Friends/ the point of religion

I meant to do this awhile ago but I didn't so here it is, and I'm going to hit on two completely separate issues the point of religion probably being deserving of its own post but I don't feel like it, its not like I have a huge amount of respect for religion anyway so putting it behind my friends seems fitting. First off I had a shitty weekend, a family member is ill, nothing life threatening but in the hospital and no one knows whats going on, no fun at all. But I don't feel like talking about that. In telling the people I work with, many of whom are nurses, about the family member about half of them finished with "I'll keep her in my prayers" or something like that. First I need to hold back from laughing as I've never really stated my atheistic views at work although those I work with closely could probably guess correctly. But there are a few devout folks around and it's easier not to stir up trouble in the workplace, I think on my last day I'm going to tell a few of them just to see the reaction, it'll be great, especially the fundie who thinks the world of me. I'm sure she thinks she's never met an atheist and would know them by their pure evil, she won't know what to think when the first open atheist is the guy who saves her ass by taking the mail, fixes her computer and moves anything heavy around the office, ha. Anyway, that simply little phrase "I'll keep her in my prayers" as empty as it seems to me, pretty well sums up religion. I can fully understand the comfort of thinking that some higher power is looking out for you and your loved ones, particularly in a case like this where someone is in the hospital and no one know what the problem is. Its a very helpless feeling, I just see looking to imaginary friends for support as counterproductive but who am I to judge the feelings of others?

And now to my original point about friends. I know I go on rants and depressed commentary on what I'll loosely call my love life, but I was reminded not to long ago of why I still have hope. To me a relationship is founded on friendship, love being just the ultimate form of friendship. Or it should be, I've seen many that aren't and they don't last or they're ugly relationships. So in my mind, and man I hope I'm right, if you can have good friends then you can find that friend thats more than a friend. This is why I'm able to hang on to hope for love, I have awesome friends. My best example of that, a friend of mine helped clean my apartment a couple weeks ago. When I say he helped I mean he practically shoved me out of the way and cleaned it himself. He's cleaned peoples houses and businesses for years because when you have no job training you end up doing random jobs like that. Plus once he got started his OCD took over and he had to finish. Most of my friends are broke, real broke, but almost anyone of them would do anything them possibly could to help me, because we're friends. There was a time a while back where I basically didn't have enough cash for food, I was working but had been dumb with my finances and it caught up with me, so I had like ten bucks for the week. So I took turns going to different friends houses for dinner and skipped lunch. When I said I'd pay them back they all said "don't worry about it, we all go through rough patches, you'd do the same for me," and its true I would and I have. So I consider myself a good friend, I assume they think that of me because thats how I think of them. And I didn't even get to the one who often DD's and has picked me up at like 7 am when my truck died, she's a hell of a friend too, and I'm happy to say she might have found more than a friend.

Oh and all this crap about friends and love is trying to bolster myself up because I might have a date with a very pretty lady this weekend. I'm just trying not to think about it too much, I have too much time to think about shit like this and it usually just hurts the situation because i come off as crazed stalker type when i reality its just that I've got nothing else goin on, oh and I'm a quixotic fool. So it goes.