New Year's Eve in The Hood

First of all, Happy New Year!

I'm feeling pretty grumpy right now, but that's essentially due entirely to insufficient sleep. In the interest of getting me back to Pasadena before traffic became a nightmare, it was necessary to wake me up this morning before my body wanted. That was not a problem, but presumably my mother ought to understand that when somebody is half-asleep and walking around in a vaguely zombified state, they don't want to be engaged in conversation. Also, when fairly specific comments such as "I don't want to talk now." are ignored (at least with me), cross comments typically result. I am probably faster to get to those comments than most, but I do believe pretty firmly that unsubtle "hints" should not be ignored. (Distracting me with a question that can wait for a few minutes when I am engrossed with attempting to get my computer to work and I have already stated previously that I'm in the middle of something is also not a good thing to ignore---especially when I am already grumpy due to sleep deprivation and don't want a conversation to begin with.)

Last night, I went to a friends party in The Hood, by which I mean Beverly Hills of course. There were some people from my graduating class from Beverly High there, as well as other fellow Normans (our mascot) who were a few years young (mostly 4-5, I think). There were some other people from that crowd as well as a few other random people. I knew a few of them before.

In general, it was fun, but one person annoyed me by making a comment that I wasn't a good scientist. (I'll spare you the discussion that led up to this, but the guy told me that apparently I had nothing to substantiate whether I am a good scientist [I'm not sure if that's what he actually meant, but that's what it sounded like] so I wasn't a real scientist. My response was that he could go to my website and take a look at my research papers, because I wasn't inclined to be remotely tactful after that comment.) Thus already annoyed, this guy decided to bring up ID and follow-up on his claim that it should be taught in schools. Now, I can rant all year on this without any provocation, and keep in mind that I was already really annoyed when this was brought up. I started by saying ID was "complete bullshit" and went on from there. The guy talking to me isn't a bad guy, but I knew from prior experience that he's pretty dense when it comes to logical discussions, and this time he was dense and inebriated to some degree. I'm definitely not holding this thing against him in any long-term fashion, but I was pissed off last night. (I don't like blowing people off, but when I decided to try to avoid him and talk to other people, he kept trying to restart the conversation. This happened something like five or more times. Other people were noticing quite clearly that he wouldn't leave me alone. Part of me wanted just not to have that conversation anymore because I was annoyed, and part of me wanted to move away before I said something really mean.)

I did my usual bad job at mingling, but I did meet a couple people who seemed pretty nice.