nags of a similar ilk

Andy IM'd me today, asking me if I had any lunch plans. I didn't have any at 11:42 when he first IM'd, though I almost had some when I realized a client's website was down. He offered, "I have a bike and want to ride it over to your house. We can go from there." He mentioned this after asking if I still had my fancy car.

Yeah, well, fancy car, eh? Sure, I still had that one S he knew about, but I also had another S, a more functional car for my life style (think, "carry crap," and "haul dogs," and "extra-large purse on wheels").

And, yes, that would be a Smith boy. Fast car? Smith boy? Yeah, lunch was about to be an adventure. What I didn't realize, however, was that he actually wanted the convertible, top down, wind through his hair. It's a beautiful, glorious, sun-filled day, and top-down was the way to spend it.

Clearly.

So, off we went, though in the purse and not the convertible. We ended up heading to Palo Alto, because Andy wanted to drive and wanted to drive fast. The extra horse power in the purse apparently made up for the lack of convertibleness, and we dashed (literally "dashed at a hundred miles an hour") up to Palo Alto for lunch.

We were all of maybe 10 minutes into our lunch conversation (conversations with Andy are always fun because he always has great stories to tell) when he casually mentioned who he had been dating before he went to SxSw, and who said ex was currently dating.

Can you hear the trumpets?

Suddenly, clouds I didn't know were overhead parted, the heavens opened up, spilling light and music and stark uncontrollably hysterical revelations upon me.

Last year at SxSW, I spent much of my time with a particular friend (go ahead, search the site, you'll figure out which friend that was), initially because he was the only person I knew at the conference, then later because it was fun to hang out with him and meet all of his friends, then later because his group was fun and inviting. That's the way of good conferences, you meet cool people, you hang out with them, sometimes those friendships continue afterward.

This year, said friend COMPLETELY dissed me. He'd talk to me, but was pretty distant, and didn't spend much time with me at all. I was puzzled, but, well, after last year, I fortunately knew other people at the conference, and everything was fine.

Turns out, that this friend is dating Andy's said ex, or near enough that spending time with me, or even inviting me to the same event as new girl would be DISASTROUS. I'm not sure why, but this Andy revelation completely explained everything, solved all of my puzzles and cleared up the lingering WTF I was having from the experience.

I could not stop laughing at lunch.

I think Andy was puzzled about my amusement. I've been trying so hard not to care about knowledge I have no right to know, trying so hard not to pry into topics that I REALLY want to know about. And here, wait a week, and the pieces I needed to complete the puzzle are handed to me, along with lunch, on a platter.

The conversation of course turned back towards various stories, including the lobby backstroke swim contest that gave Andy some serious rug burns on his arms (stupid wall, blocking his victory), and other stories of conquests. After lunch, we drove back to my house, and he hopped back on his bike to ride back to work. I watched him take off his shirt to ride, "Hey, the chicks dig it," and laughed.

As he rode off, I had to think to myself that, in a different life, I could have fallen in love with that man. There are few people I know with such a light soul and bright outlook. It's incredibly attractive and infectious. The ending would have been quite painful, but, damn, the ride would have been worth it.

I'm sitting in one of the last panels of the day, and I have to say my hunger is contributing to my annoyances with the speakers' grammatical errors. I know that English (and all languages) are ever-changing, and when I was kid, you didn't say bad when you meant good or have run on sentences or non-parallel sentences. No really.

But these two peeves have reared their ugly heads, and they're annoying me.

One panelist said something like,

"it's not about me abandoning one service for another..."

The correct use of the personal pronoun is not the objective case, but actually the possessive case when referring to a gerund. Specifically, in this case, the speaker should have said, "MY abandoning," not "me abandoning". The "me" refers to the "abandon."

Not 10 seconds before that statement, a different speaker made the comment

"It's about sharing data between different networks..."

when referring to a group of six or seven networks. "Between" is referring to a connection of two objects. "Among" refers to a connection of more than two objects. The speaker should have commented about sharing data AMONG different networks.

I'm pretty sure that very, very few people noticed these, or that anyone notices them much any more. As the language evolves, grammar will also evolve, specifically when the common usage because the rule. We don't use thee or thou or, sadly, the subjunctive case in common speak anymore. It happens, the language changes.

Doesn't mean I'm going to stop complaining about it.

Okay, so, I'm drying my hands in the bathroom, and turn to see a woman in front of me walking out with toliet paper stuck to her boot. This is quite humourous to me, so I hurry to run out behind her, whipping my backpack off my back to get my camera. Why, oh, why did I put my camera into my backpack? Why is it not in my front pocket and easily accessible?

She's out the door, and I'm grabbing the pack handle, hurrying out behind her, a few steps behind.

The woman makes it 10 steps out of the bathroom, and I have my hand on my camera, when another woman taps the toilet-paper-on-the-shoe woman on the shoulder, pointing down to her shoes.

DAMMIT! I was going to tell her about the toilet paper, but only AFTER I had a picture of it.

Have I mentioned how much I hate this game? Probably not recently.