That was nice.

Asleep, just about, when I hear MSN make some funny noises. I am instantly at the computer, thinking, "It's Dave!" ... and I jiggle the mouse and the screensaver clears and it is . . . and we chat for a few minutes before he has to go off and face the day.

He hasn't e-mailed back because he's been so incredibly busy . . . but he's been thinking about me.

Cool.

Not much time for flirting, but ... wow, it's nice. I adore Darkside . . . but this thing with Dave is special in an entirely unique yet similar way. Both of them are swordsmen, both associated, however vaguely, with the military ... both older than I am... both heavily into science fiction and anime ... both gentlemen ... both of them dear, dear friends.

Darkside seems relieved that Dave seems to have taken up the place he used to hold in my affections. (if she was relieved, that means you were pressuring her.) (A Civil Campaign) The day when Darkside starts to resent Dave... that day there will be Issues. But for now...

...and the ship sailed on, deeper into the old night.

a decent morning, for once.

Despite staying up way the hell too late last night (as evidenced by the time of my last post last night) I manage to be somewhat coherent this morning, and actually rather cheerful. In fact, I was so cheerful that Darkside had to literally smack me out of it...

I think Darkside is sick of hearing about Dave. Already.

But Dave's been thinking about me... (I think I'm melting.) You should see the grin I'm wearing.

versus

Oy. While it's nice that Darkside likes my attention, he is accustomed to having a rather lot of it. I notice this just now...

This morning's uncomfortable moment:

First, I started off things by saying something insensitive about sex. I won't go into it here -- it's not particularly bad or anything; the discussion just doesn't need to be reiterated. Suffice to say that it was a short monolog from me on the subject of sex and how much I wanted some.

"You know that phrase 'open mouth, insert foot'?" Darkside asked. "Well, open your mouth . . . here's my foot." He usually says things like this in a tone of sarcastic amusement. This wasn't. This was sharp and serious and made me realize how the fuck much I'd just hurt him.

I covered my face and turned away. I didn't mean it to sound like that. I wanted you to laugh at me and make jokes about my ex-fiance and make taunting noises about Dave being in Germany for the next few years.

. . .

I didn't mean to hurt you, my love.

. . .

Then Darkside smacked me on the shoulder. "Snap out of it," he said.

"Out of what?"

"You were acting like a lovesick puppy. Stop it. You may feel like a lovesick puppy, but don't look like one. C'mon."

His voice was back to normal. There were grins exchanged, and he discussed the plot of Back to the Future until he suddenly realized that the computer labs were open.

(The labs open at seven -- sometimes a a little after. This morning they'd opened about five minutes before seven. I'd noticed, but was waiting for him to notice, which he finally did at about 7:15.)

We had our usual race to see what was up with the Fanboy Otaku Gamer's Club and he won. He's in class now. I've only got two hours of class today; he's got four. Nyah-nyah.

In summary: Dave's very concerned (more than he wants me to know) that Darkside will make a move on me before Dave and I get a chance to get together face to face, and then I will be Darkside's girl. Darkside is concerned that my newly re-awakened thing for Dave will interfere with our friendship; beyond "interfere with our friendship and take up time of hers that used to be solely devoted to me," I cannot tell what is my wishful imagination and what is Darkside actually thinking of me as potentially more than a friend.

Total Waste Of Time (and exercise in humiliation)

After updating the journal after breakfast, I decided that enough was enough; I would go and catch up on that half hour or so of lost sleep from the conversation last night with Dave.

So I slept, and I crashed out on one of the couches in the TV room. My class started at nine. I woke up at two after and dashed into the room, minus the proper textbook, of course... proceeded to make a fool of myself in class... dumped my backpack in the next classroom, swiped in at the automated attendance machine, and went and found Darkside.

I went back to the classroom after a few minutes of chatting. I didn't see any familiar faces, but I still hadn't gotten to know my new classmates. I finished up the homework. The teacher walked in a few minutes late. I was wildly startled to see that this was not the familiar retired military Adelman, but some rail-thin guy with a beard and pure white hair. This was not my class. I skedaddled down to 109, but that had another class in it. Fortunately, I was able to decipher from the sign by the door that Adelman's class had been moved (again) to 118. I skidded in just as my name was being called. It was determined that I was completely unable to find my class with both hands and a map. Roll call proceeded.

Class let out; I wandered off to Darkside's classroom, where I had a brief chat with Shrimpy, the really really annoying guy who almost succeeded in seriously disrupting my friendship with Darkside. Darkside despises the fellow; Shrimpy has been nothing but problems since day one, and Shrimpy has only affected Darkside's school career in a negative way. To add to the amusement, Shrimpy and Darkside have the same given name. Darkside hates Shrimpy.

I get along with Shrimpy somewhat, mostly because I don't have to deal with him in all of my classes. Today he was bitching and moaning because the cellphone that he is surgically attached to ...

...well, to make a short story long, it fell in the toilet.

Now it's not working.

I laughed my ass off. That's what happens when expensive electronics fall in the toilet!

I told Darkside.

He laughed his ass off.

Saying goodbye to, or rather battling goodbye with, Darkside, I was struck by first his flying hand, and second by the realization that he's thumping me a little harder these days in our friendly tussles, playing a little rougher. I'm going to keep my eye on that. He's been having a bit of a hard time lately, and I want him to have a safe place to put his frustration. There's a fine line between playing around and nasty things, and I want to make sure it never crosses that line. It's not anywhere near the line, but I want to make sure it never gets near it in the first place.

Power Outrages

Monday evening at work the power went out at work. Now, I'm one of those evil evil telephone survey people who call just at dinner time (you see, the dialer computer came with a bug: it automatically tries to time it for your dinner time, and it costs about ten thousand dollars to get the damn thing upgraded to the version that avoids your dinner time), and we work from a completely computerized system, so imagine the havoc that ensued.

All lights save for the exit lights and maybe five emergency lights (in a room that you could hold at least four basketball games in) died. The computers died. The noise in the headsets died.

Complete silence, save for one lunatic, of the blue variety, squawking, "But I was halfway through a long* one!"

Several snickers from assorted people. I identified at least one supervisor's snicker.

(*I was assigned to a survey about people's fast food habits. If the person had eaten fast food within the last month, they got the long version of the survey. If they hadn't, they got the short version. The short versions don't count towards our quota. Vanessa and I were two long surveys away from being sent home; she and I were both in the middle of a long survey.)

The lights came back up in a very few minutes. We then discovered something else interesting: the computers were acting funny. "Don't touch the computers!" the supervisors started yelling, and then one by one came around to carefully type in the word ABORT (all caps) and then BYE, also in all caps. They proceeded to do something arcane to the network to save the lost data. We took a break.

Work continued after that. We got our surveys, finally, and just as Vanessa and I had shut our computers down and were cleaning up to go home, the power blinked off again for two seconds.

The supervisors screeched bloody murder and started going through the whole emergency shutdown routine again. Vanessa and I sneaked out while the getting was good.