december 14

too much dishing

Tired tired tired. I am tired. And I have a proposal to finish, bills to pay, schedules to finish for next week. And all I want to do is go home because in a few hours A* will be there. Yaay! We'll both probably fall asleep in front of the TV before we can do any "connecting," but at least I'll be asleep in his arms.

I'm also tired because I stayed out too late with friends at a lame industry event and at an even lamer bar. The event isn't worth mentioning, although I will anyway:

It used to be the hot interactive industry gathering and where I made the contacts that got me my first job in web producing. Eventually I ran the event. It was the hip place to see and be seen.

Then the economy tanked and the event just got weird. Everyone was unemployed. You couldn't talk shop because no one had one anymore. The big wigs went away and now you're surrounded by people who are just there to get dates.

Last night we declared it the group for Skanks and Geeks because that's who was there: Geeks, and I'm not talking about smart people who work in tech, I'm talking about guys with poor social skills and worse hygeine who like to think they're brilliant when really, they only know how to write a little code, not build a product that actually does anything that anyone cares about.

And the Skanks, well, they were a sight. Lots of tight red velvet with buldges in the wrong places and ratty, bleached hair. Polly and I spent a fair amount of time commenting on innappopriate undergarments and explaining to a mutual male friend that this was okay because if we can see the undergarments, you're doing it wrong anyway.

After, Polly wanted to go to what was billed to be the next best bar in Portland, but has turned out to be a huge flop. (She already knew this and just wanted to go and complain. Why this makes her feel better is still a mystery to me. It's something she doesn when she's feeling insecure.) The bar is called Lush, but it's anything but. Words we came up to describe the interior: austere, anemic, sterile, cold, medical, hollow. A place called Lush, we decided should feel organic, colorful, tactile, warm.

In the end, my entire evening was about bitching and complaining and it wasn't much fun. I love a good dish with Polly and am just as much of a gossip queen as she is. But combine her with the rest of this snotty group and it's just too much. I spent six straight hours judging, sizing up, snickering, and wrinkling my nose. I can handle that when there's some other conversation thrown in there that's insightful or funny or intellectual. We were something out of a bad teen movie.

I could have been doing something much more productive. Like sleeping.

- december 14