And the Weekend's Over

Saturday night was the last installment of our social marathon. We were invited to a party at the house of another of my office-mates, Y. No other office-mates showed up though; it was mostly her friends there. That meant a lot of meeting new people--which doesn't actually bother me. For all these office-mate events, the stakes are low as far as I'm concerned. I do my best to meet and talk to people, but don't feel especially bad if I fail.

Actually the circumstances on Saturday were very favorable for meeting and talking. Y has a tiny little apartment to the north of us, and she was serving a late dinner of curry and a Japanese sort of potato salad. It was tasty. We sat on the floor and ate it. More people kept trickling in. The apartment was an oven. The elevator was broken and it was on the fourth floor, so there was much trooping up and down for smoking. (I dodn't smoke, but since everyone went down, I did too.) The conversation turned toward bizarre injuries and physical anomalies. One woman was born with an extra rib and had had to have it surgically removed because it was pinching a nerve. Another had accidentally ripped open his palette with a pencil. Those were the two most memorable. How can you not become friendly and amused when you're talking about this sort of thing?

The evening ended with a watermelon bashing, kind of like a Japanese pinata. We carried the watermelon out to a strip of grass near an underpass and took turns bashing it with a stick, blindfolded while everyone else gave directions. It took a long time to really smash open the watermelon, in part due to the inadequacy of the stick. But that meant everyone had a turn.

When the thing was open, we ate it with our hands. Then Pocket of Bolts and some of the other guys started using parts of the rind like a board you'd break in karate. When you punch a watermelon rind, juice and watermelon go everywhere!!! We were all covered in it. There was much laughing. You have to picture this being around midnight. We decided to head home after that (way past our bedtimes) but it was a really fun time all in all.

Yesterday I didn't do anything except play games and do a small chunk of writing. I am asymptotically approaching the end of this chapter but can't seem to go the last little step.

Today classes start for PoB. He left very early, as he teaches at 9 AM. I had breakfast but am getting off to a later start, heading down to U of C to use the library and possibly have coffee with one of the grad students there. It will be fun to talk shop again after all this time. I've discovered that it's better to miss the rush hour traffic when going down there though. I may not be able to avoid it coming back but at least I can avoid it going down there.