P: Diane in Boston, Part III- MIT! Soccer! Miracles of Science!

So Diane and I have an interesting taste in our mouths after this house party Friday night. We leave around 2am, and it takes us 20 min to walk home. Among the characters we met was this girl was very sweet, and I think she happened to be crowned queen of the Space Prom party (I left before they announced those awards). Again, she was very nice, but unfortunately her breath was a bit foul, which led Diane to say her mouth, well, "smelled like a butcher shop.” I thought this was pretty classic. I am henceforth going to use this phrase ALL THE TIME.

So SATURDAY: I head off to running club, while Diane heads off to have a little wandering adventure of her own. She meets me back at the running club house for breakfast, where I once again assault her with a bevy of dorky guys. It turns out one of the characters we met at the party the night before decided to come to running club (I had mentioned it in passing). So he starts running with me, and it looks like he’s faster. So I say: “You can go on ahead if you want,” and he says, “No, that’s okay, I like running slowly the first couple of miles.” Then he proceeds to barrage me with advice on how I’m supposed to work on speedwork. Thanks, but no thanks.

So I tell him, “Actually, believe it or not, I’m now running a minute and a half faster per mile than I was back in November.” I don’t know if this shuts him up, but he tells me he’s going to breeze ahead and he’ll see me back at the house.

Now this kid was no looker. But he seemed nice enough last night. Or at least, socially with it enough last night. But lo behold, in the daytime, it turns out he’s a total social retard! Like, it’s beer goggles for social skills or something. So he continues to follow me at every point of the day. I’m stretching; he’s stretching by me. I go into the house, he follows. I go to the kitchen to get water, he’s right behind me. I go outside to the backyard, he’s tailing me. At this point, Diane comes by, and he’s tailing her, too. What’s worse is that he then starts to say something about how “yeah, we’re all socially smart enough to know when we’re invited to stuff, yadda yadda.” Then when he learns that Diane and I are going to play soccer, he rambles on about his IM league.

“Yeah, I’m not good, but they like me since I’m a runner…” and I say something harmless like, I’m still learning to play D and then he bombards me with yet another speech about where I should be positioned behind my offender, and proceeds to demonstrate. What irks me most is when people are obnoxious about knowing it all, when they don’t even have the goods to prove it! Like, who does this little punk think he is?

So Diane and I start talking with these other guys, but this guy continues to HOVER over us. And he doesn’t quite jump into our conversation, but he just stands there, peering in. This was so unsettling that Diane had to create this Spatial Diagram to demonstrate, which she entitled “Proximity of Hoverer Ratio” or something like that:

In this photo, Diane and I are the yellowish-tawny colored beers, the water glass is this pale white guy we were talking to, and the HOVERER is the pepper shaker.

As Diane and I are trying to leave, this guy is still trying to angle in on our soccer game! He’s like, where are you guys going to play? Okay, I’m going to swing by the MIT fields and see if you guys are there, I’m on my bike, etc. ARGH!!! And there were a couple of other people from running club I’d like to have invited, but the hoverer kept HOVERING in the way, and I couldn’t invite them without inviting him.

So Diane and I snuck out the back of the house, and headed to the MIT fields, where we started to kick the ball around and toss a frisbee. Then I texted my friend J, who’s at MIT for city planning, and even though his thesis is due on Thurs, he came out to toss the frisbee about with us for a few, then kindly gave us a kick-ass tour of the facilities, including the architecture studios.

He and Diane got on swimmingly, talking about structure and modular housing units and all of the like. And when we walked into the architecture studios, Diane was hit with the Proustian aroma of not madeleines dunked in tea, but the smell of stale-cut cardboard.

We had yet another dorky ROBOTIC VOICE moment as we walked all around the campus. More cantilevers.

Then Diane and I headed to Jacob Wirth’s for schnitzel and a pint of Radeberger Pilsner and Hofbrau pilsner. Jacob Wirth’s—to refresh your memory—is the German beer hall that also does a Friday night piano sing-along. Here are some photos of our Saturday afternoon:

This way for Part IV….