Two plus two is ten

I got to tag along to Nate's D&D game last night, which was even more geeky and awesome than I could've possibly imagined. He was worried that I was bored out of my skull the whole time, since after a certain point in the evening I could barely keep my eyes open, but that's the sort of thing that happens when I sleep horribly (for some reason, I don't think I got more than thirty consecutive minutes of sleep all night on Monday -- I kept jerking awake in a disoriented panic, and then it would take me a while to fall back asleep again) and have to wake up before 6:00 am. At first, he thought I was using the "I wasn't bored, I was tired!" thing as a way to avoid telling him I hadn't enjoyed myself, but after we got back to his place and I literally fell asleep in the middle of our conversation, I think he was more inclined to believe me. Heh.

It was the weirdest thing. Before I slide into a really deep sleep, I hear what's going on around me and can even carry on conversations (which is something I find profoundly unnerving, actually -- I hate that I talk in my sleep), although they tend to be fairly incoherent conversations full of non sequiturs. Last night, I zonked out while we were discussing character classes, and I blearily asked him if he'd seen The Life Aquatic, and if so, did he like it? At his confused, "Hang on, what?", I jerked awake and stared at him, completely disoriented.

"You mean we weren't just talking about Steve Zissou?"

"Uhhh...no, not so much."

"Oh." And then, feeling a bit lost, I just sort of blinked at him until he started laughing and declared that he was putting me to bed, because apparently I hadn't been kidding about that "really freakin' exhausted" thing. I think I passed out less than a minute after my head hit the pillow. Lucky for me, he found the whole thing endearing as opposed to weird, so thank goodness for that.

Anyway. There's a possibility that I might get to actually join the game, which I think is completely and utterly awesome. I haven't played a tabletop RPG since the Shadowrun group I was in fell apart after my freshman year of college. We'd kept it going for a good year, but we'd started the summer we graduated and it got harder and harder for us to meet up back in Vancouver to play, and eventually we just had to let the whole thing go. But it was fun, that's the main thing I remember, and Nate's group seems pretty great. They were all cool with me being there, which was nice, and I like the overall mix of characters, combat, adventuring, and roleplay.

Hooray! Yet another thing to be nerdy with him about!

Seriously, it's awesome dating a geek. We've had conversations about Kingdom of Loathing that have lasted HOURS. *happy sigh*

So hey, guess what? I'm in love with a boy, and I'm totally going to apply to nursing school.

I know those two things don't have anything to do with each other, but I figure that I might as well get two sweeping pronouncements out of the way for the price of one. So...there you go. In love with a boy, nursing school. Whee!

The Nate thing will probably get its own post, once I stop freaking out enough to write about it. He doesn't know, thank Christ, so it's mostly just a matter of me having a complete mental spaz-out on account of I didn't expect it to happen so soon. But, like I said -- that gets its own post.

Nursing school, though. I'm cool with writing about that now. It probably seems a little out-of-the-blue, but I've been thinking a lot about school and jobs and careers a lot lately, and I've come to realize that I want an actual, honest-to-God career. Becoming a published author still is and always will be my ultimate goal, but I want to have something to do in the meantime. I thought I could make do with office jobs, but...no. Not happening. The longer I work in an office, the more I realize how much I dislike it. I have no passion for it. There's no security in it. I'm an easily replaceable little robot, and the thought of spending the next five, ten, fifteen years as an office monkey makes me want to fall apart.

( So...why nursing school, exactly? )

Argh, I think I'm getting sick. I felt like crap when I woke up this morning, but since everything is blooming now, I thought it might be allergies. Unfortunately, the longer I'm up, the worse I feel...and there was a nasty little death plague going around the office towards the end of last week. I suspect that's what I've ended up with.

What sucks is that tonight I'm getting together with a Portland writer I met a little while ago, along with a few of her friends -- they wanted to talk about setting up a writer's group, which is something I've been dying to be involved in for ages. We're doing dinner and going to one of the Willamette Writer's Guild talks, and I plan to go no matter how shitty I feel, but it still stinks that this thing I've been looking forward to for weeks is now going to be slightly less awesome, because all my body wants to do is collapse and go to sleep.

Also, I'm supposed to get together with Nate tomorrow, and I don't think we're at the stage of our relationship where it's a good idea for him to see me when I'm sick. I don't want him to catch it, for one thing, but ( I'm also just not a pleasant person when I'm ill. At all. )

( Squishiness. ♥♥♥ )

On the work front, things have improved IMMENSELY. They're still insane, of course, but that's par for the course. No, the incredible thing is that they did something I never thought they'd do: they fired my nemesis.

I've written about her a few times -- she was the assistant of one of the partners, and was absolutely impossible to work with. Impossible. She treated the paralegals like they were monkeys, refused to communicate essential information to us, berated us when something wasn't done according to her exact specifications (see: refused to communicate essential information to us *eyeroll*), actively tried to undermine projects we were working on so that she would look good in comparison...the list goes on. She was awful and almost none of us could work with her, but she seemed to have immunity because she was a partner's assistant.

Apparently, that wasn't quite enough. Heh. I know I should feel a little guilty for exulting so much over another person being fired, but...damn, you guys, it's like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders now that she's gone. I was the only paralegal left who could sort of work with her (she'd burned the other two enough that they point-blank refused), and she was making my life miserable. Maybe I'll be able to stick this place out a little longer yet.

And on a book/movie note: I just finished Water for Elephants today and LOVED it, I'm halfway through Into the Wild now and find it fascinating, and I've been on a total geek-umentary fix when it comes to movies -- The King of Kong (EXCELLENT!), Monster Camp (hilarious and kind of sad), and Darkon (AWESOME). I think I'm going to have to write a more in-depth post about the latter two, actually, because...documentaries about LARP-ing? Are way more entertaining and compelling than the subject matter would have you believe. This stuff is golden.

You know, aside from those few times when I was completely without internet access, I think this is the longest I've gone without posting. Weird! And probably unimportant!

Heh, I don't know. Work's been running me ragged lately, and the time change threw me off even more. I caught myself staring at the clock yesterday, trying to figure out what the numbers 2:35 actually meant. Obviously, they meant something, but for the life of me I couldn't figure out what it was. Two? Thirty-five? What? It was like trying to read binary. I'm sure I didn't help matters by staying out until four in the morning, but that's just Tuesdays. One of these days, I'm just going to say "fuck it" and schedule a personal day for Wednesday so I can just spend the night at Nate's and sleep in until eleven the next day (he works the brunch line Saturdays and Sundays, so his "weekend" is Tuesday and Wednesday...it's a little crazy, but we seem to be making it work).

Our relationship at the moment is one of those strange, ambiguous things where it's not entirely clear what we are and I don't know whether I should think of him as a boyfriend or not. It's not that the ambiguity bothers me -- to my immense surprise, I'm actually okay with it -- but I have to call him something when I talk about him to people, and lately I've been referring to him mostly as "Nate, this guy I'm dating." For some reason, this seems to confuse everyone. The "I'm dating someone" thing seems to shock them just as much as the "I'm dating a GUY" thing, so...I don't know. Maybe I just come off as really introverted and asexual to everyone? I have no idea!

And really, it's not that big a deal. I'm 99.99% certain that he's not seeing anyone besides me and he seems to genuinely enjoy my company, so that's really the important thing right there. Everything else will work itself out in time. *nod*

( For your general amusement, have some brain-breaking conversations I overheard in the lunchroom yesterday )

The universe has a really horrible sense of humor. Apparently, things can go well in my personal life or things can go well at work, but both at the same time would knock something crucial off balance and that is Not Allowed. When part of your day involves getting bitched out for following an official company procedure because it apparently doesn't apply to this one case? Yeah. Awesome.

Also, my desk looks like a filing cabinet threw up all over it. When I have messy piles of paper because they're organized that way according to my own obscure and incredibly specific mental process? That's fine. When I have messy piles of paper because I'm running out of room to put stuff and people keep fucking with it when I'm away from my desk and everything gets all screwed up because it wasn't added according to my own obscure and incredibly specific mental process? FAIL.

Stupid work. At least I'm going over to Nate's tonight. That helps make this bugfuckery bearable. :P

Today's turning out to be a pretty good day. It's cake day, for one thing. I fucking love cake day, because the cake on cake day is free, and free cake -- especially free and delicious cake -- trumps just about everything. Mmm. Cake.

Also, I'm going over to Nate's tonight to watch the first Hellraiser movie, and while I still can't figure out if this is technically a date (I couldn't really figure out if Saturday was either), I'm sticking to my prior assertion that I'd be happy with him as a friend and not necessarily anything more. I'd PREFER the something more, true, but we'll see how it goes. As per usual, I'm excited and anxious to the point of vague nausea, although I get anxious to the point of vague nausea over plenty of non-date-related things as well and I can only hope it's something I'll grow out of eventually.

On the "not so great" front, I just found out I'm going to have to sink another two hundred dollars into my car. The dash lights and electrical systems have gone a little wonky, so...bye-bye, two hundred dollars. *sigh* It would be nine hundred if I fixed the stuff currently wrong with the transmission, but they said I might still get another two years out of her if I decided to leave things the way they were, so that's what I'm going with. She's sixteen years old -- at this point, I don't think repairing the transmission is going to do much good when everything else is falling apart.

Still, it kind of sucks. My family's owned this car since new, and I've definitely developed a soft spot for her. Also, I can't afford to buy a new one, so it's no more car for me when she finally does decide to call it quits.

Things that the guys of Portland are apparently into: Cthulhu, girls who express opinions on certain punctuation marks (Oxford comma for the win!), and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Who knew?

Seriously, this whole thing is reminding me of why I'm a total recluse and terrified of people. I thought maybe one or two people at most would reply; instead, it's...a lot more than that. I don't know. I really didn't expect this. I'm getting coffee with one guy tonight, and then I have lunch and Powell's with the first guy tomorrow, and it's all very weird and strange and I kind of have no idea what the fuck is going on.

Nerdy Portland boys are adorable, though. They're like puppies. I want to gather all of them up in a box and keep them in my apartment so I can pet them and watch zombie movies all day.

( Blah blah more about BOYS )

I promise I'll start writing about things other than my stupid love life soon. It's just the only remotely interesting thing going on for me right now. Heh.

[4:00 PM EDIT]: I'm leaving in half an hour, and I'm terrified. Excited, and terrified. I really hope he likes me.