No sleep 'til... I'd like to say Brooklyn, but I'm thinking it'll be more like sometime Thursday night.
Yesterday, with tagalong-sweet-enough-a-guy-but-kinda-in-the-way Gary following us on our shopping spree (Paul bought RAM which I showed him how to install until he glowed with pride, and I glowed with how happy he looked in the moment, and I bought a vacuum cleaner with filters and attatchments and doohickeys and swivel-thingamabobbers and little lights that go on or sit around and blink or dance the occasional jigs...) was odd.
With someone there, I couldn't "jump Paul in a parking lot" like I'd promised earlier that morning, half asleep and murmurring softly at each other across aged and dusty wires.
But it didn't stop us much from jostling, and play-punching and hugging and sneaking hand-holds and arms-about-the-waist as I explained this or that about motherboards to him, and he explained what a "hepa" filter was.
We cavorted off to some sports bar for dinner, the three of us starving and jittery from having skipped breakfast and lunch and whatever we usually have in between, and when the waiter returned and dripping charm from his starkly starched collar, asked if we wanted more coffee
Paul said:
"She does, she's a PROGRAMMER! She needs LOTSA coffee!"
He sounded, again, so proud.
To know me.
Of course, this resulted in the waiter joking about whether or not I could teach him to hack, and my very seriously responding with "just go have a look at Packetstorm and have a scour through a few of the texts there, try to write your own script or two... But whatever you do, try writing your own first before using someone else's because then you become dependent on other people's code and essentially become the bane of the thought-race across information technology... The *DANH DANH DANH* SCRIPT KIDDIE!" and on and on.
Flattering, I have to admit.
I seem to be using that word a lot.
And so yesterday, I watched wrestling with the kids after all, all the while learning new moves and lifts and ways to hurt myself with a puny little 10lbs dumbell, being carried up and down hallways as if I was some fragile little doll
and sitting there, curled up against the cold in arms too taught with strength to be human, I didn't want to leave.
So we put in a movie.
And I finally got to see "Aliens" or whichever the second flick in the series is. And tired and cold and caffeinated, I jumped at the scrabbling little white beasts, I jumped at every teeny thing, and with every jump, I felt arms tighten about me.
And so I feel strange. Tired, and sore, and very, very strange.