As the tiger sang: That's what friends are for...

Today I was an hour and a half late meeting up with friends... Because the lovely people I'm living with happen to be epic, amazing board game geeks, and yesterday they acquired the latest expansion set for the game Sentinels of the Multiverse - which is a hilarious riff on classic comic book superheroes and villains, and a thoroughly enjoyable co-operative game too. So we started playing a game at 1pm, I needed to leave at 2pm at latest... I started to feel like maybe the game was taking a little too long shortly before we beat the scenario and wrapped it up, went off and checked the time... 3.20pm. Whoops! Fortunately my friends are lovely and understanding and most of them have played Sentinels before and know how absorbing it can be.

In any case, we made it out and about and tried a different restaurant to usual. Pulled pork all round, and much gossiping and silliness and relaxing in good company, so happy days.

I also managed to finally pull myself together and talk to one of my best friends in the world, who is insanely busy and lives in the US so has completely different time zones to me and we never get to meet up face to face. I miss her a lot, all the time, but I'm notoriously bad at keeping in touch and she, as I say, is ridiculously busy, so it's been a little while since last emails etc. I'm pleased I managed to get a little contact going again, and must try to email more often. My only resolution this year was to be better at keeping in touch (with a lot of people), and I've already let it slide too much.

I've been chatting to a couple of other friends on Skype as well, including my lone friend back in my hometown, who, similarly to my US friend, I don't talk to enough. Those two in particular always brighten my day. They somehow manage to settle some unstable part of me, even on the other side of a computer. I do get more anxious if I haven't talked to them in too long.

So generally today has been a day of my people, which is good and calming and helpful and fun. Tomorrow will be reading and writing again, and possibly even that weird cooking thing too...