gement | In which I am a harbinger of snow.

Good morning. Let's just make this post about Seattle. Portland coming soon.

Let's see. The 30th I got into town and brought snow with me. I went to

rigel_p's dinner at Chang's with too many people to list, some of which I was quite surprised to see again.

datavore gave me a new Apples to Apples deck (yay!) which we promptly played at

cow's house. We walked through the winter wonderland to Broadway Grill, but I left before any cross-friend drama started because of the smoke, and thus slept soundly.

I was cuddled by Jeremy, the person I was most surprised to see at dinner. The snow made transit scary, and he lives on the other side of town... but mostly we hadn't seen each other in three years and were both really hoping for some cuddle time. It was nice, and inspired some surprisingly fierce emotional reactions, some old baggage I didn't know I was still carrying and some new tensions and frustrations I'd added to the pile. My hostess was quite understanding about waking up to me crying at six in the morning.

The 31st I meant to go playing the snow, but I stayed in bed and knit and napped instead, and then rain washed the snow away. My big accomplishment was packing for Portland and finding harlequin diamond tights for the party. The party was the usual thrill of old friends and new flirtations; there's something wonderful about a party that's actually optimized for safe flirting, and as far as I can tell it comes down to two factors explicitly set down in the party charter: that whatever happens at the party stays at the party, and that no areas of the party territory are amenable to guests having sex. The new Nerdvana hot tub RULES, and I made a couple contacts for my job hunt, if that ever gets off the ground. Ahem. No performance anxiety about formalizing my resume, nosir.

This party led to one flirting complication that I'm still trying to figure out how to handle appropriately. At a party that large, there are always a few people who Just Don't Get It. They can't read body language, don't know what's too far, and can make even a casual touch feel slimy. Since I'm flirting with total strangers, I'm accepting contact from a lot of people I don't know, and thus look like I'm open to a casual arm around the waist or a kiss, because, for the most part, I am open to that. My choices when dealing with the few slimeys seem to be:

1) put up with it because I've left myself open and I shouldn't be rude. This sets off all my horrible passive buttons and is pretty much out.

2) screw the niceties and tell them to shove off because I'm just point-blank not accepting contact I don't enjoy. This would hurt their feelings since they are obviously the odd men out, and might discourage contact from people I do want to flirt with, and hurting people is painful to me. This ideologically seems like the line that should be drawn, but it's very difficult for me to be that mean to someone.

3) accept the casual contact but then find an immediate reason to wander off, along with not giving any encouraging body language. This is the tack I usually take, and I'm still not sure if it's a cop-out or an appropriate societal signal or both.

Thursday the 1st I woke up at the crack of dark to haul my tired little self to the Amtrak station, where the train to Portland was delayed by over two hours. Still, it was a very pleasant trip, as

capnexposition is an excellent traveling companion and knew a good place for breakfast in the International District. I forgot just how comfortable Amtrak is, and the prices have come back down since 9/11, so I can start taking it again more regularly. There's no way I can stick the Portland trip in this post. It will be separate. All I will note here is that I once again brought snow with me.

Monday the 5th we traversed in the reverse direction, on a significantly less comfortable train, but it still beats the hell out of Greyhound. We played Gin Rummy with the minor arcana, and I only lost by 85 points, which is remarkable since capnexposition is a bit of a shark and is better at recognizing the cards by sight. Bridgett's mom retrieved us safely in Seattle and kindly gave us both rides home before it started snowing again, which it did. I return with Bridgett's beautiful clay dumbek (sp?), a clay drum that's optimal for accompanying belly dancing. I intend to learn to play it.

The 6th I woke again to drifts of snow on the window sill, and again I spent the day napping and knitting. My accomplishment this time was to make a good trip to Safeway and make dinner! I made a giant pot of chili, because I don't know how to scale down chili. I fed it to myself,

plantae,

cow, and

ilmarinen, with mini-Bundt chocolate cakes with sugar glazing for dessert. Reactions seem to be good, except for cow who would have really preferred that I hadn't experimented with throwing pork into the mix.

We were also entertaining a prospective roommate, which means

plantae wouldn't have to move! (If I didn't have an iron clad rule against extra exclamation points, that would have had about five.) She's perfect. She's a recent convert to plantae's church, and it turns out she already knows a good chunk of plantae's second-hand friends, and wants to start a smoke/drink free goth club in Ballard. We were all twitching with glee and threatening to show up with a moving van. I hope we didn't scare her off. I think the chocolate cake I gave her was a selling point, though. Hope hope hope. She may also have a job for me working with books. Hope hope hope.

Now it is morning again, and I am pondering new things I have learned about people. Sorry, I can't be more specific than that, but to those of you who have confided in me, thank you.