east bay = beast bay

Today was long, somewhat productive, and ultimately utterly ridiculous. I dragged myself out of bed at 9:30, which wasn't really early enough to gather myself into some semblance of order and stumble out the door, but I made it in time for my training session with Alyssa. She didn't torture me too badly, although that's all relative; also, compared to all the people training around me, I felt like I was being handfed grapes while being fanned by a bunch of young/dumb/hung men -- my training schedule seems to overlap with the time when a bunch of the trainers take their breaks and do their own workouts, which means that while I'm doing my measly lunges and stretches and squats, they're performing superhuman feats of strength without batting an eyelash. Sigh.

sssanyway, after working out, I showered and took a bit more time than usual with my appearance, since I was meeting with some romance business people tonight and didn't want to look crazed/slovenly like I have been the past couple of weeks. This may have been a mistake, as we shall see. Then, I went to Joanie's and had some eggs while catching up on email, and then I drove to the dirty, dirty east bay so that I could beat rush hour/holiday weekend traffic, since my dinner tonight was in Emeryville. I went to Target first and stocked up on some necessary items (including emergency glowsticks (in case of emergency, not in case of emergency rave)), and then I hung out in Emeryville. First up was Williams Sonoma, where I got some butane for my fancy new creme brulee torch. Second stop was a bookstore/coffee shop, where I intended to write for a couple of hours before dinner.

I wrote about four pages, but it might have been twice that had I not accidentally befriended the security guard. In yet another odd occurrence that only seems to happen to me, I was friendly to the guy initially because he helped me find a table (the first coffee shop I've ever been to where they have a seating expediter), and my initial friendliness, combined with making too much eye contact because I tend to look around a lot while writing and so kept inadvertently looking at him, ended up making us fast friends. Or something. It was all fine at first, and then I found out that he was a painter in addition to being a security guard, which was interesting. However, I never would have ever gone on a date with him; I was just being friendly, since I figured he doesn't get a lot of friendly people. But it all took a strange left turn when he came back from somewhere with a tin foil packet containing two eggroll-like things and insisted that I eat one of them. He wouldn't take no for an answer since it's rude in his culture for someone to refuse food, and so I ate it because (as we all know) I tend to just go with it when things get awkward (see: friends hooking up in the bed I'm sleeping in, double breast massages in India, etc., etc.). This led to him telling me that he loves kissing more than anyone else in the world, that I'm very beautiful, etc., and asking when we could go out.

I ultimately fled, leaving for dinner half an hour earlier than necessary and sitting in my car instead, since I was done making excuses but also didn't want to be too rude. But yeah, that was my first truly bizarre experience of 2012, and I'm sure it won't be the last!

So the dinner I was going to was with tomorrow's speaker at my romance chapter's monthly meeting; it was just me, the speaker, and the chapter president, and we ended up having a truly fabulous time. The dude works for Amazon, but he ended up being younger than I thought he would be (my age), which I guess shouldn't surprise me, since in tech everyone that level is probably younger (as opposed to traditional publishing, where you're still making coffee for people until you're forty). It was the most fun I've had in ages (well, days -- but it was new fun, since I'd just met him and don't hang out with the president that often), and it was great to get to know him before tomorrow's meeting. Then I sped home, took care of some stuff on zee computer, and now desperately need to sleep -- I need to go back to the dirty east bay tomorrow morning (and be there by 8:15, ugh), so I must sign off. Goodnight!