Diane got her hair done. It's darker than it was before but it still kind of sticks up at weird angles. I don't remember women having hairstyles like that when I was a kid, but I see them a lot now. It's almost kind of punkish. I told her she looked nice and she really did look nice, not because she looked any better or worse than she did before, but just because it's something you're supposed to do. Especially if you're a dude, and she's hot, which she kind of is. Anyway, Diane told me it was her natural color. One of the guys in her department interrupted and said it isn't natural if you have it colored that way, because in her department that are always ragging on each other. I told the dude she had it dyed back to her natural color (she nodded and said thank you) and I added that she just needed a little support from the guys around her. And then I walked away and didn't say anything else.

The entire exchange took maybe eight seconds. That's about how long a conversation about someone's hair should take.

A few weeks ago I asked her how her weekend had gone, and she said ok. And then before the conversation went anywhere, she was like "Do you need something?" which was so abrupt and off-putting that it's not even that far from just saying "Why are you even talking to me, douchebag?"

So if it's not work-related, I don't even try to engage her in conversation. I'm not going to make any judgements about her, as there are a number of reasons why someone would do that, and the fact is that I don't even care enough to think of any.

I was volunteering at a shelter on Saturday and I met this woman who is probably 27 or 28, she volunteers all the time and runs several ministries at her church, and we spent the morning talking and hanging out, discussing spirituality and sharing our faith and talking about our lives. It was actually incredibly awesome. It was the kind of connection you dream of making, and I will probably never see her again and she probably hasn't given it a second thought.

Is it irony then, that someone like Diane, whose only reaction to having to step over my body if I dropped dead in front of her would be mild annoyance, I get to see every freakin' day? Because life is exactly that fair.

Women have told me that I'm awesome because I don't freak out when they reject me, like if they say they're not interested, I'll still be friends with them. Like I'm not always scamming on them and trying stuff with them, and they feel comfortable around me. And I think they're trying to be nice when they say stuff like that, but I'm not sure if I should feel good about myself or just file that under "compliments I could live without" like "You hardly flinched at all when I punched you in the face".

I don't see what's the big deal.