Confusion, reunions and general weirdness

So it was an interesting weekend. I started off dutifully dragging my achingness off to the gym on Friday, and discovered that I was actually able to run! My family sat me down afterwards and told me that the TOD is psychotic and this is all rubbish and so on and so on. They were somewhat mollified by my promising to avoid exercise for the rest of the weekend as I had a lot of stuff going on...

Saturday was the vet as usual, where I was joined by the very charming seven-year old daughter of my bosses again, who was very cool this time. She made me business cards (my name is "Hellin" now) as well as making me envelopes so that I could write her letters, and a proper 3-dimensional landscape thing of children dancing around a tree next to a tent on a beach. Seriously, for a sever-year old? Impressive. She also gave me outfit advice for the evening which was seen with great amusement by her parents!

In the evening I rushed off (late as usual) to Tamara's birthday thing. I was pretty scared, particularly walking up the road in her complex. It was a beautiful night, the crickets were chirping and I had the awful feeling that it was the opening scene for a slasher-movie. As it happened I made it out alive (not just because of the flat shoes) and although I couldn't stay long, everyone was really nice, they seemed to like my entrance of "Hi, nice mullet!" and by complete coincidence one of my ex-students was there with his wife. By even creepier coincidence I had been thinking of him recently in the "I wonder if he's still alive?" kind of way.

From there it was a sprint to chief-Goth's house, where I had a mild freak-out at my general lack of makeup (as usual. Seriously, I need to start taking eyeliner with me!) I was distracted when I had to do the eyeliner and nail polish on one of the guys. To his credit he sat very still and it looked AWESOME!

From there we went off to Goth-world, which had a surprising number of normal people there, including one of my students of course. Here I am with La trying to pull emo-faces. Well I tried, La is always smiling! I believe we took this photo shortly after the eyelinered-guy tried to set me up with the bouncer (who was gorgeous!) and we had swapped phone numbers. As I said it was interesting...

And of course we had to find people with hats... This guy was quite into the whole photo things... I had just jumped off the dance floor having gone totally ballistic for about 5 songs in a row (including headbanging to Song 2, fending off some dodgy guy and laughing at someone trying to dance with La who didn't even notice he was there) and so I was exhausted and my hair had decided to remodel itself...

Hat-guy had a scary friend who was actually really nice, but had a weird tendency to appear in the bathroom whenever I was there. hence the panic-face...

I also got to spend a lot of time with one of the people in the social circle who I've never got to know before (beyond the obligatory re-naming and laughing at us when we got a bunch of random strangers to yell at the TV with us one night). The problem is that eyeliner-guy and his girlfriend are trying very hard to be puppet-masters in the whole situation. Seriously, if I want to get to know someone I will do it on MY terms. Don't mess with me, I can make my own decisions! AAARGH!

From there I went to La's house and had hot chocolate and a great discussion about life before crashing until the next morning where we had a great breakfast at MacDonald's (don't tell the TOD!). Then I went home and slept before I went to work with La in the afternoon and Chief Goth brought us milkshakes and we had a great time dissecting the previous evening a La Girl of course...

After all that... Things I learned this weekend:

• I know a lot more about music than I'd realised.
• I really suck at being out of my comfort zone. It's amazing how I can be the life and soul of the party and do crazy stuff as soon as 'My Girls' are with me. On my own it's just plain scary.
• Getting to know the quiet people is immensely rewarding
• sometimes eating burgers in the parking lot with a close friend is the best kind of hanging out.
• People are generally nice
• I should avoid a certain lip-gloss in future (thanks for pointing that out NOW Leia...)
• I don't like being a puppet
• I don't speak Girl. Or Guy. How the heck do people read so much into things? I just don't see the fine print. Seriously, I need a sign around my neck that says "Mind Games Prohibited" It would make life so much easier.
• People really DO say "I can like to" In my case it was a dodgy old guy who said "I can like to chat you up!" while looking down my shirt.
• Shy people are really good human shields.

Anyway that's enough for today, I'm off to have lunch with Leia as I think we have a significant amount of news to catch up on!