magicbeans. nothing if not awkward.

a trip out into the cold with chris.k and garth to take some photographs. a family outing, as it were.

later, sabriyah's birthday party. she makes a big deal out of these things. fancy invitations. instructions to wear "winter white attire". garth and i arrived relatively early, before things really picked up, but i felt a little out of place even with a small crowd. that feeling intensified as more people arrived, but i knew enough people there to keep myself from feeling totally alienated.

quite a few architecture people came, including melody. we talked a little bit, but somewhat uncomfortably. garth and hannah got me to dance for a bit. and that was nice, even if i'm a little too self-conscious about it. after a while i moved back out of the crowd.

i started composing things to write about the night. about feeling out of place. about how melody seems very young to me. justin came up to me and said something along the lines of "you have no idea how drunk i am." i told him i could see it in his eyes. in my memory it seems that i turned my head and when i looked back he was gone, but a girl in a white dress was walking up to me. "so what do you do?" she asked.

she said she had come with friends who had all paired off with their dates, leaving her alone. so she decided to talk to strangers. i was the stranger. her name is kate, although we didn't get to the name part until near the end of the conversation. she's from california and she's in dentistry school in boston. i could see myself married to a dentist, i thought. which is not to say that i have any plans on getting married any time soon, and not to someone i just met, but those are the sort of weird things that go through yr head sometimes. architect and dentist seemed like a good pairing.

that aside, we talked for quite a bit. about books and movies, architecture and dentistry, small internet companies and world traveling. it was a nice conversation, if bits did get lost in the noise. and comfortable, a bit reminiscent of my first ever conversation with sonali in that way, although a lack of expectations certainly contributes to that. and she has a very nice smile. (which is a good thing for a future dentist.)