800 in line, 790 disappointed*

The PlayStation 3 will be released upon us poor Americans in about 30 minutes. A couple of folks got in line in San Francisco to get their system. $500 or $600 (no game included) later for the first few and the rest will go home without the prize.

Is it worth it? The system I’m getting is $250, with a game, and they made enough of the things that I don’t have to wait in line for more than an hour (and that hour will be mostly meet and greet/nerd observation time and buying an extra controller). Is that worth it?

The Work Boundary

I’ve long felt that I have friends at work and friends outside of work.  The line between the two rarely, if ever, blurred or ceased altogether.  When I was at work, I could speak with my work friends.  If I saw them while I was with my outside-of-work friends, though, there would be an uncomfortable feeling for me.

Reason being that these work friends represented work to me.  Not in the fact that it took more work than usual to sustain a friendship, but because I worked with them.  My first thoughts around them were about work related issues, not the stuff of friends.  I have my friends outside of work for that.

Something has changed, though.  When I got home yesterday and thought of the stories I was to tell friends of my weekend, the boundary between my friends at work and my friends outside of work wasn’t there.  They were all simply my friends, to one natural extent or another.  What’s more is that I don’t think of work when I think of my friends that I work with.

Seems like a good thing.

An Invitation

I’ve been thinking about invitations lately. Mostly from a desire to receive them more often, despite regular invitations from my close friends; invitations to movies, to lunch, to talk, to walk, or to simply share space for a time. A perceived lack of invitation, while a reality in some cases, misunderstanding in others, and merely irrational in the rest, lead me to think a bit more about what being invited is all about.

Saying How Are You

Last week, I talked a bit about saying hello and how it can relate to being welcoming to someone. Since then, I have found myself thinking about what is usually said next, “How are you?”

Saying Hello

I’ve been giving the ideas of hospitality some thought lately. Nothing in particular, but as I come across something remotely concrete, I plan on sharing in some fashion.

I have heard many talks and sermons about giving thought to “what it looks like” to welcome people into our (whoever the “our” is) midst. Be it church, work, or society at large, I’ve heard the language in all places in one form or another. Each walk of life treats it differently, and they all fail and succeed differently, but they all seek in some fashion to achieve something of a simiilar goal despite a wide range of reasons.

Most recently, I’ve been struck by the value of simply saying hello.