Why bother with all the kickball drama when you can enjoy Fast Paced Four-Square instead? We're not resorting to flip-cup as a "ritual" either, like the heathens a few blocks over.

Tuesday Salon kicks off today at six in the post meridiem, as usual. You know how it goes...

It's been awhile since I shared any fast-food stories. Last night, while ordering a pizza from Papa John's, I noticed that their internet service was down. Angry, I turned to Pizza Hut to provide me with some hot delicious pizza pie.

Don't get me wrong: I enjoy Pizza Hut immensely. But this is the same place that in the past has "run out" of pepperonis. Twice. So I was a little wary. But I logged into their new system, ordered a hawaiian pizza, and sat back to wait.

And wait.

And wait.

Forty-five minutes later, a guy appeared at the door. I had paid with a credit card, but I still had to sign the sheet (since you cannot tip online with PH, which is also annoying). But the guy didn't have a pen, forcing me to run inside and rummage for one. Even after I signed it, he said he needed to "do a rubbing" so he took my credit card and did a quick rubbing against the receipt. Sketchtastic, right? Finally, he says, "you only got one pizza right?" to which I replied yes. He then pulls the top pie out of the box and runs back to his car. I take the pizza downstairs, open it, and discover it's the wrong pizza. Running back upstairs, the guy is already gone.

Furious, I call the Pizza Hut line and get to wait on hold for 10 minutes. Finally, a guy picks up and I explain the problem. He says, "well, what kind of pizza did you get" as if his computer couldn't tell him that. I say we received a small pepperoni pizza instead of my medium hawaiian pizza. The guy then says, "well, medium is actually the smallest size" as if that made a difference. I was going to point out that the pizza I received was

• square
• covered in pepperonis
• with dipping sauces
• sliced into tiny rectangles

instead of the hawaiian pizza which was supposed to be

• circular
• covered in ham and pineapple

Instead I just told him it was nothing like the pizza I ordered. So then he says, "Okay, well, how about if I give you a $5 credit on your next order from Pizza Hut?" I couldn't believe it. It was a $20 pizza with tip, and he wanted to give me a $5 credit! So I said, "um, how about if you give me the pizza I ordered instead?" He said yes, and that it would take another 45 minutes.

Sure enough, 45 minutes later, the same guy showed up at the house. He gave me my pizza, apologized profusely, and told me to "check" before I went inside. I did.

Soon I was eating delicious hawaiian pizza and watching the Dukes of Hazard after Robot Chicken. The evening had been saved in the nick of time. Pizza Hut is rapidly joining Armands as a place I refuse to order from.

It happened again.

A week ago I noticed that due to a series of circumstances beyond my control, if I had chosen to leave my last job either a couple weeks earlier or later, I wouldn't have been able to get my current job. The timing worked out perfectly, and the window was so small, in fact, that had I delayed even a few days in making my decision, I might not have been able to score the perfect position.

I've explained this concept of flow before, almost exactly a year ago.

This weekend I worked incredibly late on Friday evening. As I left Tyson's Corner, I dropped by the apple store to pick up a power adapter for Jenna. (Un?)fortunately, they were out. But I made it back home just in time to hit a local Ethiopian place with Jenna, Michael, and a bunch of other friends on Jenna's side. The service and really, the entire time spent at the Ethiopian place, was a bit of a let down. Afterward though, we rolled over to a party on 13th street just in time for me to have a series of interesting conversations.

So far, the flow was only so-so. Or so I thought.

Yet Saturday, after a not-so-early start, I met Loaf for lunch in my new car. While driving toward Maryland, she mentioned two places she needed to go for two different articles of clothing (one bridal-related). As she called information to get the address of the first spot, I made a couple of turns. By the time she had hung up the phone, I looked around and we were in the exact spot we needed to be. Next to both places. Without any planning on my part.

Later, because I was unable to score Jenna's power adapter on Friday, I hit another apple store and managed to find one for her there. Because I needed to go to Bethesda to get the power adapter, Loaf and I ended up having lunch at the local Rock Bottom. Due to time constraints, we decided to eat inside, which was directly responsible for me running into an old co-worker at my previous firm, who had been fired due to some extremely bad things he had been doing at the firm. Again, only a series of events led me to the restaurant in time to see him. By the time I returned to the city, it was about three minutes away from pouring. Yet I helped escort Jenna and Jill and two other friends to a party and a house, respectively. In the process, I got completely soaked, delaying my return to the house significantly and forcing me to bail on my planned dinner with Kristen. Washing and drying my clothes took forever, which left me not much time before a planned b-day event for a friend of Jenna's who had been out with us during the bad-Ethiopian evening of the previous night.

With mere minutes to spare, I ended up grabbing a bit of sushi with Heidi and showing off the car, albeit with the top up. Here's where the flow really started to crest: my abbreviated dinner left me back at my house about ten minutes after the b-day celebration was due to kick off at the Saloon. I made it back home, parked the car, and walked the few blocks there, only to be told at the door that they were at capacity and I couldn't come in. The guy did say that if my party was already there, that I could join them, so I said I'd look for them.

Unfortunately, the b-day girls weren't there.

Fortunately, several people I knew were!

So I asked quietly if I could pull up a chair and the guy at the door dropped by and asked the other people at the table if they knew me. (Just to test, I guess.) They all said, "yeah, of course, it's Edward" and I was in. Scanning the group of people, I realized that in fact, I knew far more than one or two. A couple of them had worked with Deborah at an old job of hers. Another ran a sailing group that Kevin and I occasionally dropped by. And others had come to Tuesday Salon.

Some time later, the women in question who were hosting the event (but couldn't get in the Saloon) made it inside to inform me that they were relocating to Bohemian Caverns. I said I'd join them there later, as I was having a great time instead with my adopted table. Some time after that, one of the people at the table who was friends with one of the b-day girls got a phone call informing us that they had moved again, this time to Stetson's. Without my connection to the table, I would've been in the dark again.

And so I found myself at Stetson's discussing Sycamore Island and the Outer Banks and Crash with a bunch of people who were even cooler than the earlier group. Everything had worked out perfectly, down to the precise minute. If I'd been delayed or had sped up at any point, nothing could have been so perfect.

It it, really, the best possible way to enjoy an evening: to know that it took a billion tiny chances to come out the right way. It happens to me a great deal but it never ceases to amaze me.

It also drove home a point I had realized earlier that day: that I hate people who willingly avoid others who are not like them. In each group of people I joined during the evening, I was the outsider, the person who wasn't supposed to really be there. Yet I had a great time with everyone at both places. Limiting oneself to certain groups of people is the highest form of arrogance, even if it couched in terms of derision, such as saying, "well, I don't want to hang out with them because they are

• wear blue ties
• are jerks
• are republicans
• are racists

Okay, who am I kidding? The latter is truly, beyond the pale. But most times people aren't racists or homophobic. They just like to wear blue ties, and you don't. Getting beyond the petty differences is important to me, because the idea that our differences define us is such an outmoded concept. Guess what? You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. And wishing to hang out with snowflakes who melt at your temperature is a silly distinction, because we all do.

Writing someone off, to say that you'll never hang out with them again, is the most egregious form of social slapdowns. To say the same thing about certain groups of people is just as bad. Everyone, no matter how strange, has something interesting about them. The trick is finding it.

However, with all the said, despite being a hypocrite in general, I'd be willing to hang out with the same said people who are unwilling to hang out with others. Perhaps I could show them a thing or two about expanding one's comfort zone.

Sunday dawned poorly, but ended up incredible. I got to put tons of miles on the car, and hit some serious Virginia back roads with a fury. After driving fifty miles, I realized my mouth hurt from smiling. The drive back was especially enjoyable, culminating in some late night barbecue chicken and family guy fun with some nearby neighbors.

Any weekend that ends with an Epic Chicken Fight is a good one.

Okay, here's my new car:

It's got a lot of power. Every stoplight I'm at I have to remind myself that I'm not supposed to top 4500rpm in the first thousand miles. Fortunately, a trip up to Brad's neck of the woods soon should help me reach that milestone. This morning, going up the GW Parkway, the car practically flew.

Oh, and here's the interior:

Nice, eh?

Okay, here are the metro pix:

And here's what the metro should look like (this is the money train run I saw late last night):

I cannot express how bad the advertisement train looked. But even worse: only one car out of six had the ad on it, so it not only looked awful, but out of place. Please Metro, just raise the fares. I'll gladly pay not to have look at those ugly trains.

In other news, I've updates tons of pictures on the image side of the website. So go check them out. You might even catch one of a recent rampage.

I took a picture of the new metro cars (the ones with ads plastered on them) yesterday.

They disgust me.

I'll throw up the picture in a bit.*

Oh, and I also scored a second four-square ball. We had two groups going the last time...

Nicole came to my house for the first time last night, along with another friend from my old workplace. I was glad to see them there.

Work has been crazy busy, which is why my posting level is lower. I'd go into more boring detail, but doing so would actually expose some security flaws, so I'll keep my mouth shut. Let's just say I'm working really hard.

Tomorrow I get the new car.

That's right, tomorrow.

I don't know how I'm going to go to sleep tonight...I'm so excited that I just want today to end and tomorrow morning to fly by. Which, of course, won't happen.

Lately I seem to be attracting a great deal of crazy people, from the bus driver who kept complaining about "those damn (whisper)illegals(/whisper)" on a bus full of people speaking only Spanish, to the overly socially awkward guy on the Metro who kept talking in one continuous stream, a budding Faulkner if you will, except he mostly talked about people throwing up. My attempt to stare into my Pynchon novel never slowed him down for an instant, as he continually asked me direct questions in order to keep the conversation moving. Ugh. When a woman got up to leave he stared at her, then as she left, looked at me and said "yeah, i remember those attractive college girls. she was an A- if you know what i mean". I felt ill.

Over the weekend the 'rents were discussing autistic behavior, and how one of them has certain tendencies that are super-super-mildly autistic. You know, smells to avoid, colors to avoid, etc. (Don't start flaming me in the comments, okay?) I realized that many of the traits I value, like an attention to work while at work, or a focus on logic rather than emotions, are all things that taken to the nth-degree, might qualify as a mild social disorder.

That's why I think navigating between the two worlds is such an important crossing for me, and one that I relate naturally to as the division between business and pleasure. In my mind, at work, being professional is all about pure logic and efficiency. As long as a proper organizational structure is in place, it's easy to be perfectly honest with your boss and not have to play office politics. Obviously, being rude is bad, so perhaps some low-level of social grace is required (telling your boss he/she is an idiot is not a good way to advance further) but in general, the less water-cooler talking and the more working in front of your desk, the better.

When it's time to leave work, however, I feel as if one must move into the personal time with an equal shift into a super-social setting. Why? Because discussing TPS Reports or some other boring office dilemma is not social. And it's like continuing to work in your free time. People who are generally socially clueless, like the crazy guy on the Metro, don't seem to realize what is and is not proper behavior on personal time. Chatting up total strangers is a faux pas, especially when the subject is "people who threw up on the metro". But by the same logic, when one is in any social situation outside of work, the ability to understand how people work is important to getting by.

This is, perhaps the most interesting thing about such a switch: people who tend to be quite poor in social situations often are fine when things are logical and straightforward, such as in the office. Yet the rules governing each situation are not different: one is simply a more complex system.

I'm looking at the network over here and everywhere I turn there are small fixes present: some anti-spyware installed on certain workstations, certain permissions altered to enable certain programs to run. A person who understands these little fixes can get by. On the macro level, the network isn't being operated properly (yet!). Likewise, if a person were to just be dropped into the middle of such a network, they might not understand what's going on. In any system of a large enough size, emergent behavior starts to arise that couldn't have been predicted.

The tiny clues then, that I gave to the man on the metro: the lowering of the eyes, the use of monosyllabic responses, the lack of questions on my part, all were indications of an emergent behavior designed to clue the casual observer in. Of course, the man didn't know what was going on because he was a poor social actor.

But that, I feel, is my main point: anyone, given the proper attention to detail, can transition from a poor social person to a better one. All you do is build up from the basic blocks to the more advanced nuances and gestures gradually. Most people do this well before middle age. The fun begins to happen when one can, perhaps with double-entendres, begin to use tiny statements of little significance to convey fairly large social meanings. The holy grail, of course, would be to create a social contronym, that is, a situation where one says one thing and means it, but at the same time, implies the exact opposite. I'm not there yet. But I'm working towards it.

Whew. Clearly, all work and no play makes edward a dull boy.