I went into the office for a meeting today, which turned out to be rather awkward as the other side hadn't prepared for it at all, so I basically fired questions at them, but they really had nothing for me. Made me wonder why we'd been meeting in the first place? If you can't be bothered to prepare for a meeting, please don't waste my time...
Yet, there was a bonus about being in the office, in that I got to catch up with my friends Nat and Dave. We all grabbed lunch together in the company cafeteria, and mostly spent the time talking about proposed office closures and forcing people to work from home more. Dave couldn't see how it could be done, but having seen people work remotely in the US so much, I think that's the direction we're headed in. Dave will just have to learn to adjust, I think!
After work, I was supposed to go running, but Nat talked me into going to drinks with a printing company they use instead. It was a Northern Irish guy (with a really thick accent!), two women from the printing company, and another woman from Accenture. It was a nice enough time as the printing company was covering the cost of drinks, so I felt a bit badly that I wasn't someone who really used their printing services. But it was some fun conversation, and interesting to talk to everyone about their holiday plans. The guy had a 4-year old son who was spending the holidays with his mother, although it made me think about how he otherwise looked like a good catch of a guy, but how hard must it be to date a guy with kids? Scary to think that I might be moving into that demographic bracket, but I really wouldn't want to go there...
Finally, after drinks, I figured I should go to the run and collect money from people, but I swore to myself that I would just do that and then skedaddle early, for I was leaving for New York the next morning and had not yet packed. So I made it to the pub and learned that the runners were not yet back, yet I ran into two other absolutely tedious elderly women from the club who had also not run. Spent ages making mild small-talk with them, and trying to figure out how I could escape the boredom.
I was at this point absolutely convinced of my theory that I was going to depart for home at the next readily available opportunity, when Matt showed up.
Matt is one of my favourite people in the entire world, and more than that, I seem to be one of his favourite people in the entire world too. And it's such a wonderful feeling, to see someone you'd like to talk to walk into the room, see their face light up when they spot you on the other side of the room, and watch their polite-yet-casually-disinterested dismissal of people attempting to impede their progress as they make their way to your side. And you reunite with a giant bear hug and find yourself happily ensconced in conversation for the rest of the evening.
Until this point I had avoided drinking at all, as I'd wanted to be clear-headed and ready to go home and pack (when I left early, remember?) Yet when Matt offered to buy me a drink, he did it in such a way in that there was no real point even trying to refuse, as it was just going to happen anyway. So he brought me a drink and we talked for a while, agreed to go outside and watch the down-downs, and then came back inside to keep on talking. As we finished our first drinks, I figured it only fair that I buy our next round, and so we kept talking.
It was funny at one point Matt noted that the group next to us was having a conversation about cancer, whilst we were talking about doing the "Walk of Shame". I asked if he'd rather that we join the other group and talk about something more serious, to which Matt laughed and replied, "God no! I'd much rather keep talking to you about sex!" Yet lest you think we have terrible conversational habits, we did talk about the appeal of academia vs business, living in the country vs the city and visiting our old friends who have never left our hometowns, and our family Christmas traditions as we prepared to go home.
Even at the point where we were now a drink-for-drink and should have just called it a night (I still needed to go home and pack), when Matt, obviously enjoying our conversation, asked, "One more for the road?", who was I to say no? Still, I was surprised when, after my determination to "leave early", it was past 11 PM and we were being ushered upstairs as they were closing the pub cellars. Was it that late already?
Once upstairs, I was DETERMINED at this point to be leaving, when one of the guys bought a bottle of champagne (why? I have no idea), and insisted on passing out glasses of champagne to everyone. Now anybody who knows me knows that champagne is my HUGE weakness, and so of course I couldn't resist taking a glass of champagne (plus, it seemed rude not to). Yet I was realising that it was getting quite late, and Matt seemed antsy to be leaving, so I handed him my glass of champagne and told him, "Please make inroads on this while I visit the loo so that we can finish and leave." I spoke so quickly, I wasn't quite sure he understood, until I got back from the loo and my champagne was nearly all gone. What a brilliant boy, he must have ESP!
Hence I downed the last of the champagne, and we said our good-byes to everyone, as Princess made some snide comment about the two of us leaving together, which I didn't appreciate but Matt took with good grace and joked about.
We chatted all of the way to the Tube, again re-iterated intentions to get together in the New Year, and then kissed and parted with wishes for a very Merry Christmas. I dashed to the Tube and found the train just leaving as I arrived on the platform, but I absolutely bounded the short distance to the closing doors, and leapt inside the train just as the doors shut and the train pulled away. Okay, so I didn't leave early, but at least one thing had worked right towards getting me home at a reasonable hour!
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