kicker and women

don't let the title of this entry deceive you: kicker and women have little in common, besides both tending towards complexity that often seems less than necessary. no, rather these are the two topics on my mind right now and putting them together in the title sounds salacious. and i'm not one to pass up on salaciousness.

kicker is everything i'd imagined it to be: an unending stream of bug reports and a code base that's so finicky and full of options that doing things in it is often like dancing in a ballet. which is to say it requires a good amount of grace, strength and agility.

ballet dancers tend to have gorgeous backs and legs. and that, my friends, is my oh-so-graceful segue into topic #2.

i have a friend coming next month to keep me company for a week. haven't seen her since august 2003, so i'm excited. she's off in Vancouver at the moment attending a poetry reading by Billy Corgan. lucky girl.

but she's not here, so last night before commencing some hacking on kicker (which didn't happen, as you will soon read about) i went for some food. i had a hankering for nachos (no idea why, really) and so went to the nearest place that makes non-disgusting nachos. that would be the Elephant and Castle. a girl i saw for a while works there, but she works the lunch shift, so i figured it would be safe enough to go there and have a snack in peace without running into her. don't get me wrong, she a nice girl i just didn't feel like entertaining company. i wanted to hack.

i sit down and order and as the food arrives, so does she. apparently she now works evenings in the Sears directly above the pub (yes, it's an odd building). she sits down and we start visiting, which is basically me talking as she's a very quiet girl. rather simple-headed, to be honest, but i'm a sucker for the red heads. she devours much of my nachos, so i offer to buy her something of her own to eat. she orders poutine. i start wondering if this was her first food of the day?

we continue visiting for a bit and i'm planning my escape when a 20-something Russian emigre comes up and introduces himself. he's from Moscow and been here for 2 years. i invite him to join us, he buys a round of beer. i'm now on my third Guiness, two more than i had expected at this point in the evening. he tells stories of Russia, why he moved here, things he's done since immigrating. the girl goes to the washroom and Eugene the Russian asks me if she's my girlfriend. i tell the truth and say no. he doesn't believe me. "How can you know such a girl for almost one year and not be dating her? You must either be gay or you are lieing to me!" uh-huh. i couldn't be bothered to explain my relationship habits to Eugene so i just insisted that we weren't dating. our female company returns, finishes her beer and then excuses herself as she's had a long day and wishes to go home and sleep. she says she'll phone. oh, goody.

Eugene suggests we catch a cab down to the area of town we live in, and that if i buy a round at the neighbourhood pub, that he'll pay for the cab. i agree to the deal. we go into Watchmans and i buy a round of Alexander Keiths for the two of us. he asks if i see any girls that would make for good conversation. i scan the room and point out a table with two girls who are by themselves and are decent looking, at least from the other side of the pub. Eugene, who's name is actually Evgeny, walks right up to them and asks if we can join them. they say sure, so he motions me over and we sit down. he introduces himself (they take to calling him Russia for the rest of the evening, however) and my stomach starts to quiver ever so slightly. i know these girls. but, i think, perhaps they won't remember me.

no such luck. "Hey, I know you!" says one of them, who's name sounds very much like Ameretto, the liquor. "Yeah, we hung out once last spring," i say, knowing that playing dumb is not a viable option. then another girl comes and sits down. the girl i was hoping wasn't with them tonight, the crazy girl with the dark hair. she immediately recognizes me. "Hey! It's you!" Russian/Eugene/Evgeny looks at me and says, "You know these girls?" i nod, but don't bother explaining. crazy dark haired girl says, "He knows us. He said I was fat when we met." Eugene wassn't sure what to say about that. i just took it as par for the course.

but know, dear reader, that i said no such thing about Crazy Girl. i mean, we'd only just met and breaking the Fat News to a girl is second-night-of-drinking material, at least. we'd met by complete happenstance, actually. i was eating nachos one evening in a pub (see the connection? i really need to stop with evening nachos) and these two very pretty girls sitting across from me kept looking at me and my nachos. eventually i said, "Look, would you like some of my nachos?" they dove in with much thanks and what not, introduced themselves (they were sisters) and things were generally good until Crazy Girl showed up. loud, defensive and with a couple of young-dumb-and-full-of-cum goofballs in her wake it immediately made things suck. the sisters did end up dragging me all around the town that night, though, which wasn't horrible. at least not until they insisted on going to Cowboys, my least favourite place in this city. anyways, that was many months ago.

this night would be more fun, however. see, Eugene invites them back to my place (gee, thanks for volunteering me Russia). the girls of course decline (whew!) and then start trying to figure out how Eugene and i know each other. they don't believe that we just met. in any case, Eugene was getting drunk so he excused himself to go home and sleep it off before work in the morning. i bid him goodnight, he asked if i could hook him up with the redhead from the Elephant and Castle, i say i'll see what i can do (suuuuure). i nurse my beer for the next few hours with the table of three girls.

during this time another fellow who is by himself at another table starts listening in to our rather odd conversations. he was obviously enjoying it. i went to the washroom and he followed me in and asked which one was my girlfriend. i told the truth: none of them. he wasn't sure whether to believe me. i was tempted to tell him that i was gay to get him off my back, but instead decided to just pee according as per my original plan. he follows me back out. do i have a sign on my back that says, "follow me for girls"? well, the girls invite him to sit down at the table. he was their problem now.

for some reason (i forget the specifics of the conversation that led to this) i say that Crazy Girl looks like Genine Garofalo. New Guy gets a look of horror on his face, and tries to cover for me. "You don't look like her at all!" hm? what's so bad about looking like Garofalo? well, for some reason my Garafolo comment makes Crazy Girl happy. it turns out she likes film. so do i. so we started talking about film. she pulled out her discman and insisted i should listen to this soundtrack she had with her. i have to admit, it was a really good disc, mellow and melodic. but it made the rest of the experience feel very Salvador Dali. who needs drugs when you've got crazy people and music that is contextually out of place surrounding you?

we continue to discuss film, she writes down a list of films which she hasn't seen in her day timer as i tell her about them. she shows me a poem she wrote about some guy who wasn't nice to her. (i wanted to ask "Did he say you were fat too?" but i successfully resisted the urge) i ended up writing in her day timer before the night was over, and while i'm guessing she's expecting to find my phone number or some other piece of contact information she'll just find a rather cryptic bit of verse. i blame it on her music.

i wonder what the next encounter with Crazy Girl and Amaretto will be like. it is, of course, inevitable. karma has a way of laughing at me like that.