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I had a conversation with my husband the other day that made me realize that he and I are at opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to being friendly with people we encounter in our day-to-day life.

Husband: Do you remember Brian at the pharmacy?

Me: ?

Husband: He was there when we first started going there. He went back to school [blah, blah, blah – I'll admit I wasn't paying much attention] and now he's back working on Sundays.

Me: I really don't remember him, but I might if I saw him. I'm afraid I don't pay that much attention when I'm involved in a purchase.

Husband: You're really not very friendly, are you?

Me: No. No, I'm not.

And it's true. My husband knows the names of everyone he regularly encounters at the restaurants and stores he frequents. He knows what's going on in their lives in more detail than I probably know what's up with my actual friends.

If he came home one day and said, for example, "John from the bagel shop needs to stay with us for a while because he's homeless and couch surfing and has nowhere else to go," I would not be surprised for an instant. And then I would have to ask how tall John is because only one of our two couches is long enough for most people to sleep on—and I wouldn't know which bagel shop guy he was talking about until I saw his face.

Is that a guy thing? An extrovert thing? I don't know.

I don't tend to ask people a lot of questions. I was raised with a strong, "Mind your own business" ethic and I always figure that people will tell me if there's something going on that they want me to know about. That's friends, though. It really never occurs to me to ask personal questions of acquaintances and casual contacts.

It's certainly not that I don't care. Reading blogs and following people on Facebook and Twitter exposes me to exactly the kinds of things that the writers want to share with others. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by all of the personal happenings—good and bad—that I read about online.

So I don't know how to feel about the fact that I was neither aware of our pharmacist's absence and return, nor does it make any difference to me. I'm not at all rude in public, just businesslike.

Which side of the spectrum do you fall under? Super friendly, all business or somewhere in between?

Photo credit: ~*Ally*~

Oh, hi. Yep, still alive. The last week or so has mainly been me working a lot between coughs. I am considerably better, but I may still end up consulting an allergist because it seems likely that allergies are playing a part in my recurring cycle of coughing. Not to say that I haven't had colds, too. That became abundantly clear when I started infecting key co-workers who now hate me.

I learned this week that I am rather frighteningly tuned out on the highway. I was commuting between a client meeting and my office (about a 30 minute drive) when I got a call from my brother-in-law. He said he'd been beside me on the highway for miles trying to get my attention: honking and swerving and generally scaring every driver on the road except me. I had absolutely no inkling of any of it. Frankly, I'm not even sure what to do with that information.

I've had two book club meetings in the past week, so there was a reasonable amount of reading taking place in my spare time: "Emma" by Jane Austen and "How To Live Safely In A Science Fictional Universe" by Charles Yu. The former was kind of a slog and I didn't finish it until almost a week after we met to talk about it. The latter I read in one sitting, which I would recommend because it's the kind of book that has a flow that you don't want to interrupt (and it's short, so that works out well).

On Tuesday, I got the first season of "Game of Thrones" on DVD. I couldn't get to them until Wednesday night and then I discovered that my Blu-Ray player's firmware needed to be updated before they'd play. Aargh! I am proud to say I actually figured out how to do the updates myself, so we've been watching one episode a night since then. It's just as wonderful as I'd imagined.

I got a chance to visit the auto show with Social Media Club of Kansas City on Wednesday night. That was cool. We were treated to a reception by Ford, which has been a social media pioneer among auto makers since the early days. If anyone would like to get me this car, I'm accepting donations.

Otherwise, it's been a pretty quiet week. I've had a lot of free evenings, including last night. That gave me the opportunity to do a little Trader Joe's shopping and make dinner at home, for once.

Tonight's another open night and I hope to repeat the dinner at home and TV watching experience of last night. Tomorrow I'm forgoing some of the things I've been invited to do so I can get my tax paperwork together for my accountant before it's time for my volunteer shift with the adoptable cats at Petco.

So what have you been up to?

Last night I actually had a free evening, for once. I've been maintaining a fairly hefty post-work schedule even while being sick, so it was wonderful to have the opportunity to laze around the house and go to bed early.

I ended up sleeping close to ten hours, which I really needed. Right before I woke up, I was having a detailed dream that involved a winter festival and I thought to myself—in the dream—"I should be taking photos of the colored snow sculptures."

That may be the definition of an obsessive blogger: the desire to get photo documentation of stuff that's only happening inside your own head.

Photo credit: Agustin Rafael Reyes

I was humming along nicely with the photo challenge but then I contracted the plague and lost my will to go on.

My husband caught a bad cold from some of his studio clients and of course I got it from him. I was this close to being over the bronchitis I'd had since Christmas and then I was plunged back into the whole mess again. Yesterday I went to the doctor and was re-prescribed all the heavy-duty meds I'd already taken this year. Ugh.

The fun, new symptom of this particular cold is that I can't taste or smell anything. Ordinarily I have an unusually sensitive nose, so it's just plain weird to have that shut off completely (although it made scooping the cat boxes a lot less unpleasant). Also, I have to say that not being able to taste anything really sucks a lot of joy out of life. Right now I'm sipping a cup of jasmine tea that may as well be a cup of plain hot water.

Today the coughing has subsided considerably, which is good because I was tired of getting the Typhoid Mary stinkeye from everyone I encountered.

If this latest round of antibiotics and steroids don't do the trick, it'll be time to make the rounds of specialists. The whole allergy/asthma thing I deal with all the time has already made it so I can't sing in a band anymore. It may be time to look for a more targeted allergy treatment and make sure my sinuses don't have something going on that we don't know about.

So how's your week so far?