when i am with you, i feel a little brave

I had too much work to do today, and so I left at seven despite my overworkedness, and went to the evil city. I almost bailed, but I had promised Julie that I would come up and see her, and I decided that keeping my promise was more important than working and sleeping. So, we had coffee at this really weird Mediterranean cafe in her neighborhood, went back to her apartment, watched some Winter X-Games followed by an episode of 'The Office', and hung out with Tom (aka Tom Foolery). Then, Adit, Vidya, and a couple of other people showed up, and we repaired to a nearby bar. The bar was v. nice; they had a real fireplace, which seemed strange, but definitely made it feel more homey. I drank cranberry juice (or a virgin cosmopolitan, if you prefer, but I had no desire to drink eight of them, which makes them quite unlike a cosmopolitan--but rendered me capable of driving home), we played some dice, chatted about various and sundry topics, and I left around 12:15am.

I can start to sense that the city is going to become much like the rest of the things I have railed against in my short life--I started off with an irrational hatred of it, became stuck in my ways due to my own stubbornness, but am now slowly being forced to reevaluate my position until I end up loving it. I by no means love it yet, but my friends have all moved up there over the past couple of years. Only Claude, Zach, and Sri are left down here (well, Shedletsky and that house too, but I never see them), and both Claude and Zach are moving at the end of this school year. If I get lucky, Claude will get into UCSF--but that means another friend in the city (although that's preferable to having her on the east coast). I still see Vidya occasionally because she works down here, but that's about it. If I ever wanted to see my friends again, the best case scenario would be for Adit, Claude and I to move in together this summer. But, I like my apartment...and I like being ten minutes from work...and I like the silence and the solitude. So, who knows. All I know is that I'm supremely annoyed that I had a good time tonight, because it makes it hard to maintain my hatred at its usual intensity.

Now, I should go to bed. But first, allow me to give you one insight into corporate America. I really despise corporate-speak, even though there are things that I say too ('circle back' for getting back into touch after doing something, 'action item' for task, 'bandwidth' for the amount of time I have to do something--usually extremely low, etc.). But I've begun to absolutely despise one particular bit of corporate-speak--many of the people in my office, particularly the managers, have begun to use 'ask' as a noun, which to them means the same as the noun 'request'. Usage would be something like, 'I know this is a big ask, but I need this report in five minutes,' or 'My only ask would be to make sure you circle back after doing a deep dive into the weeds and determining the viability of this strategy'. 'Deep dive' is annoying too (often because I'm the one doing the diving), but using 'ask' as a noun drives me batty. So tonight, my only ask is that I dream of a place where I will no longer have to speak the language of corporate America.