This reminds me of....

It's funny how certain things in your life remind you of the people you surround yourself with. Take for instance music...when I hear the song "These Days" by Rascal Flatts I'm automatically reminded of Josh. It brings back memories of our first date 3 years ago and how far we've come in that amount of time. Fall Out Boy's "Sugar, We're Going Down" reminds me of M and I in our old office and a conversation we had about a crazy night of celebrating and partying after training down in the Southern Missouri facility back in December. "Build Me Up Buttercup" reminds me of my mom and her singing me that song when I was just a tot. And I'm reminded of my bro every time I hear "Baby Got Back" by Sir Mix-A-Lot. My bro sings an awesome version of that song that I was quite shocked to hear at first because he doesn't seem like the type who could rap. In any case, I have a lot of good memories from songs and music in general.
Last night something else brought back some very good memories for me as well. It all started when M and I decided yesterday that we were going to go out after work. We haven't really had a chance to go dance or kick back in quite awhile (ok probably only a few weeks) and after the week that we had we felt we deserved a break. So I got online at lunch and tried to find out what bands were playing where and see what we could iron out. Well come to find out two of our favorite local bands were playing at the Bottleneck Blues Bar last night and we definitely wanted to go. But the bar didn't open until about an hour after we got off of work so we needed a plan for grabbing something quick to eat and possibly getting a drink there before dancing the night away. That's when we thought about SidePockets. SidePockets is a bar and billiards hall and we'd been there one time before with J and we only found it by accident after the other bar that we were at only accepted cash and all we had at the time were debit and credit cards. Anyway, our little stop in to SidePockets last night reminded me of that night and all the fun we had before J left for Laredo and then of course it brought back the memories of all of the crazy stuff that the 3 of us did for the 2 months he was in St. Louis by himself. The night at SidePockets, M lost her cell phone and J and I called it like 20 times to see if we could hear it ringing anywhere in the bar. Come to find out it was in J's truck and when he and I went out there looking for it all you could hear was what sounded to be a chicken clucking. It wasn't, but her ringtone sounded really funny and all I remember J saying in his Arkansas accent, "where the hell is that chicken noise coming from...who has chickens around here?" It was hilarious. Of course the thought of this brought back all of the memories of the fun times I've had with my coworkers at this company. Who would have thought a year ago that I would have met some of the greatest people in the world that I now call some of my closest friends.
What is also kind of funny when it comes down to it is that M completely agreed with me. We were talking yesterday about how it doesn't seem like either of us has changed that much but that we both think that some of our other friends are no longer on the same page as we are. Probably the biggest thing I have seen myself is the fact that I hardly keep in contact with the friends I had in high school and college. I always thought that I would have a small group of people from both high school and college that I would email or call and see on a semi-regular basis. While I know that lives move forward and priorities change it seems as the contact has fallen by the wayside. I know a lot of that is probably my fault since I don't get online every night like I used to and I'm not very good at calling people back. And it also boils down to the fact that I have been very dedicated to getting my feet off of the ground with my job and trying to adjust to living on my own. But like my new motto suggests, "live and learn" -- either I will go back to contact all of the people I thought I would remain friends with over the years or I will just move forward. I haven't decided which is best yet especially since I'm pretty much satisfied with my life at the moment, except for one small thing that hopefully will work itself out in enough time, so we'll just have to wait and see what happens.

Hope everyone has a great weekend and enjoy the 3 day weekend if you're lucky enough to get Monday off!