know roughly where you are but not exact cities/zip codes). I've done a lot of searching through that site so I may be able to find stuff you missed? (happens ALL the time, the site's kinda confusing).

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As for me... things are going ok. That cold really kicked me down over the weekend but thankfully is going away fast. Monday I felt pretty bad but at least made it to work. Tuesday I felt pretty good all day - H and I even went for a bike ride after work (yay!!). It was our first ride with my odometer/speedomter hooked up so that was cool. My average speed was about 7MPH, max speed on a downhill was 16MPH, and we went 7.3 miles. To a bike rider that's really pretty lame, but for someone like me I think that's pretty darn good, especially when I'm still a bit sick. I'll keep workin on it. My friend up the street just got a bike too, so hopefully we can find some nice flat areas to ride (I'd be kinda embarassed to ask her to help push me up a hill!).

I've been feeling really antsy all week - well, a couple weeks now - just wondering if another bomb's around the corner. H has been dropping all these weird hints about "good friends" and how sad it is to lose touch with people and how "you shouldn't have to stay away from people who were part of your life" and such. Me bringing up the OW/PW and trying to set boundaries pretty much backfired (every time I asked for less contact he stepped it up)... so, I have decided instead to focus on improving myself, and improving our R/M when I see chances. And hope that the rest will fade with time. If not I will bring it up again later, but now's not the time.

So, I'm still working on getting back to basics. Have another meetup dinner tonight so I am looking forward to that. This weekend we have a race again and H is all excited for me to go. Have Monday and Tuesday off and I'm planning to do some things just for me - not sure what yet, but I'm working on some ideas. One major thing will be sitting down and doing some serious goal setting finally. I need some direction in a lot of areas.

The 4th has turned out to be kind of strange. For the last 8 years we've had a tradition of going on a big rafting day-trip with friends. It's something I always thought H would keep going with no matter what. We LOVED doing it - I mean even when we separated he said "But you can still go rafting, always" - it's a big deal for us. This year he's been acting all funny about it, so yesterday I decided to suggest another idea instead. He got kind of excited and said "Really? You'd be ok if we don't go rafting?" - so that was kind of cool. Trying not to ASSume anything but it was the rafting trip last year where OW/PW sucked H back in. He had cut off contact for about a month and was feeling a lot better (his words), but when we started planning the trip she heard about it at work and came crying to him going "You mean I'm not invited anymore??" After a half hour of her crying he caved and bam, she was back in his life again. So, I can't help but wonder if that's somehow related. Doesn't matter, I know, but the thought crosses my mind. I'm glad I took the pressure off about the trip because he definitely seemed to be feeling some pressure about it.

So... that's about all the excitement here, I think. Keep on keepin on, and keep on hoping for no bombs, dropping shoes, or whatever else you wanna call it!

Hope all's well with everyone else. I wanted to get around and catch up but I talked too long on my own thread, so will have to catch up later. But I'm thinking of everyone and hope everyone is moving forward!!