Hangin’ Out

I’m just chillin’ in my hotel room for a while between the big 6-hour meeting this morning and the meet & greet tonight before the actual conference kicks up tomorrow.  My leather jacket is in the corner of the room where I dropped it when I got back from my meeting.  It’s heavy and stiff enough that it’s sort of standing up by itself, with one sleeve a little farther forward than the other.  I don’t know why, but it strikes me funny.  I usually hate hate HATE and suck suck SUCK at meet and greets – probably those two things are interrelated, eh? – but I’m going to try to be a little different about that.  In the long term, it’s not very positive for anybody.  So in a few I’ll slap the jacket back on and walk back across the street.

The meeting today was in my relatively new capacity as someone with some responsibility for this organization, so I was a little nervous and not sure what to expect.  About a third of the people in the room were folks I’ve known for a while and liked, including the lady running the meeting (I’ve said before that if I could have worked for her, we would still be living in the Central time zone).  It’s a big step up from the smaller groups I’ve had leadership roles in before, but still they seem like a good group, fairly laid back for the size we’re talking, and I think I may fit in.  Although I’m still going to have to do some figuring out of things as I go along.

Amusingly, without any planning whatsoever, the room aligned today with all the men on one side and all the women on the other.  Even as a couple of other people came in, gave reports, and left, the pattern continued.  We were all laughing about it.  I think mostly the women came in early and sat down facing the windows and the guys filled in the other side where there was space.  But there were a few cootie jokes thrown around there for a while.  Which is especially funny when you consider that I was probably the youngest, or at worst third youngest person there.

I forgot to mention how flying northward yesterday it became obvious that the leaves are much brighter and more colorful the farther north you go.  Back home they’re really just starting to change; here they’re full bore and gorgeous.  So I guess I get to experience a few extra days of the full autumnal explosion, and that’s pretty cool.

Sadly, the weather has taken a big turn for the Suck.  Last night was stunning, mid-60s and crisp with the street musicians and the passersby and everything.  It was hot enough that I left my window open last night, and this morning?  Mid-40s and rain, and that’s where it’s been all day, with the wind out of the northeast and whitecaps visible on the lake outside the conference room window.

I woke up this morning, looked at the alarm clock, and figured that Dys should have been just then getting up to get Boy to school.  Knowing Dys’s relationship with sleep and alarm clocks (deep lust and eternal hostility, respectively) I pondered calling home.  But then I thought “Nah, she’s up and that’ll just be insultingly condescending or something.  Besides, I was up late reading.  Back to sleep.”  Uh, yeah.  She woke up two hours later.  Boy, in the meantime, had gotten up, made his breakfast, and was quietly playing video games.  He even took the dog out and fed her so her whining wouldn’t wake Mom up.  Little shit.

Belatedly, in reply to Laura’s Tweet, NO, nobody at work ever commented on my new piercings.  I was amazed.   I finally did point it out to the one coworker, and her only comments were “Did you have it done before and re-do it?”  and “They do them that big for the first time nowadays?”  But that was only after I asked her whether or not she was going to give me crap.  Everybody else?  Either 1)  They look so natural on me that they didn’t notice they were new, which is Dys’s theory; 2)  They really are just that oblivious, 3)  They think it’s a midlife crisis/desperate ploy for attention and they’re not playing along.  Take your pick.

Dys knew I was coming to this meeting when I had it done, and she asked if the people here would freak.  My answer was that I was gonna do it eventually, so there’d always be a “first” meeting where I showed up like this, so might as well be now.  But really I don’t see any of these people more than a few times a year at most, so they’re even less likely to remember if I had ’em before.  I did wonder how accepting they’d be for a day or three, but then I remembered that another of my colleagues (very good guy) is a big part of this group, and he’s a gay white man in his mid-40s with shoulder-length dreadlocks.  Not braids, not cornrows, actual dreads.  So I’m thinking “Hey, if they can not blink at him, I’m golden.”

So now I’m gonna kick back for a few before the meet & greet.  I wonder if there will be booze?  Because I’m much more charming when I’m too buzzed to realize when I’m bombing…