DEAR ABBY: A friend and I belong to a book club and have regularly gone to lunch and a movie afterward. We have occasionally mentioned a movie we liked while chatting prior to the start of the book club meeting. This has prompted other people to invite themselves along or ask if they can go with us.
If we wanted to spend more time with these women, we would have invited them. The two of us feel that this afternoon outing is our time together and we would prefer it being just us. We changed the day, which was a bit inconvenient but preferable to the alternative. How do we handle it when future inquiries come up without hurting feelings or sounding snobbish? -- OUR TIME TOGETHER
DEAR OUR TIME: Your mistake was in talking about your movie dates in front of the other women. In the future, handle it by refraining from doing that, and your problem will go away.