When I looked into that TIC in Palo Alto, one of the organizers was this beautiful, intelligent woman ("hot" would be pretty accurate) that I ended up talking to for a while. Though I decided not to go into the TIC, I did decide yesterday to ask her to lunch, figuring at worst she could flip out and call the police--not really a problem, since it's not illegal to ask someone out to lunch (yet--I'm sure there's a Republican somewhere working on it). But far better than the worst case scenario, she said yes. It occurs to me now that I just said she was nice to talk to, I didn't mention she's a bombshell, and it's not clear to me she knows how hot she is; but we'll burn that bridge when we come to it, as we say in Engineering.

I slowly re-integrated to work today. Rather, I tried to go slowly, and work sort of picked me up and threw me back into the flood of five billion things happening at once. I half-volunteered to do a little bit of C++ work, which frightens me inasfar as I've spent the past six years specifically not coding in C or C++, and C++ is a horrid pile of spiky rusting tetanus-laden complexity, but it'll keep me on my toes.

I am deeply impressed that my emotional life is this complicated and varied when I'm not dating anyone. It's as if my life is complex because I'm complex. Who knew?

*cough*

I'm missing Christmas with my family this year, for the second time ever (first time was 2001, when I was in Mexico, in the idyllic bay of Tenacatita, getting kicked off the boat by the asshole skipper). There are a few things happening at once: I'd like a quiet holiday at home instead of the hassle of traveling; my aikido teacher is getting married on December 28th, so I'd have to come back on the 26th anyway; and the main reason I've always gone out at Christmas was that it's always been the traditional and best time to get everyone together, and that's not really the case any more--it's likely to be at least as easy to give everyone advance warning and show up during one of my more preferred New England seasons. (Winter and summer are the ones I don't miss, though I do miss the summer thunderstorms I got to see again a few weeks ago.) It'd be nice if everyone could visit me; if a time ever comes when I can have a house big enough to hold them, I can probably also subsidize the trip out...