A: "So, um, are you seeing anyone?"B: "Ah, yes, but they're in LA."
A: "Oh well, he's a very lucky man."
B: "Um, something like that..."
A: "So, um, are you seeing anyone?"
It's been an interesting few days. Saturday was nice and relaxing after I'd recovered from the exhausting, exasperating roller-blade to and from work. I think I spent the evening corpulently lying around in bed.
Sunday was the Renaissance Fair, and Avi (from the gaming group) picked me up at about 9:30 am, however the other people were running late, and the drive was much longer than expected, so we got to the park about midday. It was a lot of fun, and there were heaps of people there, some in garb, but most in casual clothing. There were lots of shops and games, but as usual much of the stuff was of fairly limited utility, so I only ended buying one thing. There were six of us, me and Avi, Ben and his wife Debbie, and Ray and his wife Marilyn. We were also joined by some friends of Ben's, with their young child. We watched the jousting, the "Live" chess tournament, a hilarious acrobat/comedian and plenty of other things. I discovered I have an unrecognized skill with stilts, was almost tempted into getting my face painted though I eventually decided against it and watched some of the more competitive people climb walls, throw axes and generally have fun. Alas when we left (7 hours later) I was a bit sunburnt, but it had been a really great day. I shot a lot of pictures (was even in some) and hopefully I'll get them developed soon.
Monday was much more subdued, as I had a raging headache and two reactions which didn't work so well. Still, I battled through and was feeling much better by the afternoon, I spent time with my boss and one of the new graduate students trying to learn to use the crystallography software. I did something I hadn't done in a while, and asked for some homework, since I knew that only practice could help me become better with this fairly important area. That night was spent talking with Allison into the wee small hours.
Today was better, I put on one reaction which worked, and by 5 pm, it had been through a silica column. I also got the "homework" from my boss and struggled through that slowly, it's not easy, but it's a very good skill to have on a resume, so it's worthwhile learning, though by 6 pm I'd had my fill. The gaming group started late, and my character was running into a lot of dead ends, but it was nice to be out of the house for the evening. As we were leaving, Anthony (the GM) asked me if I wanted to go see "The Naughty Nymphs", these were a group of three girls who had sung bawdy(sp?) mediaeval songs at the "Ren Fest" and who were recording a new CD this Friday. I of course said "Yes", and have to admit that I haven't been to a pub in ages, and so it should be a lot of fun.
Last night we went up and saw the "Naughty Nymphs" show again in Boca Raton. It was at one of your standard "Genuine Imitation" Irish Pubs, and this was a pretty poor example of one of them. The crowd was huge, but it was worth it and we were there well past midnight. After that the six of us drove to Denny's (a chain restaurant) and had traditional drunken greasy food. At some times it was actually kind of odd, the group dynamic was just sort of weird, a few of the people I didn't really know were behaving not "happy, happy", but quite bellicose, not something I had expected. One girl was making a big deal with her best friend about a lost/stolen CD, and whether they had kissed once, so I guess it was slightly unexpected. The drive home with Avi was long, mainly because we were both so tired, and in the end I managed to fall into bed around 4 am.