In the zone?

Well, today I spent the morning thinking and the afternoon hanging with friends. Had a bunch of friends just leave a little while ago, in fact. I also went to the gun range with one of them earlier. I'm a fairly good shot, but I seem to group my shots low and to the left, and I haven't figured out what I'm doing wrong yet. I bet I'm tensing up or something right before I fire, but I don't notice what I do as I do it. Might need some help to fix it.

I had an interesting night yesterday evening. Talked to the cute bartender as my evening went on and the other customers at the bar slowly left. Two of her friends came in and eyed me a little suspiciously. The cute bartender said to one, "This is Erik. Don't worry about him, he's like a girlfriend to me." I had two distinct reactions here.

1. Ok, she's trying to make her friends comfortable around me so we can all talk.

2. Oh shit, I'm in the friend zone where there is almost no return from. Only one huge sucking sound.

I laughed it off and talked to them all. It's never totally a bad thing being the only guy around 3 girls. After a while of bantering, they left and the bartender and I continued talking again. I asked a while later about the girlfriend comment, and she said "I talk to you about stuff that I don't talk to any other guy with. Take it as a compliment."

Being horribly bad at judging other people, I thanked her and left it at that. I'm still quite curious where that puts me, tho. I'm hoping to get her out where we can bullshit and have some drinks together eventually but with her working, in college, and going home to visit her family most weekends, time is at a premium. So until then, what do you think?