Heh...

So Sarah's down with Joelle. Julie is out of town. Mikell seems to have a tiredness-causing disease of some kind...perhaps too much Harry Potter on her brain. And John, the co-worker that I'm closest to is able to leave on a 3 week trip to Uganda with Solar Light for Africa. In fact our entire "EcoPower", e.g. renewable energy, program is going to Uganda on this trip - though that program is only 2 people...it'll still be a chunk of the office gone for a long time. Anyhow, the end result of this is that I'm kinda bored and lonely. Given my aversion to attempting to meet strangers in random social settings like bars or wherever else you meet people this absence of others being available poses a bit of a problem. It's fascinating that despite the fact that when I'm around people I often desire peace and quiet in isolation...when I'm forced into these situations, I am utterly miserable. Does that make sense to any of you?

Anyhow, through a random chance event (namely him returning a call of mine a week late), I ended up talking to Nick for a while. I should do that more often. It was comforting to hear someone else agreeing with the loneliness of only having a couple of friends around (in direct contrast to Olin) and with the uncertainty of what the heck we're going to do when we're done at Olin. Nick is also dogged by his desire to have a direct positive impact with his career. So yah, I should talk to Nick more; it actually helped things.

Then I started a conversation I shouldn't have (should have just ended interactions with people for the evening and read my book/retreated into World of Warcraft) and began to watch as my own memories replayed in that conversation began to sucker-punch me again. Bah!

On the positive side, I actually got a PAYCHECK on Friday from ERT! (For those of you who didn't know, I was theoretically working for nothing this summer at both places) And the Director mentioned that we should have a conversation at some point about my post-graduation plans. Which I managed to utter a good reply to after a 10 second+ shock-induced lag. I don't know if this meets my "saving the world" bar, but I think it's closer than most traditional engineering options.

That thought actually leads well into a thought that occurred to me this afternoon as I was walking through the Air and Space museum wondering why I was there when the small little space-art section of the museum had intrigued me far more. I think it might be that technical problems fascinate me on some abstract intellectual plane, but they just can't hold my interest for prolonged periods. Maybe this is best expressed in my interest in history. I can walk through the American History Museum and spend eons (Ted will attest to this) slowly going through the Presidential History section - effectively reading everything that was there. Then we go to Edison and the light-bulb and electricity/motors and I generally need to force myself to focus on a single thing long enough to actually realize what it is - nothing can really hold my focus. Same with the "information age" exhibit. I know it's cool stuff and historical technology and all that, but frankly my dear, I don't give a damn.

So I don't know. Maybe it means nothing, but history and societies might be more interesting than semiconductors and servos...Or at least I think they might be able to better hold my attention? But then I can't seem to get started into The World is Flat so maybe I don't know what I'm talking about and nothing actually captures my interest at this point.

So I think I'm going to put off all the stuff I should be doing for a bit longer and try to finish The Big U by Neal Stephenson - I ended up deciding to avoid the mob last night and skip the HP madness...however I just talked to Mikell over IM for too long and am now buying the UK version...and needed to fight the tempation to buy all the UK versions at once...