2008 November 03

It didn't take long for me to come to terms with the possible issues of dishonesty. After all a lot of people have to keep things secret because of industry secrets. Significant positives took longer to show up but I decided that it wasn't going to matter much, I was going to be paid for my help, however much help that might be.

That left only one more thing to consider, would my girlfriend mind me disappearing on random evenings, possibly with little to no warning? I didn't think she'd mind if I was to simply be missing another night a week on a regular basis, me gaming on Fridays was an opportunity for her to spend time with her friends watching TV I had no interest in so the time apart wasn't ever an issue. I didn't think that me suddenly canceling plans to visit her parents, or go see a movie, or have dinner out would be accepted anywhere near that easy though. Veronika would normally be out on a Tuesday evening but I decided to call her and leave a message if necessary.

Getting up from the recliner was not easy after a couple of hours lying there but the dropping temperature helped. As did my stomach rumbling. Veronika has often said that we have some sort of synchronicity, as I walked inside I heard the phone ringing and it was her voice that I heard when I answered it. After the obligatory greetings and me mentioning that I had been about to call her so we could talk about something she let me know that she was wondering if she could come stay in the spare room, one of her flatmates had been attempting to run cables under the floor and put the drill through an important wire. He got a big shock but was lucky enough to have suffered nothing more serious. Without an alarm (no power - no alarm) Veronika thought she'd have trouble getting up at 6am for her job and knew there was a spare room in my home.

Of course I had no problem with her coming around so I told her to bring over however much of her stuff she thought she would need and just walk in when she got to my place. Like I expect most of my peers would have done I then proceeded to move around the house picking up the worst of the mess that had accumulated over the few days since she last visited. Unlike most of my peers however I was able to have the place looking decent within a few minutes, I don't have enough stuff to make a significant mess in just a few days.

I was making a sandwich when Veronika arrived my kitchen so I offered her half and then asked her to sit so we could talk for a short while. With her stuff dropped on the chair we ended up sharing the couch and I slowly worked my way around to the possibility of missing things we'd planned for a while if I took the 'new job' at work. I think I probably prevaricated more than was actually needed, she seemed uninterested in the specifics, just in that I was still wanting to spend time with her.

Picking up on that worry was probably one of the smartest things I'd managed in our relationship. And as such I did my best to convince I was interested in the new work because of the money and the possibility of helping my colleagues, I kept to myself the fact that I could potentially be famous if we managed to achieve anything. With that reassurance from me and a telling to along the lines of "If it starts happening to often we're going to be having a far less pleasant conversation" she told me that I should sign up.

With that I helped her up (I really should have got a new couch months earlier) grabbed her bag and we went through to the spare room where I immediately realised I hadn't done anything about the bed. With a pitying look she went out of the room to get sheets and a blanket and came back with them. We then set things up the way she prefered them (I'll never understand why a person would choose to have their top sheet tucked in all the way to the fold, it's always going to come out anyway) before I went back to the kitchen to make another sandwich.

It wasn't long before she came back out with a book and sat on the one truly comfortable piece of furniture I owned, I expected to see a second book when I arrived home the next day if she was still around. From the previous occasions we'd been at the others place in the evening I knew she wasn't likely to mind if I picked her up and sat down with her on my lap but I decided to just lie down on the couch with a magazine instead.

Apart from a few random comments, mainly along the lines of her making sure there wasn't anything specific she should be doing in the morning, neither of us felt any need to talk for the next hour or so and so I almost missed her getting up to go to bed. I looked up in time to reach up and deflect the magazine she had been intending to drop upon my head. I took the hint and got up as well so we could hug goodnight and as she walked off down the hall I made sure to pick up the plates and glasses we'd made use of since she arrived.


The following morning I wondered if I'd ever get used to having someone else sharing my home again, even with Veronika taking care to not make noise I'd been able to hear her get up and get herself sorted for work. The effort involved in getting myself up and somewhat presentable was almost more than I felt inclined to make but I decided that seeing her off was more important than another 30 minutes in bed would have been.

I walked into work early by a significant enough margin that I couldn't actually get into the building as I arrived. The earlier changes regarding non-researchers working outside of normal hours was still an issue for me so I waited the 15 minutes to have the timers cycle.