Hanging out

Continuing with the series of "personal life" kind of posts, when I switched from Spanish to English I had to learn a totally new phrase in my book: hanging out. See, when you translate it into Spanish, it really doesn't work well. What are you hanging? And why do you have to hang it out? Can't you hang indoors? (hehehe - sorry, being silly here for a moment).

My friends often call me up or email me and say 'let's hang out' ... and even to this day, I giggle a little. It's not a commitment to do anything fancy (like dinner and a movie) but it does mean that people want to spend time in your company.

I love hanging out with my friends, don't get me wrong. But I find the phrase funny. Perhaps a more appropriate phrase would be "spending time with my friends". But what I find is that "hanging out" does provide enough wiggle room to actually do nothing. That is, if I call up any of my friends and say "let's hang out and watch a movie or just veg on the couch" [note veg=synonymous of vegetating] I am basically saying "let's just spend some time together and we can make plans later on what we are going to do".

I know, I admit it... this was a totally random thought. *blushes*