Will Work for Swords

Well, Saturday decided to follow suit with the rest of last week, and proved to be, uh, eventful. Fortunately, it wasn't as incredibly exhausting and/or demoralizing as Monday thru Thursday were, heh.

• Rolled out of bed at 9:15 to get ready for a coffee date. Damned near fell asleep again, after being out late on Friday night, but I got up and out the door, on track for being about 10 minutes late to said coffee date. While on the highway, my car started sounding odd, so I got off at my exit and pulled over, to discover that my tire had completely blown out! I called and left a voicemail for the dude, saying, "you're not going to believe this, but my tire just blew the hell out on the highway," and apologizing and such.
• Dude called me right back, and started off saying, "I am *really* sorry I'm such a flake and am not there yet!" Apparently, he'd gotten up early to get ready, and wound up falling back asleep later, heh. After I told him about the tire, he offered help, so he came out and changed my tire. AND he also handily jumped my car, because I was an idiot and left the headlights on while we were dealing with the tire. After all that, we had 15 whole minutes for me to buy us both coffee, before I had to take off for my wushu demo. Said coffee was a macchiato at this little shop he'd suggested in NE, and it may have been the best coffee I've ever had. Holy damn.
• The wushu demo itself was fine. We didn't find out that we'd even be doing a demo until 2 weeks prior, so with the Thanksgiving holiday, we'd had almost no practice time, but we pulled it off. It was also nice that we actually got to perform on the wushu carpet this time, because slippery gym floors? Not so good for traction.
• After demo, there was just enough time to make a deposit at the bank, and dash off to derby practice. It was a shorter practice than usual, but I did my skills checklist, and I'd already passed the rules test a couple weeks ago, through some miracle of divine providence. SO, that means I'm officially cleared as Scrimmage-Ready. Doing the skills checklist really helped drive home the point of how much I've improved since I started, so even though it's an early, *early* step on the road to derby awesome, it still felt like a victory. :)
• After practice, it was run home, shower, grab food, and go to the derby bout! It was a double-header, and My Hero Napoleon was in the second of the two bouts, so I got to sit with marykae and a few other girls from Wreckers, and scream my head off, and it was awesome. Once that was over, I came home, loafed around the house, and passed out.

Sunday was much, much more chill. I met up with Kenna to talk webstuff, and then worked on web things that I was actually (gasp!) excited about working on. It's so good to be doing design again, even on a small scale.

AND, katlyn , daemonwise , and I sat down and finally finished watching the 3rd and final season of Avatar. I LOVE THIS DAMNED SHOW. A couple of minor issues with the ending, yes, but still, so completely worth it. I think I'm preaching its gospel almost as hard as Veronica Mars (or possibly more?), at this point. And I may have to find some excuse in the future to dress up as Avatar Kyoshi, heh. (P.S. phasmaphobic : I still don't see the resemblance, but eh, I never do. ;) But costuming as an Earth bender? Uh, YES PLEASE.)

Anyhoo, now it's Monday, and so far, it's proving to be a far better one than the last. Decisions reaffirmed, design work being well-received, and the day is flying by. Hell yes. And there's Farscape viewing tonight!

Yes, in spite of everyone and their mother's attempt to derail me with Things I Have To Do yesterday, I successfully found time to make friends with the ol' XBox again. I'm finally out of freakin' Lothering! Yes, I'm the slowest gamer on the planet. Morrigan disapproves. But, I intend to have more free evenings at my disposal in the near future, so I *will* get through this freakin' game. I have others I need to play!

Also, I don't think I've mentioned it here, but should you want to be friends on XBox Live, leave me your screen name, and I'll add you! (probably better that way, given my sporadic console gaming endeavors)

I also had a sort-of-date via Skype, earlier this evening. It was stunningly awkward for the first couple of minutes, just by virtue of the fact that it was on Skype, and you can thusly see each other, but not completely. My wild gesticulations went outside of the webcam's view more than once, and we had a couple instances of one of us pointing at something in the background, and then realizing that the other couldn't see what was being pointed at.

Other than that, however, I wound up having a great time, and I didn't want it to end, when it came time for me to log off and leave for the evening's activities. And just, wow. I had what was, more or less, an extended, face-to-face interaction with a person in another city. Realizing that blows my mind a little.

It's official: I live in the gorram future, people. And I think I may be spending a fair bit more time on Skype in the coming weeks.

This was a very good weekend.

The rooftop of the Hotel Deluxe was the venue for my post-wushu Friday night, and I got to dress pretty, hang with my band of Laptop Party girls, drink fancy champagne cocktails, and pose for photobooth shots in silly fashion.

I also got to hang with _dilate_ & Co. at Amnesia Brewing afterwards, where I was hideously overdressed, but having a good time nonetheless. I like NoPo so much.

I consumed a metric ton of pork on Saturday, courtesy of daemonwise's pet project, Rib-Off 2: Electric BBQ. Holy damn, there were some seriously delicious ribs to be had, and when it came time to vote for the winner, I was in serious conflict over my decision. They were *all* friggin' amazing, and each in a very distinct sort of way. My hat is off to each and every one of you who cooked. Seriously, DAMN.

Post-Rib-Off, I found myself at Horse Brass, having a date that (gasp!) ACTUALLY DIDN'T SUCK. When I arrived there, I was sweaty and gross from biking, vaguely pork-drunk (™ praenomenal), and not exactly in a good headspace for impressing new people, so I figured it'd be Meh, at best, but it far exceeded my expectations. This was the first one in quite a while that actually has me excited about going on a second date, and he actually said he wanted to hang out again, "if that's okay with [me]," (d'aawww!) so it's a fair assumption that a second date will happen.

There was also a friend whom I'd been fearing I might be on the outs with, but my fears were apparently inaccurate, because I heard from him and we wound up hanging out during the weekend, too. And that turned out fun, overall, so that was a pretty huge relief.

This will probably make at least a few of you laugh, but: I also watched Sailormoon for the first time in at least FIVE YEARS. It wasn't until I was sitting down with typsie, Jason, and praenomenal that I realized I'd watched most, if not ALL of my Sailormoon episodes either alone in my college dorm room, or alone in my Dad's old apartment in Connecticut at the age of 15. But oh, MAN, they're as cheesy and hysterical as I remembered. The R Movie is so overwhelmingly gay that I can't help but still love it. XD

And, finally, I had a really nice time working with one of my new senior reps, too. She's a Vancouver-ite, so she had a fair bit of difficulty finding Overlook Park, but once she got there, we had a smooth session. I found myself wishing a few times that I'd made arrangements to have an assistant, because manning the reflector myself got a bit hinky once or twice, but I got some rad shots, nonetheless. She's in summer school, too, so she's ready to start throwing my business card at all of her friends right away. W00t!

And here's why!

This whole "Ice Breakers" thing, where they essentially recommend that you write to a person, knowing nothing about them other than the fact that they like something you happen to like. While I understand the importance of common interests, there are plenty of obnoxious people in the world who happen to enjoy one thing that I also enjoy.

People who comment about how cute I am in pictures, and who obviously didn't read my profile? If I wanted to be objectified, I could just go to a bar. At least then, I'd have a beer in my hand.

One aspiring suitor described me as an "X-Men conocer." I sincerely hope that is an obscure English word that I haven't yet learned, because if that's supposed to be "connoisseur," I may just have to punch something.

And speaking of word abuse, Anxious and Eager? NOT INTERCHANGEABLE.

On the flip side of the word abuse angle, there are the dudes who try *too* hard to sound smart. Overusing pretentiously-long words isn't quite as irritating as using more conventional words incorrectly... but it's close.

Dear Unattractive OKStalker: "i want to marry you" is not an effective conversation starter. THANKS.

Another dude wrote to me... for the sole purpose of asking me if I'm looking to do freelance web development work. Because I'm *obviously* on OKCupid for the purpose of getting jobs. Riiiight.

And finally, Paul Atreides is apparently hiding out in Portland and looking for love. Well, at least that one's more funny than it is irritating.