Oddly enough, meeting the son of our family friends was a refreshing experience for me. It made me remember my own perceptions of where I thought I'd be at 25 and the preconceived notions that went along with it. I am apparently recognized universally as an adult, since he called me "the new man" and even addressed me as "sir" at one point (seems he's a bit reticent to call me by name), and peppered me with all sorts of questions like "how old are you?" and "are you married?" and "do you have a girlfriend?" and "do you have a job?" I called up my friend who lives here and when he asked who I was speaking to, I told him one of my best friends and when he asked me his name, I corrected him to say "her" -- so he immediately started singing out the "sittin' in a tree/K-I-S-S-I-N-G" song because he couldn't really conceive of a platonic friendly relationship between two people of the opposite sex. It kind of made me remember that when I was 8 years old, 25 seemed awfully old and I did expect to be fairly settled in life when I hit this age. Now that I'm older and know better, it's kind of amusing to remember how idealistic and strictly defined most kids' views of the world are of older people.

We had dinner last night with some of their family friends -- people I'd never met before -- but they're very nice and apparently rich beyond my imagination and very generous to the point where one of them insisted that I borrow her Mercedes C500 to tool around town today. I'm going to graciously decline, not because I don't want to drive it, but the prospect of being behind the wheel of an $80,000 car in a city that I'm not totally familiar with sounds like a recipe for bad things to happen. The sun is out today so I'll stick with my convertible, but I'll thank her very much and ask her to give me a raincheck on the Mercedes for that time when I finally get that date with Elizabeth Hurley.