I love it when my friends cash in on offers I don't expect them to take me up on.

I see how that could be a bad thing, but let me give two recent examples:

Sometime early in the summer, I thought about how my friend SW was taking a year off and living at home in West Virginia. 'West Virginia's not super-far from DC,' I thought. 'I should let her know that I'd be cool with her coming to visit for a weekend sometime if she needs a break from home.' I wrote on her Facebook wall to this effect, but I'm not gonna lie--I was surprised when she actually emailed me months later saying she wanted to visit. We had SUCH a great time when she was here and I was so glad I'd decided to extend that offer, even if I wasn't particularly expecting her to take me up on it.

During Sandy, I kept checking in on my friend who lives in Arlington because I knew way more people on NoVa had lost power than in DC. When he still didn't have power by this afternoon, I told him that if he and our other friend and his housemate wanted to come hang out at my place when metro re-opened, they were welcome to. He didn't text me back then, so I was like, eh, well, I guess that's just something people think people say, but when he called me later to say they were coming, I was so excited! We hung out catching up for a few hours, I made dinner, and now, like the 20-somethings we are, we're all sitting in my living room on our computers while they make use of my good electricity. 

It makes me feel good when my friends know that my offers aren't empty. I like being able to be here for people, as a mini-vacation, a source of company and electricity, an editor, a pair of listening ears, whatever...