When I woke up at 4 a.m. yesterday to catch my flight home, I was sure of one thing: The journey from this hotel bed to my own bed that night was certainly too long to endure. Bed- Rental Car- Half Hour Drive-Airport- Flight-Airport- My Car-Hour Drive- Work- Bed. Way way way too long.
But I made it… save for a little airsickness. It was nothing like the red gatorade puke from hell that Mr. 5280 so beautifully describes for us. But I had never gotten airsick before and it was pretty terrible. I think it was from lack of sleep and coming down off the stress-high I had been on for a week. About 30 minutes after takeoff, I got cold sweats and the plane started spinning. I rang for the stewardess and (with only minimal disgust) she managed to get me a bag. Gross. Enough about that. Needless to say, it was awful.
But the trip in itself was eventful… stressful, but worthwhile. Wednesday night I found myself out at a bar with about 25 other male engineers from our grad student program, which made for an interesting evening. They had all seen our presentation earlier and were eager to talk about it. Or talk to me. As I am realizing now.
When I first arrived at the bar, one engineer (we’ll call him Original Engineer) came right up to me and offered to buy me a drink. Bold! We talked for awhile but were interrupted by several other of his friends coming up to join the conversation. Surprisingly, there were several good-looking ones, but I was not about to embarrass myself by drunkenly hooking up with another employee on this trip, so I refrained from drinking too much in order to avoid.
About an hour into the party, I realized that I was surrounded by young men. All of which who were vying for my attention. It hit me that a blond communications girl from New England was outside of their usual species of woman and they were probably all very overstimulated. What can I say, I’m hot shit.
As I was chatting with a group of them, one guy (we’ll call him Tall and Handsome) in particular was laying on the flirt. Original Engineer came up and joined our party. My conversation turned into a side conversation with others, but we were still standing next to Original Engineer and Tall and Handsome so I was overheard what came next.
T&H: Dude, that girl is getting surrounded. She’s so fucking hot. I wonder who she is going to hook up with… I’m totally hitting on her, screw all these jokers.
OE: Oh yea… what’s her name?
T&H: … what?
OE: What. is. her. name.
T&H: Uhhhh…
OE: Dude, you don’t even know her fucking name.
That is all I heard. Wow. There is something so strange and nice about overhearing someone defending your honor. I think he might have wanted me to overhear so I would consider him valiant and let him sweep me away to his room, but whatever. That wasn’t going to happen, but it was still a nice moment.
Soon after, OE got a little too touchy-feely for me and I decided that I needed to extricate myself from the situation ASAP before things got out of hand. I didn’t want to cause any more fights, after all.
So too bad that was a work/awkward situation and I couldn’t actually follow-through with any of them, but I need to find a similar situation (where I am the only girl in a sea of young men who are starved for female attention) and put myself in it again, for sure. It felt nice to be wanted (and defended!) but it was just a little too weird for me in that exact situation.
So I am back. And a little worse-for-the-wear, but I’m here. That was definitely the most work I have had to do (in the shortest period of time and with the most frustrating team) in my young career.
This weekend I am going to The Lawyer’s for a Chicago-Throwback weekend. What is a Chicago-Throwback weekend? Ah, you will have to check back later to find out, but all you need to know is that I am super excited and it is good timing because I need to escape my life for the time being. It’s only 4:30 but whatever… I need out of here. I am corporated-OUT.
5 Comments
November 21, 2008 at 6:10 pm
Yeah for you being super hot and getting all the guys!!
November 21, 2008 at 11:52 pm
Bloggy McFlirtsalot – Congrats on being the super hot chick at the bar! That is quite the accomplishment.
Also, although your morals (whatever those are) are admirable, your blog would have been way more entertaining if you hooked up with one of the engineers. I’ll let it slide this time though…
November 22, 2008 at 12:51 am
And it would have been twice as entertaining if you hooked up with both! Not that you should sell yourself for your blog readers or anything….
November 23, 2008 at 9:14 pm
beth! what an awesome vacation…. not really vacation but yeah getting out of new england is definitely needed. i havent read further down yet.. but how did the presentation go?
November 23, 2008 at 9:23 pm
that is hilarious! you’re so funny, and it was so nice of that guy to defend you. I hate getting sick, especially on airplanes where you can’t really hide.