4/25/16 (4-day recap)

1. 4/26/16 (4-day recap)
1. Wow, I’m a couple days behind at this point :D
2. Thursday was cool but packed. Lavin lunch with the retired CEO of Pop Cap Games, Dave Roberts (Plants vs. Zombies anyone?). He described how the company was always straight product driven from the beginning, made money from pay to play, sounded like transition to freemium was tricky. Also got to hear a little bit about gaming habits in different countries.
3. Spent all day off and on working on math and still couldn’t finish the proofs! Ugh. Asked Will for a late day, once in 3 quarters, but Prof. Morrow wouldn’t give it--frustrating. But fun working on math with people.
4. Friday, classes, SPS meeting, spent much of the day finishing the math homework ‘cuz I just wanted to get it done anyway. Had a bit of a motivation crisis, went and played some piano in the music building and returned to normal :D
5. Oh wait! I met in the morning with the CEO of Siren, bused down to midtown for some coffee. She told me about various campaigns she and the "hustlers" were running to try to get traction, gave me some stickers and cards I could hand out. Pretty neat conversation--digressed at one point to the effect that I should be blogging (yup, I need to get off my lazy backside and write something other than journal entries!)
6. Couldn’t get a ride to the Friday dance, but met up with some Swing Kids anyway at a Swing Kid’s birthday party (after running to the lake--so pretty!, hitting the gym and some Smash Bros debauchery with Xin and Brandon). The party was actually held in Wesley’s house that he’d given us a tour of a while back. Very interesting experience. Hung out with Alex and Eleonore, danced a bit. Played basketball outside :D Helped a random dude from UCLA look for a girl who’d wandered off. Got hit on by a random Informatics girl waiting in line for the bathroom, that was bizarre.
7. Spent 1am-2am talking with Eleonore, talked about relationships :D Walked with her back to her apartment, then jogged back to the UW for sleep.
8. Saturday: Woke up nice and late, took run, got breakfast with Xin and Brandon. Off to math review session, sample problems weren’t super hard so we spent some time goofing off :D Dad showed up from meeting his buddy Jim at the Husky spring football game, and we took an incredibly muddy but fun walk in the arboretum. Dropped off next to the ethnic-cultural-theater, where I met Alex for a performance by the Early Entrance Drama Society (I had gone to an awesome performance last year :D) The acting started really slow, but picked up, and the storyline was really great. The play “The Foreigner” is about a dude who gets introduced to a rural American South family as a foreigner who can’t speak English, learns all the family secrets and intrigue, and basically saves them from the evil plot of two of the family members.) After that, to dinner and bubble tea with Alex :D
9. We relaxed pretty fast and enjoyed casual conversation over our burgers. But over bubble tea, the Meta-Conversation (conversation about ourselves) resumed. Somewhat at my prompting--I was a bit nervous but needed clarity on where we were at. We started off continuing the Questions we had been answering last bubble tea meetup, but eventually Alex identified that I had questions of my own. We had a long conversation about what we both were looking for from the relationship, which alternated from the concrete to the abstract refuge of those with few data points. Alex was super perceptive and kept figuring out holes in our definitions and statements. I honestly could scarcely believe that we were having the conversation :D
10. After several hours of hashing and refining, our brains were reeling. I didn’t have the strength to pull together a resolution, but Alex did. Basically, Alex was having just as much fun as I was and wanted to continue dating, but after her previous experiences in that other life, high school, she feared the irrevocability of romantic decisions. So we put together a charter of a few points outlining our freedoms and the loose, reversible, informal couplings that bound us.
11. We stepped out of Mee Sum, a sense of serenity and preternatural calmness (perhaps tiredness) steeping over me. We were still talking, though less ardently than before. Alex was talking about reversibility, leading me to realize my naivenesses towards my own System 1. She said, “I’ve thought about grabbing your hand when we’re sitting together--I kinda want to, but I think, is this reversible? I don’t want to break your heart (note, context required for reasonable interpretation).” And a second later (a pause of consideration?), in one completely natural motion, she scooped up my hand and interlaced fingers with mine! I was completely astounded. System 1 emotions washed over me, my grin spread across my face, I slowed down, and part of my brain thought, “reversibility, pal! Keep your wits about you!” That first time holding hands--the memory will certainly be irreversible, though the relationship state transition shall be so, if my System 2 can hold fast the mortal sword.
12. Parted with a hug at the gates of Mercer. I returned to campus via the physics back stairs, singing whatever refrains came to mind.
13. In the quad, dude complemented my singing--I recognized him--TA from Honors Physics last year. We walked up to Haggett together, he’d never been in Haggett so I gave him a quick tour, talked about grad school vs. industry, potential specializations in physics with CS/EE.
14. After that, I hit the hay pretty solidly :D
15. Ok, today! This’ll have to be quick ‘cuz I got a midterm tomorrow.
16. Woke up, almost immediately off to West Campus for brunch with Brandon and Xin. Max and Trevor joined. Super awesome food :D
17. Then to math review session. Pretty fun. Will showed us some crazy group theory stuff, some of which I actually understood, and we talked about our paper topics. I got some good information about potential directions to explore within graph theory.
18. Got some exercise, knuckled down on Thermal hw.
19. Got dinner with XIn, Josh, and Winnie, fun to catch up with those guys.
20. Bashed out a Systems exercise and worked on note sheet, last couple of sample problems for math.
21. Wrote this journal entry. Time to turn in! Health and joy to the lot of y’all,
22. Spencer