2008 November 15

Lots of very short writing sessions through the day, I think I even went and wrote a little once or twice between game turns. It's not so good that this was the halfway point for the month and I only just passed 15,000 instead of 25,000 like I "should" have.

Words today: 1024
Total for the month so far: 15567

After she talked with her flatmates Veronika came to the decision that she would apply for the job at my work and if she was hired she would shift into my place. Feeling that there was a good chance of her getting the job, and feeling that behaving as if she would get it would be a positive thing for her I made the effort to rearrange stuff so that she could have the room she had slept in while staying over as a permanent room. It didn't really take much time, especially when I'd cleared a fair amount of stuff out (a little at a time) while waiting for my foot to recover so it was easier for me to get the stuff.

The wait for news was less of an issue for me than it might have been if I hadn't been busy at work, both catching up a little on what had slipped by the way as I was off and more reading for the new research and tests that had been occurring. Nothing major seemed to be discovered but Ben had come up with a way of reducing power requirements so the company was more willing to let the team spend more time trying new things for real instead of just simulating them. A good thing when the simulations just couldn't compare to reality, mainly because of how little was known about the physics of what they were doing.

Veronika on the other hand found herself losing sleep a couple of nights a week as she vacillated over the wisdom of taking a job at the same place as her partner at the same time she'd suddenly be living in the same place. I don't know why I was suddenly seemingly completely okay with the possibility of having someone else in my space so much of the time, I wasn't sure that Veronika and I were going to last as a couple but I did feel that we'd be able to continue to get on if things went bad. I'd also enjoyed the time she spent at my place in the evenings before heading to her place and the nights that Laura had been there as well were more entertaining than nights by myself.

With the possibility of her getting the job she asked if it would be possible to meet the people that would be her colleagues without having to come to work during business hours and interrupting people while they should have been working. I figured that the upcoming game night that Friday would be a simple, convenient way to meet people and it wouldn't be out of place for her to come along as other partners had been almost from the beginning.

That meeting went as I expected, when we walked in I introduced her to the three people that were already present and we sat down to a "simple" game to test Veronika's ability to learn games as she went. As more people arrived for the evening most of them would come over to our table, I'd introduce them and then the new arrivals would either move off to play another game or start stilted conversations with someone around our table. As she had the night Laura had stayed as well she managed to pick up the rules quickly and did well, not enough to be particularly competitive but it was a reasonable score.

The next game was similar in result, although by that time there were no longer new people showing up and some started to leave. Veronika asked when I was intending to leave as we came to the end of that second game and after agreeing to leave when she wanted the two of us helped clean up the game and then said our goodbyes. The next morning Veronika told me that she'd slept fine that night, figuring that knowing the people she'd end up working with would have helped calm subconscious fears.

The next week from meeting the gamers saw Veronika begin to look forward to working at the same place so we were both happy to read her acceptance when the letter came in the mail. Getting things cleared at her soon to be previous employer turned out to be remarkably simple, especially when her boss found someone to replace her suspiciously quick. She didn't feel inclined to look into it or ask around or anything but she thought it might have been because her boss was looking for some reason to get rid of her. While it had been obvious that the two of them had a personality clash the degree could easily have been obscured by professional distance.

Her flatmates were the ones with the problem when it came to Veronika shifting, they now needed to find someone new to fill her place in the flat. None of them were wanting her to stay instead of leave besides the issue of liking her and not wanting change. They all helped her pack as well, although we later realised that each of them had kept something back as they helped so she would need to go back and visit.

Getting shifted in took Veronika very little time, having already known what I had throughout the house made it easy for her to divide her stuff into two separate lots, one for storage because I already had it. The rest went mainly into the room she was taking as it was personal stuff, like her books and clothes etc. We did end up changing out some of my stuff as hers was nicer but for the most part I didn't end up seeing much change in the way things were. I think that would have made the transition easier for me.

Getting to work after Veronika shifted in proved a little more rushed as neither of us realised how much earlier we would need to be up when sharing amenities the way we would be. Back at her flat there had been a very staggered start each morning, with only a few minutes of more than one of them around typically.