point of view

I have a very odd problem. It's not too often that my brain gets "stuck" and is incapable of thinking in a particular way. I enjoy word and number and logic puzzles, and I like to think that doing these helps keep my neurons flexible so they can get me through whatever problems happen to come up in life. (I think that this concept originated from my days in college, when I would convince myself that playing Minesweeper counted for a little bit of "study" time because it was such great mental exercise...)

But my brain is now officially stuck.

The conundrum: I cannot figure out how to write in a combination of first and third person.

This might require a bit of explaining, because how can anyone write from two different perspectives simultaneously? That is illogical! (And is probably why my brain is giving out on me). But here's what I want to do, and this takes me back to my age-old aspiration of being a novelist - write a story that has parts told by a woman in first person ("I went to the store, I bought groceries...") but also seamlessly shifts to third person where the original story-teller is STILL telling the story, but it's not longer her story ("At the store I saw my friends Bill and Craig. They went home and played video games. While they were playing they had an interesting conversation and it went like this...").

I have been pondering a) how to do this and b) why this seems to complicated, and I realized that part of the reason it's so tough for me to conceptualize is that I have been writing nearly exclusively in first person for the past five or more years. Most of the writing I do for school and work is, essentially, in first person ("We proposed to do this..." "I conducted the following experiment..."). Even the stuff I write that's not so technical is in first person - my journal is all "Today I did this; I feel like this; I wonder about this." I very rarely write anything from any other perspective! Perhaps I should practice!!

Well, anyhow, my lovely readers, have you any advice? Do you know any good books that are written in the style I'm striving for? I specifically need to figure out how I can switch from first- to third-person without having a segue in between (not like the example above; e.g. I need to say "I went to the store. The end. Next chapter: Bill and Craig were sitting playing Grand Theft Auto when all of a sudden..." without it sounding all weird).

Ah...this is what I love about writing...it's not all that simple!

By the way...is it possible to write in second person?