The past 24 hours have been a lot more like 240.
And HR women are not to be trusted. Especially when they drag you off for a haircut.
Yesterday I had a big head. Today, my head is minuscule, the curls all settled close and sheeplike, and far shorter than I'd wanted. I'm just waiting for someone to pinch my cheeks like they used to like the last time I had short cutesy hair...
It's all round and layered and to my shoulders again.
But it's only hair. And I think I'm getting less stares this way.
Although yesterday morning, head ensconced in the presentation I was SO not ready for, I made a mistake I knew better than to make.
I got onto the last car on the metro. The empty one.
Head sunk deep into one last review of the principal document, I didn't notice my neighbour squishing up to me until I smelled his breath.
He told me I was beautiful. I thanked him, awkwardly, realizing how alone I suddenly was.
He proceeded to insist that he was nice enough to tell me that I'm beautiful and that therefore I should be his girlfriend. Repeatedly. Aggressively. With nasty, scary fucking breath.
His logic still eludes me, but either way I'm far too caffeinated to care anymore. I didn't make the same mistake on the way home, despite being way too panicked about the other presentation Nicolas decided to tell me about very very last minute.
The one directly to the bank.
This morning.
I was up until two in the morning, with Annik and Caro chattering happily on my bed, panicked and startled into a high-speed pre-exam sort of intense studying mode.
Somehow, it went smoothly.
I answered questions I didn't know I had answers to. I shook hands in a daze, trying desperately to match titles to faces, all except one.
All except their head security geek.
The one with the beautiful long hair and excited light in his eyes.
The one with the unfortunate name (I'm strangely superstitious about names, and while his last name resembles cf's rather closely... anyway.), the one with the unfortunate name and identically matching "I'm going to a big meeting" uniform as mine. Corporate black pants, charcoal grey pinstriped shirt.
Both just a little streched over matching beer bellies.
When I mentioned the remote SCR problem, he said "why can't we just forward the linux device using STUNNEL..." and my eyes went all wide and so did everyone elses'.
Theirs because they were utterly lost, mine because I'd simply never thought of it. It's simple, and utterly brilliant.
After the meeting, everyone standing around to ask questions about "this new security person that they've heard such things about", I was lost in a head-to-head with Mr. Unfortunate Name.
Eventually, I had to shake hands and break it off, and promise to return to the subject with him when it became more relevent to the planning stages.
But wow. It's been a long time since I've seen that sort of geek passion in a banking environment.
I have to pack my bags for Limoges. I have to do my dishes. I have to switch projects in my head and get over this silly crush I've developped on someone who is brilliant and eloquent and still geekily humble who I will hopefully be working closely with, at least as long as I stay on this project.
Which shouldn't be long, and all other plans proceed as usual, and in the meantime, I have a brain full of an entirely new architecture that was mentioned last week, that I drowned in this weelend, and that I have to master for Monday.
I'll be working the weekend again to catch up to Nicolas and Hubert, and the clients.
I might have a good excuse to skip next weekend as well, to not go to the perigord with a group that I am suddenly extremely uncomfortable with.
Seb is panicking, Guillaume is playing pouting puppydog games.
I, however, have a little head with great big ideas racing through them again.