[Coffee and TV]

The past few weeks have been very different for me. Usually, I stay at home or work and that's about it, but in the past month, I have traveled to Providence, to Philadelphia, and to New Jersey, all on my own as well, which is even more different for me as well.

Three weeks ago, I drove down to Providence to visit Steph at school. She's studying cooking at Johnson & Wales University, and she likes it much better than she liked UNH (which wouldn't be too bad because I'm pretty sure she hated it there). I went down and we stayed up talking to her roommates until about 2 in the morning, went to the mall, saw a movie and Waterfire, then walked around in Providence for a while. It was a great time, the weather was great on Sunday (figures, when I leave the weather always gets nice), but it was cold and raining on Saturday when we were actually planning on doing stuff.

This was a big step for me I guess, because it was the first time that I had ever gone so far away from home alone. Sure, I'd driven to Ohio, gone to Portland for MEPS, and all that. Ohio was with the rest of the family, though, and MEPS was only for about 20 hours, and it was really only for work.

Another part of it was the fact that it was the first time I had ever stayed anywhere with just girls. Sure, it may not sound like a lot, but anyone that really knows me knows that I'm pretty shy, and until recently I was incredibly uncomfortable around girls, so for the most part I could only go to the movies or something, unless I was with more than just one person. Strange, yes, but it's me.

So after I came home from Providence, I found out that my mom decided to get a dog. He's a black lab named tux, and even though he's supposed to be more than five years old, he's just like a little puppy.

A week after I'd gone to Steph's, I went down to Philly to watch Ramp Riot. I stayed with Alicia and Karen at Alicia's house. It was kind of funny to see us when I got off the train, because even though we'd known each other for more than a year, for the girls and I it was like I was meeting them for the first time. Slightly awkward, and not really great for my shyness at all.

We went back to Alicia's house and dropped off my stuff, then we went to the mall for a while. We went to the Halloween costume store, bought some stuff for jokes, and walked around through the mall for a while longer. We ate, then went back to Alicia's house for the night and watched some movies.

For a while I'd assumed that I was completely wrong about Karen because she didn't really talk to me all night, unless I talked to her specifically, and when we watched the movies she opted to sit alone on one couch, while Alicia sat next to and on me on the other. Looking back, I think she could have been just as nervous or shy about being around me as I was about being around her. Really funny since we knew each other so well, but I guess that's just how it is.

The next day was Ramp Riot, so we all piled into the Lin's minivan and drove about 40 minutes to get to the school it was being held at. It was fun to see all the FIRST kids that I hadn't for a while,and I met a few that I hadn't before. Corey and Bharat were there with Team 25, and Jeff Rodriguez was there with RAGE, as well as a bunch of others I knew. I met Emily and Mike from 303 for the first time, as well as Tony from 56, Conor Ryan from 1403, and Carli Roberts from 1089. The internet is a strange tool, you can meet so many people from all over the place and still be surprised at what they look like.

Team 25's alliance took the competition, which in my opinion was fun for the people there, but not as much the competing that occurred. Karen was on the drive team, and so was Alicia, so for most of the day I kind of wandered around upstairs and outside because I didn't really want to sit alone in the stands. After the elimination matches though, Karen and Alicia were around more than they were before so they joined me and the rest of the other non-driving kids near Team 25's pit and we talked, played with paint markers and Sharpies, and danced, took pictures, pretty much just messed around and had a good time.

Near the end of the day, a guy that liked Karen pulled her off to the side of everyone else, about five feet away and asked her out, but she declined. Though I thought it was kinda funny because he had been stalking around us all day, Karen felt really bad I guess because he's kind of the hopeless romantic type and she's a really nice girl most of the time, and even when she's trying to be evil she's still not mean. She seemed kind of despondent for a while, but after a little bit she was back to her normal cheery self. I did think at first what happened was funny, but when I saw how she looked, I couldn't help but feel kind of sad myself. I don't want any of my friends to feel sad, but something hit me even harder when I saw Karen sad.

When we got back to Alicia's house that night we watched some more movies, but tonight I sat down on the couch Alicia and I were on the night before, Karen joined me and we just laid there for a while. Those few hours were even better than the rest of the day combined.

The next day, we went downstairs to eat then went back up to Alicia's room to talk (why, I don't know; I think we planned on watching a movie at first but couldn't get the dvd player working). Karen's inflated mattress was still out from the night before, so I laid down on it because I could, and she laid down the other way with her head resting on my stomach. Alicia kind of just went around all over the place because that's what she does, but Karen didn't really move at all.

Eventually, we got bored of just talking and went downstairs to watch Invader Zim, and Karen and I ended up on the same couch as the night before. We messed around for a few minutes, pushing back and forth for more space on the couch, but in the end I piled some pillows and blankets in the middle, we laid down with both of our heads on the pillows. Obviously, I didn't mind being a little uncomfortable because my shoulder was kind of jammed in a weird position, but I don't think Karen minded either because she never told me to move, and never even moved herself.

All good things do have to come to an end though, and after a little bit we drove out to the train station to drop me off so that I could catch my train home. I had planned on getting at least one picture together on the train platform since I'd forgotten my camera at Alicia's on Saturday so I didn't take any pictures at all at Ramp Riot, and I only had one picture that I took at Alicia's on Friday night. As luck would have it, though, there wasn't a single parking spot in the entire train station parking lot, so they only had time to drop me off at the dropoff circle and then head out.

Not only did I have to leave, but there wasn't even any time for a hug or anything either. On the train ride home, I had mixed feelings. I was really happy to have had a chance to spend that much time with Karen, but I was really sad that it had to end so quickly. By the time I'd made it to Boston, I called Karen up again, and we decided that we were going to go to Brunswick Eruption, an after season competition that Corey's team put on this weekend. For two weeks, we'd been trying to get her parents to let her go. Originally, I'd hoped that Karen could go to Corey's house the night before, go to the competition, then go back home afterwards, but almost immediately, that was deemed pretty much impossible, just given the way her parents are. Eventually, she convinced them to let her go though, and her mom dropped her off at Corey's school at about noon, then left to go do her own thing for a while. During this time I'd hoped to have some time to spend with Karen, but that didn't really happen. Not for any bad reason, I suppose, but it was just unfortunate for me I guess.

The reason was that I was recruited to be the human player for Team 38, Harry from 121 and Ashley from 38's team. They brought the 38 robot down alone because 38 was registered and all of the students that were going to come down dropped out at the last moment. They asked me to help them out, and I figured that we wouldn't make it through the elimination matches, or at least do pretty badly, just because Harry hadn't driven that robot very much (if at all), and I'd never been a human player before in my entire life.

Well, I was wrong. We lost one match, and that was because our robot didn't move for the entire round. We ended up seeding 3^rd out of 32 teams, which was incredible. We ran into some bad luck, though, when Ashley and Lisa (another person recruited to be on “Team 38” for the day) were working on the arm. The lifting system in the arm to make it move vertically was powered by a worm-gear and a van door motor. When they took off the motor to fix something in the arm, the worm-gear bar slipped down, and when someone raised the arm, the bar bent, at a 100 degree angle. I went to see what I could do about it, with help from Conor and a guy from team 25, whose name I can't remember for the life of me, even though he was incredibly helpful. We used a vice in 25's shop, and tried to get the bar straightened, but after about an hour of working on it we ended up never getting it, even after heating it up with a torch. Since we'd seeded 3^rd, we played through the qualification matches, and made it through the first round to the semifinals before we were knocked out. We were allied with teams 222 and 145, both of which did a great job of helping us out.

But as I was on the team, and Karen showed up just before our quarterfinal matches started, and we had to fix the worm-gear bar, I didn't get to spend more than a few minutes at a time with her. I shouldn't complain I guess because it was almost a miracle that she got to come at all. My bad luck kicked again, because it was just after our last round when her mom came back to pick her up. So I told her that I wanted to get a picture of us together, and I leaned up against the wall in our pit, put my arm around her, and expected to get a shot like I did with Steph in Providence, just a couple friends or whatever. Instead, Karen leaned her head on my shoulder and looked even cuter than usual in the picture, too bad it looked like I had no hair. We hugged for a minute then I realized that she'd probably get in trouble if I didn't let her get going, so I did and I went to watch the rest of the matches for the day, feeling a bit emo that I didn't get to spend any more time with her than I did.

I got a picture of the “team” afterwards, with Conor, Ashley, Harry, Lisa, and I, because I liked being in that group even more than I did my real team. Isn't that horrible? All in all it was a fun day.

We helped clean up the field and pits, then when that was done, we went to Panera for something to eat and drove back to Corey's house with almost 20 people just to hang out. We went to 7eleven and bought Bawls, then went back to Corey's again and chilled out there for a while until we all either went to sleep, or did otherwise, as we assumed that Scott and Em or Corey and Lisa or Harry and Ashley were doing, because they all disappeared into another room and we didn't see any of them until this morning.

This morning was pretty uneventful, we sat and talked and threw stuff around in Corey's living room until it was about time to leave, then we all got our stuff together, took showers, or whatever, and headed out. Corey, Bharat, Lisa, and I all went up to the Metropark Amtrak station to wait for my train, and it was running late, so they waited with me. Finally, they had to go because Lisa was just coming up from Florida and had to go back to Corey's to get her stuff ready for her flight back down to school at 3:30. After waiting about an hour extra for my train, it finally came, and I got on, turned on my iPod, and fell asleep for a while. After a bit, I got a seat alone, took the power outlet, and started writing this. Here it is now at about 6, and I have 10 minutes left until I get to the Backbay station in Boston, where I transfer up to North Station so that I can get my train to Exeter and drive home. A long, but fun weekend behind me.