Sometimes it really amazes me how susceptible I am. I've only owned my pilot for a little over forty-eight hours, and I already find that, when writing by hand, I try to use Graffiti instead of standard characters. All I can say is that I hope learning Greek (which has been a plan for several years now, but requires going to a real school) is this easy.

The weekend in Grass Valley had its surreal moments, but on the whole it was enjoyable. We spent the majority of our time gaming, which wasn't really much of a surprise -- the last chance we had to do an intensive Mage session was Thanksgiving. Saturday we (Al&Sheryl&Robin, Czr, Chrisber, Marith, and myself) went out to lunch at a Mexican place and really terrified the waitresses without even meaning to. I guess that while in the Bay Area a group of people talking about vampires is passe, in Grass Valley it's still worrisome. Marith pointed out that our discussion (which at one point involved removing brains from bodies) probably made the waitresses think of Heaven's Gate. No wonder the service was slow ... although you'd think they'd want to get us out of the restaurant as fast as possible.

After lunch we went back to the house. ran some more of 'Chryse and Slade and Jenny nearly get killed in Mexico City', which is a plot thread which has been dangling since Halloween. The perils of only gaming six times a year.

Jeremy and Rachel showed up late in the afternoon, and Harold with them. After various amounts of discussion we put Mexico City back on hold and started in on 'Getting Slade Back and Proving Martin Exist(s/ed)'. This kept us busy until our 9pm dinner reservation at Country Rose, which is a nice little restaurant in Nevada City with a dangerous selection of appetizers. We sang "Happy Birthday" at Al, who suffered it all with good grace.

Sunday everyone started getting up at the unholy hour of 8am so that everyone could shower and we could start gaming at 9. I protested vehemently and slept through the entire process, ending up with very little hot water left when I got into the shower. The sleep was definitely worth it. I don't remember much about the gaming, except that by the end of it we had Slade back and a few more people believed in Martin. The real high point of the day for me (other than finally finishing Mary Renault's Fire From Heaven, which is a truly excellent book) was when Robin (Al & Sheryl's son) decided he was going to start walking, and demonstrated it by walking from Al over to me, then back again. When pointed in any other direction he just fell over. I was grinning like a madwoman; I really like kids and am looking forward to having my own. Not a usual stance for a female sysadmin in the 90's, I've discovered.

You know, I've never worked someplace that was as much of a boy's club as Cadence is. Not that anyone has been rude to me, aside for some (quite understandable) worries that I might not be able to carry the 70lb monitors. Even that might have bugged me, except the person questioning my ability then immediately questioned his own, preserving the pretense of gender equality in this workplace.

No, what gets to me is just the homogenous maleness of it all. All the women here seem to be in marketing, so they all wear skirts and high heels and too much makeup; when they pass me in the halls they tend to stare at my jeans-and-sneakers approach. Even the women who are in MITS (all three of them) dress up more for work than I did when I was in a pseudo-management position at Netcom.

And then there's the morning staff meetings. We sit around, discussing issues. A pager goes off. The guy looks down at it, groans, and says, 'I knew I never should've given my wife my pager number.' Numerous wisecracks about how women should be given as little information as possible fly around. Aside from the other new hires (both male), the youngest person at the table is probably in his forties. I feel like I've landed on an alien planet. I haven't decided yet whether or not it's a hostile one.

I'm not happy with the way I'm writing. I ramble too much, I don't explain anything, and in the end all I'm doing is relating the fairly mundane events of my day. Then again, I've only done three entries. Practise makes perfect and all that.