LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIFE isn't interesting unless it's your own

My compartmentalization of social groups has tried to reverse itself, instead leading to a single but only mildly heterogenous group. Not nearly varied enough as I need to let full rein go and be fine and good at the end of the day when the different scenarios and interests rear up. Nooo. Before, back there, I had a social group for every compartment and each group was separate, being aware of each other only in that they knew I knew others. It was optimized. I was never more than a little clash, a little off, but there's only the one social group here and because of that it gets all the odd parts when they activate instead of it just being the right group at the right time. On the one hand, it appears to be making me larger than life through some unexplained effect (likely something related to the Social Doppler), on the other, it's a little bit of a concern for when those bits that are off for the group feel the need to manifest socially in that group, though that hasn't happened all that much yet. Most of the old scenes had the opinion of strange, but just a little. It never got to be Big Weird because all things had their outlet. If I don't find a friend to crudely primal male with, I am going to get in trouble. It's honestly the hardest friend type to find: either they're dumb, boring, assholes, or not open to much abstractness. It's all well and good to have friends that think you're deep or smart or whatever eidolon trait they see in the shape of the clouds, but after tapping into the Primal Male, sometimes I need to remark about tits and watch stupid action/horror movies and talk candid and casual on sex and share that side of masculinity which is essentially a horrible monster that maybe never gets acted on.

I did karaoke for the first time. Turns out that I have a good singing voice, but I'm not necessarily good at singing. I got Danzig, Ballroom Blitz, Elvis, an accidental country song, and a few others just fine, but song with too much note-matching or flipping about the scales leaves me a bit behind. Still, when I say I got Danzig and Ballroom Blitz, I tell you this: I ROCKED it. People didn't know me from Adam and yet they were rocked. Behold the power of Rock.

Weirdly, I think I may be on the edge of figuring out how to pick up women in bars. A breakthrough is near, I can feel it!

Minor cultural difference: Whereas in the Cities, almost every bar had a happy-hour deal on some day of the week involving jag-bombs, the majority of people here aren't even sure what it is. Including some bartenders. I didn't even want one. I just couldn't remember what was in it after having not slept for three days.

I applied for the NSF grant. It took longer than I wanted and I still have to send thank-yous to those that sent me letters of rec. If I get it, then I'm so free and clear I am like prelapsarian air on a planet of utopian-communist proto-people. It's 2 to 3 times more pay and no reliance on the supervisor for income and a small cash allowance for buying research equipment or paying subjects. I'm not going to get the NSF grant. I'll be applying for the DOD grant, as said earlier, which is still twice as much cash and freedom plus a couple years employment after I get the PhD rightfully mine as due for existing just right.

Sometimes I drive to school and then bike from the parking lot. Shameful.

I'm coming home for some of Winter Break. Hitting the Cities on the 20th, returning the 2nd. Better damn well offer me some New Years Parties to hit, friends. Or I'll cry, cold and alone. I won't really cry. I never could lie to you.

I eat out every day for lunch. I can afford it. And if I don't goddamn get out of that goddamned office every few hours I am going to become one of Those Guys and be broken, dull, and entirely incomprehensible outside of my own specialty. Also, the air smells like construction work down there, I hate soggy sandwiches, have little patience for food preparation, and it gives me an excuse to bike around. It's not a habit that's likely to stick for the full run of my tenure here, but it's good for now. I'm also looking forward to making the right kinds of friends to go exploring restaurants with. Or a girlfriend. Apparently, girls eat too and they tend to be a bit pickier about eating well, so it's all good influence on me there on in.

It's snowing in the Cities. It's moderate Fall here. It's unreasonable. Unreasonably awesome. Fuck snow. No, it's not pretty. It's white. It's racist. You don't see much snow in, say, Central America or the middle of Africa do you? Racist racist snow. But mostly, fuck ice, fuck jackets, fuck mittens and gloves, scarves are ok, fuck unbikeable roads, fuck that.

The research involves brains, skill acquisition, magical magnet vision, programming, and a robot hand.

I'm also still plugging away at various projects. Unfortunately, a major chunk of most of them was on a now-missing zip-drive. So I've begun new projects while trying to finish a few oversized ones leftover, like essays on perceptual culture and the evils of science and the dangers of science philosophy. You know. For the kids.

There are four women I'm interested in:
There's a particularly cute Korean girl in my grad-student cohort. She speaks pretty well, though thinks she doesn't. I want to be attracted to her, or that is I could be, but the language difference and the shy-vs-bold difference and how she's a bit isolated because of the first two make me actually feel guilty and uncertain at the idea of allowing the observation of attractiveness turn into actual attraction. Guilt thanks to those "humanizing factors" leftover from before (ceteranna noted the change, back when) and uncertainty because of my personal reliance on verbal skills to navigate any kind of romantic negotiations. Confidence and good looks only get you so far. If the words don't make sense, it's just a cavemen with most of his teeth hitting the ground with a stick. Conversely, thanks to the quirks of my attentional processes, though I know she's interesting enough, it's very difficult to get to where enough is understood to be interested and I have no doubt that the inevitable grinding of those subeterranean mental gears that power and twist a mechanism of efficiency would come to a null-scenario conclusion. That is, it wouldn't last. This is less than arrogance as there is a non-negative chance she finds me somewhat attractive.

Then, there's the tall blonde cruise-director of the group. She's pretty, self-directed, A-type, Canadian, and fairly reasonable, but almost hopelessly concrete-thinking. She's classy, fairly resilient, and open mind, if in a relatively conservative way though not politically so. She also seems to be a bit sheltered, but in the way of someone raised by that type of parent who is health-conscious and pragmatic without being hippies or engineers but certainly never buying cable or eating candy. There are other issues. She's been single for a couple years. Had a failed initialization of relationship with another member of the cohort. Is inexperienced, which isn't so bad necessarily, but reaches a 100% level of non-experience, as she puts it, "below the belt". And I've grown to be... fairly sexual over the last year and a half or so. It's not just a matter of supply, you terrible bastards, but of a discomfort in the idea of being anyone's original experience. I don't want to be anyone's first, just their best. I do what I can. And while we're in the zone where we're all disappointed at my heavy set of shallow traits, she's not the physical type I'm used to being attracted to. In fact, she'd almost be the furthest from the type I'd ever kissed. I hate that it seems I have a type. It may be a lack of counterexample, easily could, so it's a not discounting measure, but a thought. Lastly, she is the social secretary, such as it goes, of the first years as well as being a major driving force of the statistics work-group I'm a member of. Though I'm the most attracted to her of the girls here, she's also the biggest loss if a relationship proves nonviable after testing. This is less than arrogance because I am approaching 99.9% certainty she is attracted to me as well.

The other two are less interacted with. The spunky dev. psych child torturer and the half-native Canadian. Spunky is cute, energetic, upbeat, funny, and with good humor, but it's a good bet it's more energy than I can bring to match and while she's for'em, I'm against camping and being awake in the mornings. And there's the uncertain nature of the relationship with the friend she lives with. Ah. The half-native has been a bit distant from the group as a whole and it's hard to tell what to make of her. She has these intense glass-clear eyes that stop just short of being piercing and a sense that she'll be the kind of old woman you can accept your friends having crushes of various types on. I can taste the stories she hasn't told yet. There's a whole set there and that central curiousity that powers the gears makes me grit my teeth in very slight frustration at not having easy access to the notes in her head. She smells like a damn banquet of anecdotes. Plus, she's sharp, open-minded and open-voiced in twisty ways, and with the vibrational sound of the alternative, but in a tone I don't know as I've heard before except in echoes.

There's a fifth, but she doesn't count as she's just a list of traits without details that's a friend of a labmate: smart, cute, pierced. S'bout it.
And a spattering of attractive types here and there, but they're mostly nameless faces and a spanish woman in leopard print. I am a sucker for leopard print.

I'm really just waiting for some random woman to show up, like before. Or at least an introduction to a social group entirely separate from the grad work.