Before going to hang out with this aikido girl in SF, I tried to shave some of the hair along the back of my neck. I didn't feel good about the job I did, so I went the usual route when I think my hair's messed up, and just shaved it all off again. It's a bit of a setback, as I'd been growing it out to show everybody how curly it is; but I'll just start over again, and boy, it's a lot more fun to shave off when it's long.
Walked for four hours with the nice aikido girl around Golden Gate Park and the Inner Sunset. She occasionally acts with an unpleasant touch of resemblance to my ex from the Bad Relationship, but (presumably from training) she's very centered and focused, and comfortable with silence, which is sort of my barometer for how things are--if I feel like I have to keep talking, something isn't quite right. If nothing else, we're about the same rank and connect on the aikido level, though being mostly on concrete we couldn't go at it the way we could on the mat. That'll be fun when it happens, since I think she's not used to training with bigger people who have a good martial awareness; but she's feisty and all set to go for it. A friend, if nothing else.
Looking forward to Chillits this weekend. When exactly I can go may depend on our solving our deployment problems; fortunately, my cow-orker/manager is also going, and we're already both working on it, so we should be all set. We've got an interesting six months coming up at work, as many conflicting personnel and schedule pressures start to come to a head, with no really good resolution in sight: something's got to give. Standard issue for many companies, I know, but this one involves me, so the same story happening at your company is inherently less interesting.
Four years ago today, I was a month away from a vacation in New Orleans, to be followed by a sailboat trip to Mexico. Funny, neh?
With this most recent aikido test and everything, I think I may be turning a corner in my life into a time where I really, really have no idea what I'm doing, and I'm just going to do it anyway and enjoy the feeling because I'm too tired to care where my life is going at this point. It'll be fine, I'm sure, since I make good choices moment by moment; but I can't seem to get anywhere with shaping my life into quite what I want it to be, and I'm just about willing to punt; at the moment, I just want everything to be fun.