The Randomness of Me: Thanksgiving in two parts-part 1

Everyone knows that Thanksgiving Eve is one of the biggest going out nights of the year. I, however, refuse to go out in my hometown. I grew up in a very small town and I have absolutely no interest in going out to bars the night before Thanksgiving. There are only one or two bars I would actually be willing to go to anyways but Thanksgiving Eve they are always packed and the cops always end up shutting them down because no one is enforcing the maximum occupancy thing. So for the past few years we always just get together at one of my friends house. She is the only one who still lives in town and her and her husband have two kids so it's just easier to go over there and drink once the kids are asleep. And we all live in different cities, so we never really get all together very often. It's usually just Thanksgiving Eve and Christmas night.

Here's us in a nutshell: It's me and Awesomely Inappropriate (who I am been referring to as JG in other posts). We met on the bus ride home from kindergarten (awwwwwww). Then there's Jer. We became friends when we were like 12. Mike (who wanted some crazy alias for the blog like Herb Edderstink or something like that- IDK we were drunk) and Jer grew up down the road from each other and have been friends forever. Mike and I both lived in Rochester for four-ish years before I moved to Atl and then he moved to NYC. Then there is Awesomely Inappropriate's husband, Joe. But he is seriously like one of us. Sean and I were in the same kindergarten class and we went to the same college too-we literally went to school together for 17 (!!) years. So grad school is the first time I have ever (EVER!) been in an educational setting without him. That's crazy.

So basically what happens *every time* we go over to AI's is that we end up in their shed. Some people who are not me or AI or Joe or Mike still smoke and they have to do it outside so we all go out and hangout. And every time we go to the shed we write with sharpie on the walls. And every year we try to decipher what the hell we were talking about last year because it is usually an inside joke from whatever night and we have forgotten about it. For example, one year we wrote PBHS '99 x 2. Now PBHS is our high school (except Joe) and four of us graduated in 99. We have two theories about this: the x2 is for the 2 people that didn't graduate with us (and why it's not +2 IDK) or we chose to ignore those 2 people and it is from two different years. We don't really know what that means. But it *is* in my handwriting. If you follow me on Twitter (@RandomlyBossy) you might have noticed a lot of random Tweets from Wed night. Yeah, that was us.

And since this is Thanksgiving I should talk about what I'm grateful for. I am so thankful for my friends. I have known them for years and every time we get together it's so much fun. Sometimes I don't see them or talk to them for months at a time, but when we get together it's like nothing has changed. My favorite quote about friendship is: friends are the family you choose for yourself and it couldn't be truer for us. I know not everyone can say that they are still friends with people from grade school. I honestly feel blessed that I have people in my life (non-family members) who have known me for so long and that 25 years later they are still such a big part of my life. So thanks guys, I love you

And now here is a journey through our friendship in picture form. They are very out of order but I didn't feel like switching them- oops. And we are drinking in almost all of them-oops again.