For the past 56 hours, the snow in Denver has been coming down non-stop. It’s not the only thing relentlessly pounding the streets—I haven’t stopped moving since I got off work late Friday.

During the week, I find myself completely buried by my two jobs. I feel like a “real American,” working nonstop in order to pay the bills. As a result, I find it hard to be the social Craigslister I want to be. Fortunately, this weekend my calendar was jammed with new activities I have been meaning to try. The fact that I am playing catch-up on the blog only proves my status as Craigslist social butterfly.

I begin my recap with Friday night. James, the other sales associate with whom I often work, agreed to see the new Martin Scorsese film Shutter Island. The film gets a, See-in-theaters rating. It had a rollercoaster plot, excellent acting and a fun twist at the end.

But I don’t just go to the movies to see movies anymore—I want a friend and I have found breaking the barrier between co-worker and amigo to be sometimes difficult.

James is a friend. Before the movie started, we hung out in the store and cracked jokes until both of our stomachs and throats hurt from laughter. It was a very slow Friday night in the mall, but the highlights came with two very poignant customer interactions.

While fluffing the sacs, I discovered a beaten up switchblade pocketknife. The hunk of junk was being held together by supermarket twisty ties, which I showed to James. We mocked possible future customer interactions, pretending to freak annoying customer by using the knife as a pointer. “If you take a look right here,” gesturing to our pricing guided with the blade, “you will see the Supersac goes for $349 without a cover.” Writing this, I recognize it is unlikely that anyone else finds humor in what James and I apparently thought was juicy SNL material—but trust me, it was funny.

The customer came back, and just as James guessed, the knife belonged to two hardcore metalheads.  “Did you find a pocketknife,” said the kid wearing scathingly red pants reeking of cigarettes.

The plot thickened when, just before closing, two strange fellows moseyed into the store. One of the customers wanted to know about pricing covers and, though neither bought anything, they both fit the bill for our typical Friday night shoppers—either slightly off and heavily tattooed dudes or tween queens. Before leaving the store, one of the fellows asked if we were hiring. James said we are accepting resumes and so we kindly printed the kid’s resume.

We shouldn’t have gotten so much laughter out of the poorly written cover letter, but “managed salad bar” was a qualification we had difficulty ignoring.

The point I am hoping to express about Friday night is simple, I have a friend. Throughout this experiment I have been attempting to prove that anyone can live anywhere and do anything if they live with Craigslist as the entry point for all of life’s activities. I believe I have successfully proven this is possible financially, but socially I have found it to be much more difficult.

Success throughout this experiment means not only leaving a city with zero debt, it also means feeling sad about leaving friends behind. I felt that in a small sense with regard to the folks on El Rancho Madera and some of the people I worked with at CALPIRG, but I am actually developing a circle of friends in Denver, and this weekend has proven that.

Yesterday, I spent the day snowshoeing in Rocky Mountain National Park. A considerable factor that weighed on of my decision to choose Denver as my second city was the outdoorsy people and the numerous opportunities that make this town Mecca for such a person. I have been looking for a partner to enjoy the outdoors, and a quick scan of Craigslist led me to a guy who had published his “Denver Bucketlist.” On his list of must-dos was snowshoeing. I said I would love to join him for a trip and we talked details via email.

After trading email a few times, Christopher invited me to join another online meeting group that would be hitting the trails. I hadn’t really set rules on going on joining another group’s outings, but because a fellow Craigslister invited me, I figured all was kosher.

Meetin.org is another amazing site that, if I weren’t restricted by my Craigslist rule, I would definitely look into further. Its focus is simple, get people who play alike to play together. That is, it seems, the goal of all social network sites are about.

STORY ON MEETIN.ORG

Something else I have noticed and have kept track of is the time it takes for people in Denver to talk about their jobs. Before mentioning our professions—I kept mine vague—we spoke about skiing, biking, cars and family. It took our car 28 minutes to bring up our professions. When driving home, I mentioned my observation and the girl driving the car said something that really stuck out, “I don’t care about what you do, I care about how you play.” It is a completely different perspective, and something very new to me.

It didn’t matter that ages ranged from mine to mid-fifties, we had fun playing together.

On the East Coast, we want to align ourselves with people who think the same as we do and value their professions over everything else. It is admirable and very much apart of my mindset, but it is restricting. I have been forced, as a result of keeping the blog off limits to strangers, to adopt this mindset.

In a recent interview, someone asked me how it feels to hide the experiment from the people I meet. The truth is, it really doesn’t matter what I tell people. They might be intrigued by it, and they might not, but ultimately, even the people who know about the experiment, shift the conversation elsewhere and a more natural discussion occurs.

Today I played racquetball with a guy who simply needed a partner. He didn’t care what I did for money because here it doesn’t seem to matter. We played four games, and by the end I was decent competition. Only playing once before in my life, I managed to at least appear like I knew what I was doing.

It worked because we penciled in this Friday for round two.

Oh, and my socialite lifestyle continues—tonight I am watching the US vs. Canada matchup with my friend from that Avalanche game. We are hitting a bar and rooting for the homeland, though I would just be content watching Sidney Crosby lose.

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