Cute and Available

I met Teach's brother-in-law yesterday. He's quiet hip looking, and kinda cute. Major turn offs: drinking and smoking. Ungh.

Oh well, back to the drawing board.

1 Girl, 2 Bikes

Right now I have two bikes in my apartment. One hybrid (the one I've had since last year), and one road bike. It's not my road bike. Not yet, at least. It still currently belongs to Teach. I'm probably going to buy it. She wants $300-350 for it. Which is a steal, considering she paid $750 for it two years ago. $350 is more than well within my budget, since I just want an entry-level road bike. But, I want to do a bit of shopping around.

What's that? How'd I end up with her bike in my apartment?

Well, you see... We got together yesterday for me to test ride her bike. There were all sorts of logistics involving her car, her husband's car, my car, and three bikes. We started out the day with two, both on her husband's car.

After I test rode her bike she wanted to go test ride bikes (she's selling because she's buying a new one). We put her bike on my car just in case her husband decided to go home (we left him at the park) before we finished, and I decided to buy her bike—this is important. Then we went to the bike shop where Teach fell in love. She bought the bike, which we then put on my car before heading back to the park (where her car, and husband, still were).

We moved her new bike to her husband's car, and then decided to send her old bike home with me. Why? Well, she was going to have to put the old bike in her car, and they have guests in town, so there was going to be people-juggling, and, what if I decide that I want it? This way I'll already have it. Nice bonus? I get to test ride it some more and make sure.

Bill and I are going to test ride some other bikes this weekend and see what I think. But, honestly, unless I find one I'm positively in love with, I'll probably buy Teach's. It's in good condition, and it's cheap. And, we all know how cheap I am. (Hint: very.)

Dreams, Desires, and Damn Cheap Plane Tickets

Plane tickets from Seattle to Sydney are currently approximately $600.

I've wanted to go to Australia since I was 11.

And, now, that's well within feasible. I wish I had someone to go with, or knew someone well enough to bum a couple of weeks of couch time off of down there. I really wish I could get Bill to go with me. We could spend 2 weeks trekking around. Oh, man. I'd love that so amazingly much!

Road Bike

My friends have been telling me for a while now that what I really need is a road bike. I believed them—sorta. But, consuming that belief was my fear of, oh, what's the word? Oh yeah, DYING.

This weekend I rented a road bike and took it out.

Let me just say: I'm sold. Granted, my bits are a little (lot) banged up, but for that I blame the seat. I'm definitely getting one. Not sure exactly when, but it will be soon. Very soon. Actually, maybe ridiculously soon, since the Apple ride is coming up and I want to ride it. What better way to get my cycling wheels than to ride 100 freaking miles on a scary brand new bike? Oh, there are probably a lot of better ways.

And About My Promotion?

Cyclist screwed up big time this weekend, and I ended up cleaning up the mess. Normally, I wouldn't mind, but this has been happening with increasing frequency. He's generally pretty good at his job, but his level of dissatisfaction is negatively impacting his performance. And, it's starting to impact me.

This morning our boss pulled me into his office. He told me how people are losing confidence in Cyclist's work, and how they compare his work to mine, and look at how few bugs get through when I'm testing. First off: thanks for acknowledging that. Second off: nice to see other teams picking me as a favorable comparison. Thirdly: do you, also, wonder if they were asking for me?

Then he asked me if I would shadow Cyclist and make sure he does his job thoroughly and well, at least until he steps up his performance to previous levels.

I agreed.

And, I really wanted to ask, "would now be a good time to talk about my promotion?"

I didn't.

But, honestly? Where is the question that I don't deserve it, again?

Hiking Buddy

I wanted to go hiking. And I didn't want to go alone. I invited Bill, but he made excuses which amounted to he just didn't want to go. Perhaps in a subconscious effort to remind him that other boys find me desirable, or maybe just because I'm a glutton for punishment, I invited Mr. Bland. He came along and we had a good enough time. I'll probably ask him to come hiking with me again.

Maybe just to remind Bill that boys like me. But, I hope mostly because I need a hiking buddy.

Assumptions and Confusion

"My best friend is a body builder."

While not exactly 100% accurate, it is pretty close—Bill wants to be a body builder, and is working hard towards that goal, but (thankfully) isn't quite there just yet.

As I uttered those contextually relevant words Mr. Bland's eyebrows shot up it total shock. I chuckled to myself, wondering what surprised him more: that my best friend is a body builder, or his assumption that my female best friend does body building. I set his mind at least partially at ease when I continued on and used the masculine pronoun to describe said body builder. But, resurprised him when he realized that this means that my best friend is a boy.

He didn't say anything in response to that. I wonder what he was thinking.

Funk

I've been in kind of a funk the last five or six days. I attributed it to the fact that the 30th marked the third anniversary of ExOfNote's suicide attempt and the end of our relationship. I was pretty confident in my self-assessment. I've also really needed a hug—a good hug—for about that long and Bill hasn't been available for the job.

Last night I was feeling particularly down, so I called Bill up and asked him if I could come sit on his couch for a bit. He said sure, and over I went.

As we sat there talking many topics were covered: how I should probably answer some questions about my life before I really start looking for someone, how I should just get over the ExOfNote thing, the girl he's seeing—so many things. At one point I noted that it has been a really rough week and he said, "I'm sorry I haven't really been paying attention to you for the last couple of weeks. I've been working on dating this girl."

"Meh," I dismissed, "we've talked about this—our relationship will change, has to change, when one of us starts dating someone."

And then, in that moment, the reason for my funk became clear—it isn't the dreadful anniversary, it's the subconscious knowledge that Bill's and my relationship as we've known it is ending. It could almost be likened to a break-up. A very odd and different break-up for a very odd and different relationship. Unfortunately, how do you do 'break-up' when you never did 'together'?