The Seattle Freeze....being a Seattle native I think I've preferred to semi-deny its existence, but lately everyone seems to be mentioning it and every time I get embarrassed. In case you don't know, the Seattle Freeze is the idea that Seattlites are nice and polite, but have no real interest in actually being a friend or getting to know you. Umm, yeah, I guess I do notice this happen and have been bummed after meeting cool people and they have no interest in keeping the fun times going. Then this morning on the radio they mentioned a statistic that Seattle is one of the top two cities for number of single people. Gee, now I wonder why! So, I made a scientific discovery: Not being Friendly = Less Friends and Less Lovers. Fortunately, it's 100% obvious how to reverse that! Being Friendly - More Friends and More Lovers. [Maybe that doesn't appeal to you, that's ok, maybe you should move to the moon]. Friendliness, genuine friendliness, as in an interest in the other person's wellbeing and how their day is going, will only bring you more happiness. So easy!

Here is a great example of all this social mishmash: After a fun-run, some other people had shake weights, so my friend and I joined in the fun over a couple beers and there was a lot of laughter and shaking and it was really just a pretty fun time. We tried to exchange info with the shake weight owners, and they responded with a "who are you weirdos who want to hang out later" attitude. We never saw them again.

So shake on, Seattle. And other unfriendly people around the world!