Current mood:	jetlagged
Entry tags:	rl

Briefings on life.
Just dropping a note to say a long-overdue hello now that I've got a day to regroup after a work trip to Colorado. :) I know I've been completely MIA, but (as usual) it's not my fault!

With a new administration (YAYOBAMA!!), work has had me under the gun more than usual. Since December, all of us in every corner of the Dept. of Defense have been putting in a heap of overtime trying to account for and justify our programs; it's the easiest way for new folks in charge to get read in on what happened before they showed up. Actually, it's kind of neat to be working for the fed in Washington, DC during a time when so much change is happening. Some interesting tidbits that show that Obama's administration is already at work to revamp the way the U.S. Government does business:

- We've all been given direct orders to conserve energy by turning our computers/monitors off every day
- Unless it's a briefing for one of the bureaucratic bigwigs, all printing must be double-sided to conserve paper
- Documentation explaining and justifying our programs must include return on investment and "Way Ahead" (ie. the next steps that will improve our results)

More work is on the horizon, no doubt. It's only been a little under 2 months since Obama's been in office, and while we've sort of had to derail for a bit, I'm certain it'll all be for the best. If anything, someone's going to look at all the paperwork I've been producing for our department and realize that the Army Guard has all our money. ;)

And then, In the midst of all of this stuff, something totally unexpected happened: I fell in love.

It wasn't entirely serendipitous. I was sickened by memories of last year's New Years Eve debacle, so my sister encouraged me to get on eHarmony. Being an eternal skeptic when it comes to internet dating, I had little faith in the success of an online dating service in which I had to detail all of my "Must Haves" and "Can't Stands" and answer questions like "What's your idea of a perfect date?". And to be fair, it wasn't exactly easy to navigate the sea of people that turned up on my list of matches. A good many were evidently the awkward type, which, being the sort to dread a conversation in which I do all the talking, provoked my closet social anxiety - I even had one date in which the guy told me upon my arrival at the coffee shop that he had not given me his real name, but rather the alias he uses to protect his identity in foreign countries where he would bail out international criminals.

Yep. My finger hovered over the "Delete profile" button. My sister told me I hadn't given it a fair shot. I told her she had not been single for longer than a day in her adult life and therefore didn't have the authority to prevent me from giving up the hunt altogether.

But just before New Years' I got pinged by Mike. His eHarmony profile indicated he was an English teacher, and in a series of rapid-fire exchanges, he and I decided to meet by the end of the week. Our first date consisted of early dinner at his brother's restaurant on M Street in Georgetown and a trip to the movies to watch "Slumdog Millionaire", which had us both misty at the end. Then, not wanting the evening to end yet, we decided to go to Karaoke together. The man has a singing voice that belongs on Broadway. Kid you not.

Our first date lasted 8 hours. He walked me back to my apartment, and not exactly knowing how these first date things are supposed to end when things are evidently going well, I thanked him for a wonderful time, lingered for a split second, then inched away towards my front door. What did I know? Thankfully, he had the wherewithal to close the three foot gap between us and kiss me. :) We've been virtually inseparable ever since. I adore him.

It's the short version of what's been going on in my life lately to keep me off of LiveJournal, and while it doesn't look like I'm going to get too many breaks in the immediate future, I can say for now that I'm thinking of you guys and hoping you're all doing okay. This weekend, I'm going to do what I should've done a while ago and clean out my Yahoo email account, so if you've written me there and I haven't responded, please accept my apologies for not writing back immediately and hang in there! (When you're getting 100+ emails a day for work, it doesn't leave too much time to check my fandom account, if you know what I mean. However, I resolve to be better.)

All that said, happy winter to all! In the words of John and Hank Green: don't forget to be awesome.