I have a different take on the subjects. Having a list of topics/routines ready to go for when you do blank or the convo gets stale for some reason is amazing. Even if you do not use them, the confidence you derive from knowing that there is a backup plan will work wonders.
Plus you are talking about people you've known for a very long time, so it sounds like you should focus on conversational skills as opposed to enlarging your bag of routines. So I'm gonna talk to you about a few of my personal favorite convo techniques.
The first resource I recommend is Juggler's book - 'how to be a pickup artist'. He talks about speaking in open-ended statements as opposed to questions. It's better explained there.
Second, when you're having a conversation with a friend, you may notice that you 'go off on a tangent' quite a lot - go back to shared experiences, memories, whatever. This takes skill with a stranger and will not come naturally - but combine the ability to go off on tangents with some open-ended statements and you're on your way to speed rapport.
It's really not as difficult as it sounds. Let's say this is the beginning of a day 2
[Ace] Man, you would not believe the day I had yesterday[open-ended: she can ask me later]. What's with the smile? I bet you're smiling about the trouble you were causing last night! [open-ended]
[HB] Nah, I wasn't feeling well so I stayed in and watched Bridget Jones while drinking hot chocolate.
This is an enthusiastic response, but in anything she throws your way, there will be a potential tangent you can go off on - a new thread, if you will (so you can multithread - another good rapport technique).
In this it was: 'staying in', 'Bridget Jones', 'hot chocolate'.
I can take the 'staying in' response and tell the story of how I stayed in to look after my sick female SPAM instead of going to a friend's birthday party and how I ended up taking her to the hospital. (true story, by the way - yours might be different, but make sure you give her a lot of possible topics for multithreading - she'll catch on eventually)
I can take the 'Bridget Jones' part and talk about how much I hate that film, although it has Hugh Grant in it, which is weird because I usually like his films... etc. Again, give her something she can pick up and easily continue the conversation with.
I can take the 'hot chocolate' response and talk about my favorite place in the universe - a caffe which is actually called 'chocolate drinkery' in my hometown in Poland, where they make the weirdest flavored hot chocolates on the planet. I never expected chilli hot chocolate to make me feel more alive than ever before!
Anything she gives you is an opportunity to open another thread. I'm not saying you should change subjects after every sentence, but bear that in mind. This is a way to open a bunch of threads in the beginning, so that afterwards you can just relax and jump between them.
Also, learn to talk from the 'I perspective' (again: Juggler) and explore emotional rather than factual aspects of the story. Talk about how stuff felt. Don't say 'it was 90 degrees in the shade', say 'it felt like the friggin Sahara'.
That's about it for now, if you want to ask me anything more, shoot me a PM.
As an afterthought: don't lose sight of having a bag of kickass routines/stories ready to go. They are important and useful during the initial meetings, but after a while, you'll be forced to improvise. So work on both
