I spoke with an old friend, Ayne, last night (and gave her this URL. Hi Ayne!) Though we'd just seen each other a week ago at Max's, as usual we managed to fill about an hour with conversation. And as usual the conversation was interspersed with "Sorry I don't have anything to say," from both of us.

Well, clearly we have something to say, or we wouldn't have talked for an hour. We know this, but it doesn't keep us from apologizing.

See, Ayne and I are both the type of people (Cancers, she will tell you) that, in a normal conversation, are more comfortable responding to something the other person says than initiating topics. I use the term "normal conversation" very narrowly here, as Ayne will gladly spend hours sharing her vast array of eclectic knowledge if an appropriate topic comes up. But that's harder to do over the phone - instead of sharing said knowledge with a person who looks interested in what you're talking about, you're sharing it with silence or the occasional "Uh huh" or "Oh cool". For a Cancer (she tells me), that's a quick path to self-consciously shutting up.

I take most of the blame for this. As I said to Ayne last night, I'm a very "good listener", which is code for "bad talker". Odd, considering how talkative I was as a child. In a one-on-one conversation, there's a lot of pressure to think of things to say - particularly over the phone, where you can't resort to making little dancing motions. I tend to freeze up under said pressure, which is why I'm most comfortable in a group of three. Particularly when the other two talk a lot, e.g. Jenn and Katie. So we've decided that I should get a whiteboard and make a list of things to talk about before I call her next.

There's that line from Pulp Fiction about how you know you've found someone special when you can share a comfortable moment of silence with them. Ayne falls into this category for me, as does Jenn, and as did Alex and Virginia back in the day. But I don't think it applies over the phone. VG did - she and her boyfriend Paul used to fall asleep on the phone together. I think that's a bit sappy. If I want to share comfortable moments of silence, I'll go hang out with the person. The phone is for talking.

Thinking about VG just now was really weird. I'm finding it hard to relate to the person I was before college. Memories from that summer seem really foreign to me now. I was listening to a lot of Fates Warning back then - they're like a prog-rocker's substitute for The Cure.

I'm having an inordinate amount of trouble getting motivated at work recently. Now that my boss is working at his new job in California, there's nobody checking my progress or giving me short-term tasks. Furthermore, since the project has a pretty dismal future, internal motivation is hard to come by as well. (Vacation in two days isn't helping either.) Once we start working on what's looking like the final paper for this project, things might shape up, since my boss has mentioned that I may be listed as an author on the paper (SCORE!).

Once again I find myself looking forward to the beginning of the school year. The return of Katie, Matt, et al.; starting my TA position; a couple of exciting classes; and, for the first week or so, plenty of free time for snuggling and Roller Coaster Tycoon.