Whirlwind Month

*warning, no knitting content here, only read if you’re interested in detailed minutae of my life*

*oh, also, sorry for the lack of pictures. My camera is on the fritz*

Good grief, what a busy month I’ve had. We moved on July 15th, and that went well, but since we’re moving from a Really Really Big House into a much more reasonably sized one, many of our less treasured items have had to find new homes. We tried to pre-filter our stuff (using a dumpster and several charity runs) and did a decent job, but the truth remains that we still have too much stuff so the last 20% of our unpacking is going somewhat slowly. Sadly, my yarn remains packed – not that I would have any time to fondle it even if it were freed from the confines of its box…

Last week I went to a conference related to my Actual Job. I am a Geek so it was basically Geek Con. It was great fun, I attended tutorials and sessions, tried to cram in a bunch of work, and actually met new people. Usually, during these things I cling pitifully to the side of my co-worker and avoid talking to anyone I find intimidating. At OSCON, pretty much everyone is intimidating to me, so I generally hide in the corner and focus on my laptop. I’ve been 3 times so far, and that’s my M.O.

This year, after getting abandoned by my co-worker for an evening (he had friends to visit with) I went to a party at an 80’s arcade bar (free beer! free pizza! free video games!) I was sorely tempted to just buy a book and sit down by the hotel pool instead but I steeled myself and pulled on my Stonehenge t-shirt (required for entry) and boarded the train for downtown. As it turns out, it was fun! There were a zillion old video games (Robotech! Tron! Ms. PacMan!) so after I got my pizza and beer I went off in search of my old favorite, Tempest. They had it, and the game was in great shape, so I played that pretty much all night, getting hit on by several geek guys who were impressed with my Tempest Prowess and other geeky traits.

The next night I actually chose to go to another couple of events in our hotel – I had some snacks and hung out at a MySql reception. A little later, I ended up wandering upstairs to a party filled with those very people I find so intimidating (celebrities in the open source world). I brought a Scrabble game hoping I might find someone who might want to play… after going in and surveying the scene I decided to bail and just go to bed. I headed back out the door, but before I could get to the elevators I was stopped by a very kind (and cute) guy who had seen me wander through.

“Hey, where are you going?”

“Back downstairs… “

“Why?”

“Um, I don’t know anyone in there, and they’re scary.”

“Come back in and I’ll introduce you to some of them.”

So back we went into the party. Turns out that these geek celebrities were, in fact, just regular folks. And pretty nice ones, at that. The party got broken up at midnight so a bunch of us just went down to hang out in the lobby. I fully intended to go to bed when we got down there, but there were all these fun people having a great conversation, and whenever someone would leave, another interesting person would wander through and stick around to talk. Presently, the same guy who had originally kept me from leaving came down and sat with us. I tell you, a geek girl in a room full of geek guys generates a *lot* of positive attention waves so I stayed to bask in the limelight… I didn’t end up getting any sleep that night, but I sure had fun. And I’m sure we were great entertainment for the night staff at the front desk of the lobby.

The next morning I had a job interview. Normally I would be worried about a job interview on basically no sleep, but what the heck, these were geek guys asking questions about my favorite topic (me!) It went well and they seem quite cool, so I’m hoping to hear from them about a possible job…

In other news, I did get my green belt in Bujinkan, so I’m one step closer to being an actual ninja 🙂

Cross your fingers that I get some unpacking done so I can, you know, relax sometime soon. And maybe even knit.