Curiouser and Curiouser

Totally forgot to post this.

I've been driving my dad's beat up old Taurus for 5+ years now. A few weeks ago, he called me out of the blue to tell me that he may have found me a car. I said great, my car still runs fine, but whatever. No big hurry.

Last week, he tells me to take Thursday off so we can go to the DMV and swap the titles.

...What?

So you did find a car. Thanks for letting me know.

What kind of car is it, Dad?

"A silver one!"

...Thank you. That was so helpful, I'm speechless.

So I headed down nice and early, and thanks to the lovely people at the DMV, we had titles/insurance/registration/plates swapped and done with in less than two hours. Whoa!

It turns out, I'm now the owner of a silver Pontiac G6 with red interior lighting. It's awesome. It makes me want to play Splashdown all the time.

The best part about the car? The price. It belonged to one of my dad's employees, who blew a cylinder in it and was going to scrap it, but gave it to my father on the condition that he haul it away himself. Papa agreed, as the car was otherwise in fantastic shape, and took it to my mechanic cousin. They found an engine with less than 40k miles on it, slapped on new tires, cleaned the damn thing, and fixed up the climate control. Car looks like new, runs like a dream, and total money paid to get it so?

Less than $1800.

I'm so happy with it. The only trouble is, I need to find an adapter for my iPod (no tape deck in this one), and the car is crazy fast. I can go 80 and not feel it. I just need to keep an eye on that, but otherwise, I couldn't be happier. And I need to find a way to repay my dad and cousin - probably grooming the latter's dog for a year and cooking something low-cal yet palatable for the former.

I love my car.

Friday was a lot of fun. After shooting, I wandered aimlessly around Boston/Cambridge for an hour or so, then headed to dinner at Mary Chung's. jingsaw and Tara were already there, so we got to chill for a bit, then were quickly joined by bleemoo, who I see vaguely often but never really hang out with. After interacting with him for a bit, I decided that that needs to change.

Sitting between jingsaw and bleemoo was an entertaining challenge. Someone was either kicking me or fighting with me at any given point in time, so trying to hold a conversation with one or the other was fraught with constant danger.

I am very easily baited. I will fight you.

I also now have an indefinitely-standing accord with bleemoo, the conditions of which are vague but straightforward: if I ever manage to creep him out, he will do whatever I say. We shook on it. I have a challenge.

londo was one of the latecomers, along with my own elenuial, though they sat at the end of the table and tried to come up with a sadistic version of musical chairs to explain the extra place setting we had. Good times.

Afterwards, we headed to an ice cream/tea/coffee place that I can't remember the name of (though it was one of those hipster franchises) and talked more about larp. I got to have an extended conversation with Tara about her character in Martha Stewart's, as well as how we feel about characters in general, with a few of the other occasionally jumping in to offer their two cents or torment me for being an easy mark.

I really like Tara. Trouble is, she's my Type to a capital T, and that might make things awkward for me later on. But I also want to say screw it and ignore that, even though it may come back to bite me in the butt later, because she's ridiculously cool to hang out with.

We headed to Xmortis after that, where I met up with a chunk of the WPI crew (and redfishie, which was a nice surprise!). I ended up chatting with one of rigel's coworkers for half an hour about tango, which was awesome, and it turns out that he and I have very similar philosophies on the dance. We've promised each other to dance together and keep each other informed of milongas and whatnot - yay for tangueros.

Speaking of dancing, I got to dance with some really great dancers (and also total strangers) while on the floor. I've noticed this kind of process at clubs by which you ask-but-don't-ask someone to dance. Mostly, this was enlightening to me because a lot of goth dancing is dancing alone-but-together in true goth fashion. So I would dance, and either I would end up close enough to someone and they'd turn to me, or vice versa. And suddenly, I had a dance partner! Once or twice, a person would come up to me and make contact, and the feel of unfamiliar hands on my hips would turn me around without missing a beat. It was fun.

But I also did a lot of watching, and when someone does that to you, you can either: a) accept them by dancing closer and acknowledging their presence or b) reject them by pretending that they don't exist and moving away like you were totally going in that direction anyway. I tried my hand at this game, with great success, and even got complimented. There's something potentially creepy yet flattering (I took it as the latter) when the person behind you puts a hand on your shoulder and their lips to your ear telling you how fun it is to watch you dance. Especially when they're rather cute, and great dancers themselves. So I danced with him for a bit, eventually making my way back to familiar faces, but it was a neat little rush.

And I'm not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, but sometimes I can't help but wish that if I'm ever complimented, it's not on being tiny and cute. I feel like a dick for even thinking it, since compliments are rare and appreciated nonetheless, but it's still in the back of my mind.

Then home and sleep and exhaustion, only to teach the next day and see two of my favorite classes off. The good news is that I'm seeing a lot of them back for Intermediates, but I'll miss their puppyhood all the same.

Look at that. I ended a longer-than-anticipated post with a random segue into puppies. If my blog could cringe, it would.