Great thoughts of Fleeting substance

With any luck, this post will go up with a little bit more, let’s say, rapidity, than some of my last ones.

Well I got some homework done this weekend, but it took some doing. Last work week was pretty short since I had taken the time off for vacation and because of labor day, so Friday rolled around right quick. I went out to Volleyball with workmates, which is always fun. I even got one of the guys on the 10th floor (let’s call him ‘S’) here to come out with us. I’m a uniter. Fun was had by all, and we would have stayed a bit longer, but a parking enforcer came by and looked ready to write everyone tickets, so we scattered like cockroaches. Heh.

The story there is that the first car this guy was going to write up was mine. I saw this, but I figured if he had started, he wasn’t going to stop, and it’s not like a parking ticket is anything cataclysmic. Unfortunate, yes, but I’m sure I’d manage to deal with it somehow. So while everyone else took off to move their cars to leave or feed their meter, I strolled up pretty casually to my car. Well evidently, S made it up to my car pretty fast and had this conversation with the guy:

“Hey, sorry, man, this is my car.” (Yeah, he’s pointing at my car.)

“The meter’s empty.”

“Yeah, I put in some money, but it ran out.”

“Well, okay, just don’t let it run out next time.”

“Okay, thanks.”

At which point S walks over and get in his real car and drives off. Well this stuns and confuses the parking meter guy enough that when I finally walk up to my car, he still hasn’t written anything. So I stroll up and this happens.

“Hey, this your car?”

“Yep.”

“You guys need to put money in the meter you know, or else next time you’re all going to get tickets.”

“All right.”

“This ain’t free parking.”

Then he gets in his car and drives off, ticketing no one. The strangest part about this is that this is the first time most of my friends have ever seen anyone come by to check the meters. And most of them have been coming every Friday for years. Considering that the meters along the beach are incredibly expensive, they’d all be ahead if all they had to do was pay a tiny parking fine. I’d seen a meter-maid once before, but I got to my car at the same time she did, and just drove off. Couple of close calls, but like I said, it’s just a parking ticket.

Well after that fiasco, we all strolled out to the Olive Garden. (Well, all of us that didn’t scatter to the four winds.) Dinner was pretty great and one of the girls, J, even made them come by and sing happy birthday for me and give me cake. Yum.

Okay, seriously, way too many people with names beginning with J. I’m going to have to improve my classification scheme. From now on, the above ‘J’ will be known as J(5).

So J(5) gets me the singing and the cake. There. Not to be confused with any of the other ‘J’ people I know. I’ll assign them names as they come up again. Did I mention before that it was my birthday a while ago? Yeah, it was. I’m 25 now. Not a bad number if you ask me.

Well afterwards, J(5), myself, and another girl...named...‘The Chef’, all went over to J(5)’s house and watched ‘Snatch’. It’s a fun movie. Thus ended Friday.

I spent Saturday procrastinating, aren’t you proud? I played video games, mostly, but I also called up one of the guys from TKD. He’d expressed a desire to meet up with me sometime over the weekend and practice some of our kicks, some counters, go over our form, practice stuff like that. We’ll call him…Mr. Turn.

Mr. Turn and I met up on Sunday morning and practiced some kicks, went over our form, threw some counters, things like that, it was good practice and good fun. With some luck, we’ll make a habit out of it. That’d be neat. Forgot to sunscreen myself, though, and ended up with a bit of a burn on my skull. Nothing epic, though, no worries.

J(5) came along too, mostly to watch.

Background: I met J(5) pretty early on at my Raytheon career. She works here too, and she, myself, and a whole bunch of other people tend to hang out together. Friday volleyball, karaoke, graduation parties, that’s all of them. I believe I saw the phenomenon reported as ‘Urban Tribes’ in an article my grandmother sent me a few years ago. I think it’s a pretty appropriate phrase. If we were more swarthy, I’d call us a gang. :)

Well, I’m not completely dense. I recognize flirting when I see it, (hint: it looks a lot like teasing, and we’re, generally, a pretty flirty group). No one comes along to a park to watch someone work out unless they’re just trying to spend time with them. Well afterwards she wanted to get some food, so we went out to Paneria (sandwich shop near where I live, they make their own bread. Delish.) And then came back to my place to talk video games, relationships, and any number of completely trivial details. It probably qualifies as a ‘date’, though that depends on how you set your threshold for such things. I will say this much, though: I certainly enjoyed her company, and she seems to enjoy mine.

Well after she left, I finally sat down and started working on homework. It was pretty painless, for the most part, though I think I torqued up one of the problems…okay I know I torqued up one of the problems, but I’m not sure I can be convinced to go back and fix it. Senioritis.

And it looks, for once, like it’s going to be a normal week! I’ve been traveling and vacationing so much these past few weeks that just being back to normal is almost a relief.

-N