Are you a Brain Surgeon?

This weekend was the best weekend ever! Unfortunately, I had to go to professional development (blech, yuck, ick) but it wasn't that bad. Of course, some revolting male teacher was there from my middle school and he felt it necessary to pass me post-it notes with "funny comments" on them throughout the seminar. Things like, "I think the presenter is Southern Baptist. Hallelujahhhhhhh!" Only his spelling was much worse and he drew happy faces (complete with hair) on the post-its. The worst was, "You always look very serious. Does this mean you are a deep person?" Of course, to be polite I had to smile. But I always looked away deliberately in case he made the serious misstep of asking me to go out with him. Turns out he is the summer school teacher, so he got my worst student for a catch-up class when we were on break. Poor guy.
Anyway, after the development --all 6 Saturday-morning hours of it -- I packed up my comforter, pillow, and sparkly stuff and drove down to Irvine. I bought a book on CD a little while ago, so the drive wasn't bad at all because I got to listen to "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime" all the way down. It's really good. It's British, so I understand the slang and most of the allusions to popular culture, and it's about a boy with Asperger's Syndrome, which is a type of autism where the person can't decipher others' emotions and facial expressions. I taught at that autistic school in London and worked with a young man with Asperger's, so I keep thinking about him and how the boy in the story is very similar in his peculiarities. I particularly like the main character because, thanks to his disability, he has a complete incapacity to lie.
I got to Jinna's swank apartment and met her roommates. They are AWESOME! Julie is the girl and Sunny is the boy. There's another boy roommate but I didn't meet him. Their place is really nice. Even the laundry rooms have proper little buildings with doors and they have ducks swimming in a pond. I got there, changed, spackled on make-up, and then we got in Jinna's car and drove back into LA for the VA colleges mixer. On the way there I found out that Sunny is a singer and he has a manager. He was singing in the apartment and the car and he is really, really good. He sounds professional. And then he mentioned that he has been to Rent and got a cool poster from there that turns out to be worth $300. Then I REALLY got excited. "You've been to RENT!!!! Oh my God, I've wanted to see that SO BADLY!!!" When I was in high school all the cool kids liked Rent and we had the soundtrack and listened to it ALL the time. I know every word to every song. I did a big art project when I was a senior and sketched all the main characters from Rent and my art teacher loved it. So anyway, Sunny started singing all the songs and I joined it and it brought back all these fun memories. Of course, Sunny is gay, which is why he is a guy and so into the play.
Julie was awesome, too. I like her because she doesn't find it out-of-place to make disgusting, explicit comments if the mood strikes her. When we were at the mixer, she decided she had to pee. When she came back from the bathroom, though, she was pissed off. "God, you know what just happened? I went into the bathroom and the first two stalls were shut, so I pushed open the third one and there was some bitch in there peeing." She goes, "Oh, Sorry! I should have locked the door!" "And then, I saw her BUSH. I didn't know we were coming to Busch Gardens. Gross."

A few minutes later, she jerks her head at this woman with a name tag that says 'Moira' on it and says, "There's bush woman. Ugh."
The mixer was cool. Jinna and I were the only girls from R-MWC there, which we weren't too surprised about. We got there at about 8:15 and asked the hostess of the restaurant/bar where the party was being held. She told me to go up the stairs to my left, so I led us all up there. We were there for a few minutes, looking around at the tables full of people, and then Sunny and Julie left to go pee. Jinna and I were chilling by the bar when this man comes up to me and goes, "Are you neurosurgeons?" I laughed loudly and said, "Yeah, I wish!" Then his smile kind of faltered and he said, "Well, this is the party for neurosurgeons. If you want the college thing it's farther up the staircase."

Oh.

Anyway, Jinna and I bolted. I wonder how the guy clued in that we weren't neurosurgeons. Was it my bright green coat? My sparkly blue eyeshadow? Jinna's fake Coach bag? We'll never know. So we darted into "our" party and were relieved to see that it wasn't as packed as the brain doctors' ball. We had room to breathe and we got swank nametags and everything. As we were at a bar and I hadn't been out in a long time, I felt it only necessary to order and consume 3 apple martinis within the next hour and a half. The four of us decided to be snobs and hang out on the Friends'-style couches in the back of the room. We posed for lots of pictures. I held up my apple-tini and got Jinna to take my picture, grinning as I held the gorgeous drink aloft. I vowed that the pic will be this year's Christmas card.

Sunny, Julie, and Jinna are all Asian. There was a sizeable group of Asian grads slightly to our left, and they never opened up their circle so that we could conglomerate. So after a while, I told the three that I hoped they weren't offended, but they were getting totally dissed by the Asian crowd. Julie was like, oh no, I don't know, they think you have to be super-slitty eyed to be Asian. I looked at her and I was like, "Come on. You know it's me. They're like Blonde Bimbo Alert, don't let them get near us." Then I did that exaggerated wink thing that I do and she laughed. I love Julie. And she has the best last name ever. I am seriously thinking about stealing it and changing my name legally.

The best part of the night was when I was elbowing my way through the crowd, hunting my third apple-tini, and Jinna was trailing me. Then she goes, "Hey! You missed it! That guy was totally checking you out and he said, 'You can tell she's a Virginia woman.'" Whatever that means, it sounds like a compliment. I like compliments. Or, it could just mean that I have big hair.

After a while we went out on the patio and chilled with a new crowd of people. There was a mildly attractive man on the staircase, but I didn't go near him. Julie and Jinna swore up and down that he kept looking at me. Julie told me to write my phone number down and hand it to him and say, "Here, you dropped this." But I was way too chicken. I'm feeling much, much more positive now, but I'm not completely healed from the last crash and burn.

We bolted out of the mixer and drove to K-Town (Korea Town) about 15 minutes away. Oh my GOD. Last time I had Korean food was with Jinna in Germany, but I still remember how good it was then. I ordered the same thing I had before, Bulgogi, and it was awesome. It's tender, marinated beef with rice. I had pickled turnip and cabbage, too, so I was in heaven. At the restaurant we met Jinna's friend Christine and her boyfriend. Her boyfriend is 27, a VA Tech grad, and has green hair which Christine dyed herself. Sunny kept going on about what a nice smile the guy had. Sunny, honey, he's straight.

When we finally got back to Irvine I was EXHAUSTED. I headed straight for the bathroom, scraped all the gunk off of my face, put on my jammies, and crashed on the sleeping-mat thing that Jinna got out for me. I think Julie stepped on me sometime in the middle of the night, but I can't be sure.

The next morning we got up around 9:30 and started getting ready for "Smart Man Hunting" in Huntington Beach. It only took us about half an hour to get there. I invited my friend Candice to come, too, so it was great to see her. She's really smart and frank and I think she operates at my frequency. I'm really comfortable with her. She wasn't intimidated at all that the presentation was also my alma mater's chapter meeting. She just jumped right in and talked to everybody. I didn't think Jinna would like the presentation that much, but she seemed really into it and had comments and everything. The woman who wrote the book didn't seem half as nutty this time around, and Jinna seemed relieved. Last time we saw her the woman had a booger in her nose, and Jinna almost killed me when she described it as a "bat in the cave".

I liked the presentation a lot. I talked a little bit about dating guys off of the internet because I was the only one who would admit to it. We talked about all the little signs that you give (or look for) to show interest in a long-term relationship. The author/presenter talked about her different codes for men. The one that made me feel ill was MBA (Married But Available). The one I pricked my ears up at was KOF (Keeper of the Fire). The KOF guys are the ones that always do something to show that they care about you and are genuinely interested in your well-being. She mentioned a man who worked for 4 hours on her computer to get all of the spyware off, and another one who would bring her a little present every time they had a date. One time it was a copy of his favorite CD. Another time it was a can of soup that she had mentioned that she liked. It dawned on me that that is the kind of man that is going to make me feel good about our relationship. I need to start looking for him.
Section 2 in "Smart Man Hunting" is all about speed dating. So I looked it up on the internet when I got home and I decided I'm going to do it. Twenty guys, 4 minutes for each guy. Those are good odds, aren't they? The weird thing is that the closest one I could find to Palmdale is in West Hollywood, which is a little sketchy. If I'm really lucky I'll meet someone to do something with on Valentine's Day.

Oh, oh, oh, I'm so excited about this. I can't do the first ski trip with the school because I have to take a test for my CA teaching credential to remain valid, but the second one is at the end of February and I'm totally going to go. It should be fun to go play around in the snow with the kids, and because it's the school rate it will be cheap. One of the PE teachers is always giving me a greasy smile, but hopefully he won't be going.

The worst news of this weekend is that I may be going to Virginia soon. My best friend's mother is critically ill and she may not live much longer. Her kidneys have shut down and I haven't heard much good news. I feel like my whole world has turned upside down.