making friends/bbq

now it is summer and it seems the only way I will be able to make any friends is if I buy a grill for my backyard. I have been meeting nice/cool/hot people that I would really like to hang out with but I'm still in the Madison mentality. I feel like I can meet someone at one party and the town is so small I'll see them around at least 5 times in the next three days. After 5 encounters I can hint at the idea of us getting a drink together at sometime vauge point in the future. After 10 encounters I'll ask for their number, by this time I've known them for two weeks and if we don't end up in the same bar one night I might feel comfortable calling them because I know them and all their roomates and professors and kids in their creative writing workshop, I've read their poems in local zines and seen their movies at wiskino...I know them to the core. Then maybe we can go for a non-comittal walk or something.

In Chicago I don't think that is the way things are done. I think I will have to come up with some none threatening event like a bbq and invite potential friends. It sounds like so much work and scary. And what if they never invite me to anything? I'll be too timid to ever see them again.

One final point. In the mid-west bbq means anything on the grill (even hamburgers). In the south BBQ means sauce, tomato tangy stuff, hickory smoked. There is no such thing as a Hotdog BBQ, people would look at you funny because you put ketchup on a dog, not the sauce.