Eclecticism

I didn’t want to say anything about this too soon — I tend to get a little too excited about things before they’re actually happening — but now that i’ve been at it for almost a full week, I figured I’d actually say something about it.

Life at work has taken a definite turn for the better!

Last week I was about ready to turn in my resignation and ask my temp agency to find me another posting. While the work hasn’t been bad, there have been two main annoyances that have been getting to me. First off, the pay is a lot lower than I’d like it to be, and secondly, since I’ve just been your basic bindery monkey (binding books, cutting paper, laminating, drilling holes, etc.), not only was I not learning anything new, but I wasn’t even using the knowledge I had. Not something that’s likely to keep me interested for very long, and I’d pretty much reached the end of my rope. So on Wednesday, I was on my way to the boss’s office to talk to him about this and see if there was anything that could be done about either (or preferably both) of these situations.

On my way there, I got pulled aside, and asked if I knew anything about HTML. Since I’ve been playing with this website since about 1995 I was pretty cofindent in telling them that I had some idea of how it worked…and suddenly, I was a lot less interested in whining to my boss.

Since this last Monday, I’ve been neck-deep in HTML, CSS, and XML, working on helping to code the pages for a web-based job submission tool being built by Xerox for use within Microsoft for sending jobs to the Xerox print shops. They’ve given me a week or two to ‘prove myself’ so that they could be sure that I actually was able to contribute to the project and wasn’t just talking out of my rear when I said that I was good with HTML, and then we get to start negotiating a raise. This doesn’t look like it’ll be too hard to do, as I’ve made a lot of progress over the past four days with the two pages that I was given to start with.

One fun side effect of diving into the world of code has been that it’s kicked me back into full-on geek mode. I’ve had a few things bouncing around that I’ve wated to work on here on my site, but I just hadn’t gotten around to getting started. Now that geek mode is back in gear, I’ll be diving back into those projects. Should be interesting to see how this goes….

Grrrrr…at 29 years of age, I really should be able to deal with talking to someone of the opposite sex without getting entirely tongue tied, shouldn’t I?

Bleah.

Okies.

So after I get done watching the movie tonight, as I’m leaving the theater I notice that downtown seems really busy for 9pm at night, even on a Saturday night. I decided to wander down and see what’s going on, and realize that there’s a parade going down the streets of downtown! I was still pretty clueless as to just what was going on, so I asked a security guard who was standing around, and it turns out that it was the opening parade for Seafair, a local summer celebration.

I hang around for a couple minutes to do some people watching, when a girl walking by catches my eye. Probably about 5’8″ or so, brown wavy hair in a ponytail, wearing a very nice black velvet ‘goth’-style dress. She was looking around for a way to get across the street — not likely at that point, as the parade still had a way to go, according to the security guards. We got started talking as she tried to figure out how to get to the bus she was hoping to catch, and ended up chatting for a block or two as I started to head home and she found her way to another bus. Cool cool — nice to actually strike up a conversation with an attractive girl that I see for once!

I get home, shave and change, and head up to meet Rick for drinks up at the Barca Lounge, right next door to the Vogue. As a surprise, he’d gotten ahold of Candice and Chad, and the four of us hung out there for a while, then headed down to the IHOP that’s just a few blocks away for munchies. We get there, sit down, and are sitting there talking, when who should walk in and sit directly across the aisle from us but the girl I’d been talking to earlier!

I saw her sit down, and when the converation lulled at our table for a moment, asked if she’d found her way to where she was going. She hadn’t seen me yet, so this caught her a little off guard, but then she started laughing — apparently she’d been randomly running into people all day long. A little while later after heading to the restroom, I introduced myself to her, and found out that her name is Sabine.

And…here’s where the grumbling comes in. Put me in a DJ booth and I can chat and flirt with anyone who comes by. Get me in the real world, actually trying to talk to someone that I find attractive…and I stumble all over myself. Can’t think of what to say next or how to keep a conversation going, can’t seem to string together three words without stuttering, sentences just trail off into nowhere as I lose my train of thought…argh! No matter what, I always come out of it feeling like a complete idiot.

In any case, I think I survived — Chad, Candice, and Rick all got up to head home for the night, and I hung around to talk with Sabine for another few minutes. That didn’t last too long, however, as she was meeting someone else for coffee, and he (a nice enough seeming guy named Justin) showed up not too long afterwards, so I went ahead and made my exit. On the bright side, she didn’t seem too put off by any of my stumbling, and said that she occasionally hits IHOP in the evenings…with any luck, I may run into her again — and maybe even remember how to construct an entire sentence!

(sigh)

I can hope, right?