As frequent readers may know, I have a habit of taking weekend jaunts to far-off lands and returning just in time for important grad school meetings or romantic dates (not so much on the latter). This past July my friend Liza texted asking if I wanted to go St. Martin. Despite growing up in Virginia Beach, I don’t characterize myself as a beach person. However, I’ve harbored a growing affinity for equatorial sunsets after witnessing these miracles in Key West and Cuba.

“For how long?” I asked Liza.

We would leave on a Sunday and return on a Wednesday - two full days to lay out, sunbathe, explore the island, and grab some Instagrams.

Early in life we learn what it means to like someone. When we’re wee toddlers, we call it friendship. Later we learn we sometimes like people as more than friends. We call this love - or, more often, some watered down derivative.

For the first few months after we stumble into romantic bliss, or perhaps longer - think cafeteria lunches with your crush sitting at the end of the table - we may confuse friendship and love. We love to hang out with both friends and lovers. We want to share secrets with them. Both excite us - but in different ways. Soon, either through trial or heartache, we learn not to mistake these two concepts as synonyms. Friendship may be given without caution or preamble. Love, or similar affection, is far less awarded and comes packed with nuance and people’s ghosts, demons, and spite (my own especially).

While Cazey is a regular gym member, I am really good at working out for about a month and then giving up for roughly the same amount of time. Just as my DietBet was beginning, Cazey and I were given the opportunity to trial Gold’s Gym Richmond, which could not have been better timing to help me beat my physical fitness goals.

My friends know I ask inappropriate questions. I ask these questions in the most straightforward way possible and usually without ulterior motive. I am genuinely curious what people’s salaries are and how much is their rent and how old are their parents. I freely offer up my own answers to these very questions: I make $28,000/year, pay $550 in rent, and my mom would disinherit me if I shared her age.

Maybe it’s because I’m not trying to hoodwink anyone, but people generally me the truth. And I’m talking strangers disclose personal failures after one inquiry. I once helped my friend pick up a couch from a Craigslist seller. By the end of the interaction, I knew the seller’s hometown, graduation year, and why he and his girlfriend broke up (it was originally her couch).

However, asking these types of questions can sometimes get you into trouble or, at a minimum, leave the wrong impression.

Richmond has been put on the map lately for all of our breweries that have popped over the years. However, we’ve become a city (and state) with so much more to offer. That’s what Cider Week VA celebrates.

We had the pleasure of getting a little taste of what to expect from Cider Week Virginia 2018, which is coming up from November 9-18, 2018. Here’s what’s going down.

I recently had to plan a dinner for an important figurehead at my university. At the last minute some seats opened up so I asked my friend Liza to come. Liza and I have been close friends for several years.

My other friend, Peter, signed up weeks before and usually was at these sorts of functions anyway. Liza knew less of the people so she stuck by my side at the beginning of the dinner. When Peter arrived, I introduced them. Soon Liza spotted another acquaintance and slipped away to chat.

Since 2005, I have committed a few faux pas on Facebook. I don’t think my sins will ever approach the gracelessness of a middle-aged mother on Facebook (that’s a jab at my own), but I am not some beacon of social media poise. I have accidentally poked, unintentionally shared, and once even tagged myself in a stranger’s profile picture. That last blunder may be most embarrassing moment – until last week.

I have known “Phil” for several years. We share the same friendship circle, see each other monthly, and have the rapport of managing elevator talk if we even communicate at all. However, by proximity, history, and mutual friends, I daresay we are more than acquaintances.

For the last five years, I haven’t liked anyone. I used to not believe myself when I said that. I wondered if I was lying, had I forgotten someone, or was I repressing something. Then this past winter I met someone. I experienced a month of dates, snuggles, hand holding, and whispering secrets I don’t even share with best friends. The contrast in feelings proved to me I hadn’t been lying: I hadn’t liked anyone for half a decade.

And suddenly I did.

Due to a host of reasons, some inevitable and some that I will save for future blogpost rants, things ended. The fracture came abruptly. It took my breath away. We briefly rekindled what may be called a sequel or a spinoff, but like most sequels, it flopped.