First Thursdaying

Had one of those odd six degrees moments tonight. Found out that a guy who's a regular at cons and the First Thursday had spent the first half of the evening with one of my colleagues at a perl mongers meeting. Not just any colleague, either - this is the guy who sits across from me, who borrows my Buffy tapes, who I share most of my furtive Yahoo Messenger messages with when they're about work, escaping work, colleagues and so forth and I plan to keep in touch with if he does what he's threatening and gets himself a better job in the near future.

So Alex encountered Michael for the first time tonight - we discovered this because Alex was describing the odd pub he was in and when I asked he confirmed that it was one just near our office. Then he revealed why he was there and I asked if he knew Michael. "Well there was a Michael there," he told me, "He's got one of my review books." A brief description later we ascertained it was the same Michael.

I plan to go in tomorrow and message Michael with some comment about taking books from strange men and see where the conversation goes from there. I wonder how long I can keep him guessing how I know he's got a review copy of a new perl book.

It'll probably fall flat - like the dog food gag. (Yes, Ang, I know - pregnancy testing kit...)

I realised as I walked back to Waterloo with Mark and Claire that this was the first time I'd had alcohol since Corflu. And prior to Corflu the last time I drank it was at Picocon. Before THAT it was the last First Thursday. So I've informed Mark that he is a bad influence and he responded by drunkenly informing some tourists that the railway symbol on the signs was a pointer towards a tube station. Claire corrected him.

It was a good night. I did my usual trick of finding somewhere to sit/stand (sit in this instance) and staying there for most of the night. Spoke to a fair few people, got lots of congratulations on my FAAn award, drank a little, talked a lot and had an uneventful trip home during which I read. Yep, this book thing is taking off now - I'm somewhere in the region of 600 pages into Perdido Street Station and enjoying it a lot. I've even been reading the book in preference to web pages during lunchtimes.

I'm now full of micowaveable meal and about ready for bed. I'll just look in on Rasseff, though, see what's going on. Not that I'm addicted or anything. I can give up this fannish stuff any time I want. No, really...

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So I made an oblique comment about accepting books from strangers in pubs to Michael. He looked at me blankly.

It was some other Michael, apparantly, although he WAS in the same pub.

Bah.

I'm bored. No one around to talk to online (well, there are people, they're all just doing something more interesting), I'm up to date on my newsgroups, I'm not in the mood for emailing and I've checked out all my regular web sites. I've read a fair bit of my book today and I'm not in the mood to continue right now.

So I think I'm down to looking through the Argos catalogue for furniture then sleeping. Ah well, there are worse ways to spend a Friday night, I guess. Like, for example, going back downstairs and staring zombie-like at Grant Theft Auto 3 while Sin, Raz and Ruddy play it. Zzzz