Make new friends, but keep the old....

I need to make some new friends.

I already have many friends. According to Facebook I have 258. However, only a very small handful of these friends live close to me and none of them live close enough to me so that we can just run out for icecream or take a walk together. I have found that it is much harder to make friends in my old age. What I need to do is follow this step by step process that I am in the middle of inventing.

step 1: Find people. This sounds easy, there are people everywhere. This is the easy step but still takes some effort. I have to look around outside my house and keep my eyes open at the grocery store. If I need to step it up a notch, I think I will join some sort of group or start volunteering.

step 2: Talk to people. This one is much harder. I can talk the ear off of someone I know, but with strangers it is SO much harder. Today I forced Charles to talk to the little boy that lives down the street. The little boy was playing outside with his mom and I figured I had to at least try. Luckily, this woman is better at talking than I am. She is definitely in the running. In kindergarten it was easy. You would find a potential friend, sit next to them and ask,"do you want to be my friend?" In college it was easy, you just went up to someone and said, "hey, are you in such and such class?" It got a little harder when I first moved into my own place. Luckily, I had neighbors that were very good at making new friends. All they had to do was put a note on my door, "Do you want to be friends with us? yes? no? maybe?" It is even easy to make friends at work. But none of these people live nearby. It is way to hard to go on a bike ride with them. I doubt they would want to drive all the way to my house just to walk to the 7-11 and get a Slurpee.

step 3: Figure out which people like you. You want to pick people that like you from the get go. If you go in trying to make them like you, that is just going to be too much work and not much fun. AND, lets not forget that the whole point of having friends is to have fun.

step 4: Figure out which people you like. This sounds easy but is hard. Sometimes someone seems like they will be the perfect friend, but then they don't think you are funny or maybe they always brag about being in mensa.

step 5: Hang out with the person. Live it up. Have adventures. Talk and laugh. This is how you seal the deal on being friends.

Do you have any other steps I should add? Can you think of any hints and tips?