If you think I'm paranoid for using fake names for all the grocery store cards I sign up for, I'm not.

I got my ass kicked in aikido tonight, by this nice guy named Tim who a month ago was saying how out of shape he was because he hadn't trained in six years, and now plays at least as hard as anyone else in the dojo, which is plenty hard to leave me heaving. And I went to the beginner's class, partly to train more, partly to train more in the basics, and partly to train more with the cute redhead who won't look me in the eyes and doesn't smile much. She's done some kind of striking art in the past, so I'm pretty sure if she couldn't thoroughly beat the crap out of me, I'd get hurt in the process of stopping her. When she finishes a throw she drops into this compressed boxing-style stance with her fists up, which I find quite charming.

What, am I the only guy who only likes fierce women? Come on, tell me you wouldn't be proud to be out on the town with a girl, have somebody come up and threaten y'all with a knife, and you could get to be chivalrous and offer her the opportunity to make him go away. No? Must be a martial-artist thing.

I had a great political moment at work today: I nearly made off with a sandwich designated for a small meeting with the company president. Actually I did make off with it, because it was in a place where there have been leftovers in the past; but I got back to my desk, realized the sandwiches had been carefully laid out with chips and napkins, noticed it was only just noon, noticed the president had two people with him and there were four sandwiches...and got back just as they were remarking that one was missing. Our president is somewhat mercurial, flipping out over minor things like stacks of boxes in a corner, so I don't know how annoyed he was; but I'm not in a place to be intimidated these days, and I decided not to care, which was delightfully liberating. (I don't feel I have a future there anyway, I'd never use him as a reference, and I'm pretty certain they couldn't reasonably fire me for taking a sandwich which I then returned unharmed and still wrapped.)

I sort of feel for my boss...today he encountered some of my complex code which doesn't fit our established code pattern, either because I was apathetic or in a hurry or both. It occurred to me that I've written a lot of very complex, non-obvious code in this job, and some of it is the above apathy or rush, but a lot of it just needs to be complicated and I solved the problem however I wanted and may or may not have bothered putting a comment to explain it. It's scary to think of leaving a job, completely bailing on a familiar routine to go someplace new where you have to start all over, and leaving those people who are surely counting on you (okay, maybe not) in the lurch. Of course that doesn't change the reasons for leaving.

I had my conversation last night, and it went well and we worked stuff out; and we'll talk some more and work some more stuff out. Which could seem like a lot of work for a relationship that's not romantic, but stuff is stuff, yannow? Every relationship needs to be cared for and worked on, whatever its nature. Any relationship worth having is worth a little work.