This is horrible! It’s Halloween and I’m stuck at home. I was supposed to go trick-or-treating with my younger cousins tonight. But I have been feeling out of it all day and when I got home all I wanted to do was fall into bed. So no candy, no dressing up. This really sucks.

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. The most memorable costume I had was when I was nine and became Snow White. My mom had a dress made from a print on my Disney bed sheet. The dress had a blue bodice with blue and red cap sleeves and a full yellow skirt. I wrapped a headband with a red satin ribbon and wore it on my poufy bob of hair. I was so happy I looked just like her. Another year, I was a black cat. My candy bag was made from brown felt sewed into a shape of a mouse with yarn whiskers. Then two Halloweens ago, I dressed up as a dark fairy in a slim Gothic dress and shimmery black wings to boot. It was wickedly cool though it had some unintended effects when I attracted way too much attention from… never mind.

Tonight the costume I pieced together hangs confused in my bedroom closet. And I, fuzzy headed, exhausted, without candy, am off to bed.

Tonight I have my choice of two social events being held at the same time at opposite ends of the city.

The first is a monthly gathering of local members of an organization to which I belong. I’ve been postponing my own attendance at these dinners for several months now. They are all fascinating people from whom I can learn a lot of new things. But their choices of restaurants are terrible. It’s been bad Chinese food, cheap buffets, chain restaurants, and old folks breakfast joints. Being the new girl, I think it would be rather bold to appear out of nowhere and relocate the gatherings to places that serve more nourishing and palatable food. Hmm, but now that I think about it, that doesn’t seem too unreasonable at all.

The second event is a meet-up of this year’s batch of NaNoWriMo authors. It’s going to be held at a café up in North Campus. This will be a great opportunity to meet new people and build a support group for the race that looms ahead.

Having to choose between two meet-and-greets is not a situation I’ve ever been before. This is weird. What to do, what to do…

I’ve realized that when it comes to communicating, I have two distinct personas.

Persona #1: Used in public, at work, with friends, in meetings
I am articulate, sensitive, diplomatic. Listening to people of different cultures speak, I was amused by how much Americans insisted on using neutral language. I’ve since learned to say “I would be really great if…” instead of “do it” and “it’s not what I prefer” instead of “I don’t like it”. The de facto style for communicating ideas was through gentle delivery. My grandfather taught me this skill albeit through unconventional means (that will not be discussed at this time; it’s a very long story).

Persona #2: Used when talking to immediate family and close friends
I am direct, efficient, rational and I don’t mince words. When my friends ask for my input, I will give them a straight answer. They value the clarity and seriousness with which I discuss their problems. This trait I inherited from my father. Our conversations have always been objective, effectively detaching emotions from the topics at hand (yes, peculiar, but again another long story). It should be no surprise that I maxed out the T on the Myers-Briggs scale (zero in F, but don’t hate!). My secret is that I derive delicious pleasure in finding just the precise word to convey my meaning.

One of the challenges I must be more conscious of is inadvertently using the private tell-em-like-it-is persona in a public setting.

When I’m confronted with a problem, I want to fix it, and the synapses fire in my brain, energizing the calculating, logical thinker in me. Then as I begin to speak, the diplomatic filter comes on before the words come out of my mouth. Sometimes though, I forget myself. When that happens, I can usually tell by the shocked expression on the listener’s face. A friend who is now used to the straight-talker once said that when he first heard me speak frankly, it sounded “hostile.” I always mean well when I share my thoughts, though the choice of words, or rather the lack of embellishment of those words has the tendency to color the entire message in aggressiveness.

Earlier tonight, I was discussing a friend’s business proposal and said one innocuous (to me at the time) statement that offended him. I said that I “didn’t care for” half the company goals he was proposing. It was true. I really did not care for them, and since he was proposing them to me, they would’ve made terrible incentives. In hindsight, I could have phrased it better. Ah well.

My friend Anke was bored and made this little music video of The Sims 2 + Dr. Horrible. It cracks me up!

K and I were traipsing around downtown Denver looking for something to do when I suddenly had an idea for something different. He had twenty questions to guess what it was. If he couldn’t guess it, he’d have no choice but to do it. The answers:

It is indoors.
We will be sitting down.
There is no show.
The main activity is neither reading, watching, listening, talking nor eating.
It’s open till 3am.
It costs something.
It’s dark.
It’s private.
It’s not educational.
Touching and kissing not required.
It’s sort of popular.
There won’t be any food.
You don’t need to buy something.
It could get loud.
It’s fun.

Nope, it wasn’t a wine tasting. Nor was it a pedicure. But if you guessed Korean Karaoke, you win! (He didn’t.)

K surprised with a darned good rendition of Jailhouse Rock. I countered with my high school anthem Zombie. In your head, in your head…. Zo-om-beh, zo-om-beh, zo-om-behe-ehe-ehe!

A bit of U2, Carpenters, George Michael, Aerosmith, and, yes, Rick Astley (“You rickrolled me again!” -K) later, we left with our hoarse throats and soothed them with greasy Mexican food.