Finished the Harry Potter book this afternoon--just over twenty-four hours. Yay, my brain hasn't deteriorated yet.

Last night I went to a pool party (clothing-optional, of course, in stereotypical California fashion) put on by some members of the "polyamory community" in the Bay Area. I'm not really a member of this community, just like I don't participate in the other-than-straight community or other such things. The communities are a lot about labels, the labels have very little bearing on who I am and how I live, and it works much better for me to just do whatever I feel like doing as far as my love and sex lives go. I don't have to fit my relationships with people into a framework or an idea. Still, the older people in these crowds had to fight hard until fairly recently to gain some amount of social acceptance for the sorts of things I am quite pleased to do without concern about social acceptance, so I keep an eye out, and it's sometimes a good way to get out of the house.

The pool party crowd is interesting, being on average ten to thirty years older than I am. That's part of why I'm not involved with them, with a sort of lack of connection based on age and life status; there are also some creepy people kicking around. I don't really need support in that aspect of my life: I'm lucky if I find one person at a time that I want to date (luckier still if they understand what a neat person I am and want to date me). And, on superficial note not to be dismissed lightly when thinking about partners (because we draw our partners from the tribes we belong to), the "polyamory community" has, for reasons I do not understand, a vastly greater percentage of people with bodies ranging from Really Excessively Well-Fed out to Morbidly Obese. Which is fine, and they're sweet people. Call it a character flaw if you like, but I don't find it attractive.

There was a woman there, who was looking around, perhaps not entirely comfortable...something in her face warned me, but I introduced myself and struck up a conversation. Though I didn't find her particularly attractive, I had a sense she might be making a vague pass at me. I explained what I do for a living, described the device my company makes, which has a much more comfortable keyboard than most or all of the other mobile devices in the US. She said, in the beginnings of an exasperated voice, "But what does that MEAN?!". It turned out she works in ergonomics, and every response I could come up with, she met with a frustrated demand that I quantify my impression with hard data. She was close to being the worst-case scenario of a professional who refuses to understand that the rest of the world cannot communicate in the terms of her craft.

It was only native kindness and a well-mannered upbringing that kept me from saying, "Do you always talk like this when you first meet people? I'd bet twenty dollars you're single, and for another five bucks and a promise you'll be quiet, I'll tell you why."

Of course I bowed out gracefully and moved on.