silent night

Knowing that I was alone for the holidays, some well meaning friends would not take no for an answer and dragged me out with them for a boozy night in LKF.  I will admit to feeling sorry for myself now and then without SB but I have also been enjoying the peaceful state of our home and the opportunity to curl up on the couch with some warm cider and my Kindle.  I would have enjoyed spending last night finding out what happened to [the fictionalized] Cromwell after Wolsey’s death but I suspected that this night of cheering me up was more necessary to my rescuers, who granted themselves a rare and guilt free night away from their children in order to carry out their mission of mercy.

The well intentioned couple brought along their neighbor, an architect, who they seated me next to with the assumption that the two of us would enjoy talking to each other or at the very least, have something to talk about.  They were wrong.  After the initial, "who do you work for?" question that was met with a firm that I confessed that I didn't know about, I asked him if there were any projects that I would be familiar with.  His response: "We're a very conceptual firm and we don't do a lot of mainstream stuff.  You wouldn't know any of my work." Well, okay then. After forcing myself to ask a few more polite questions I discovered that his firm specialized in using animation programs such as Maya.  Creating geometric designs using NURBS (Non-uniform rational basis spline) surface modeling is definitely a specialty field in architecture though not as special and elite as he might think; I took Maya classes along with 1/3 of my graduating class back in the day.  Though tempted to throw out some comment on bifurcation to clue him in (imagine the horror of a "mainstream" architect knowing your secret language!) I decided that it was horribly selfish of me to commandeer all of his attention and vacated my seat under the pretense of ordering a drink.  

Jake, a fitness instructor, ended up taking the seat next to His Hipster Holiness and I was free to start a conversation with two random South African women at the bar.  We talked about all sorts of meaningless things for almost an hour while I carefully avoided Jake's attempts to make eye contact. When I excused myself to the ladies' room, Jake cornered me in the hallway.

"Following women to the restroom is creepy," I told him.

"Please don't leave me with alone with that guy," he begged, "all he does is stare at the wall." I looked over and sure enough, His Hipster Holiness was staring off at apparently nothing with a cool, bored look.

"I'm sure you can find something to talk about.  You're both hipsters." I desperately wanted to return to conversing about socks or kittens or whatever it was that I was talking about with the random women.

"I'm not a hipster.  I just wear tight clothing."

Sadly, my conscience got the better of me and I agreed to join Jake in attempting to converse with HHH.  Of course, five minutes into the ordeal Jake jumped up to buy me a well earned drink and somehow got side-tracked.  Eventually I saw him chatting up the two South African girls, leaving me to suffer alone.

And that is how I spent the evening instead of feeling sorry for myself at home.

Comments

Anonymous said…
A cheap Belgian beers, a burger and (if you are so inclined) a game of Scrabble tomorrow?
Anonymous said…
Ooops - that was supposed to start with A nice gentle hike but my HTML skills are obviously rusty...
architart said…
That sounds like a winning agenda but unfortunately I have a coaching course this evening. Please let me know when you do something like this again, though.

I have never played Scrabble but I've always wanted to learn. That and chess. One day...
architart said…
I have joined HK hikers, but I will hold off on Scrabble until I learn the rules at least. Thank you for the links!