What I wrote Wednesday night

Ben is a bit older, probably late forties, early fifties. He’s one of the nicest people I’ve ever met, but one of those guys who you pity a little. It’s just him and his fish tanks back in Florida. He’s already cleaned the whole bunkhouse, including throwing away all of the nasty stuff previous guests left in the fridge. Ben’s so eager to have people to talk to, so ready to tell people his stories that I can just see in his face that he’s normally pretty lonely. But I guess that’s kind of what I’m doing; I want to keep you all updated, but it’s also a way for me to have my stories heard.

It was a sad realization for me today that Jen, the one person I know here, the one person I can consider a friend, is leaving on Friday. I’m going to have to start making a real effort to meet people outside of work here. (The people I work with are all significantly older than me.) It’s easy to think of things to do and ways to meet people, but it’s hard to actually put it all into practice. I know I’m good at meeting people and making friends, and it seems like I shouldn’t have a problem, but just because I’m good at it doesn’t mean it’s not difficult for me to walk into a room not knowing anyone. You’ll hear how it all turns out.

There’s a website that is kind of for online dating, but also geared toward “making friends” – one of the boxes you can check off. I thought it could be a good resource for me out here, that I could look for people who were also new to the area and we could band together. However, Safeway’s stupid wireless filter apparently marks it as inappropriate and won’t let me view it. I’ll have to see if I can find free wireless that lets me see it.

Before I got here a guy on the site who lives here actually started emailing me, so I’m in touch with him. Luckily I can still email him via the site with my blackberry, and now I have his phone number, so we’ve texted a couple of times. I’m nervous about actually meeting him though. The site has this gimmick where you can rate people (for your own edification, they don’t see the ratings) and if someone rates you highly on looks and/or personality, the site will email you and ask you to rate a few people with that person mixed in. If you both rate each other highly, you get an email telling you so. That’s how this guy (Bryan) started emailing me. He rated me highly, I decided to try out the rating thing when I got the email, and I guess we both liked what we saw and read. It’s a strange new world we live in, isn’t it? But now I feel like there’s all this pressure if we meet in person. I really just want to tell him that I just need a friend, that the whole “rating” thing doesn’t matter. I feel kind of silly and pathetic about doing that, but as Mom says, honesty’s always the way to go. And I tend not to be able to hide my discomfort with situations like this. We’ll see. I’d probably be less nervous if he didn’t have those big brown eyes that have been my downfall before.

Oh! Some of you heard before I left that I would likely be going camping with the Youth Conservation Corps crew (YCC) in Kauai. Well, I will be going, but I get a bed in the house on the refuge. Just the kids and their leader have to sleep in tents. I’m not disappointed to be missing that personal growth opportunity. I’ll be in Kauai July 9-12th, so no one plan their trips for that time! The YCC is going to do work at a different refuge each week for five weeks, and I’ll likely get to go out with them at least once each week, which will be really interesting and a lot of fun. I think I’ll be skipping the day they dissect bullfrogs!

We got three new houseguests tonight. They leave for Midway on Friday. Two of them are a mother/son duo. Mom – don’t you want to go spend a few months on a remote island doing conservation work with me? They have a bowling alley!