Tonight I attended the After Your Bedtime party. It was a opening party for the new wing of the Pittsburgh Children's Museum. At $50 a person it didn't quite match the $250 black tie dinner preceding it, but it was still one of the more expensive/fancier affairs I've been to. I got to go the ETC dime as part of the Animateering group since the fruit of the previous Animateering project was installed as part of the new exibits. It was good to see the museum but the whole party experience was something else.

I thought, through my mom, that I knew was wealth and class was, to some degree, but our upper middle class coming from below does not compare to the true upper class who would spend the kind of money on tonight's events. As fun as it was, I don't think I took full advantage of it.

I'm speaking of meeting girls. I don't know how to talk about it even, really. I'm always on the lookout for girls. I'm really at the point in my life that it is all I need, but I do need it badly after 23 years or so of waiting.

Today was a long day, after class, and work, and a party with another masters program that was also supposed to introduce us to women, and The Incredibles which was a great movie where Pixar has outdone themselves again, I went to this party, and now I have to go to bed but be ready for an early and long day of Puzzle Royale puzzle solving tomorrow.

And so I get to the part of this story that is important after 4 paragraphs. There was a girl there. Well, there were lots of girls there, and several that seemed around my age or so. They didn't seem to be attached. That's one of the things that stops me talking to girls. I have a very hard time talking to girls out at bars or parties or anywhere because I always assume they are there with someone. If not a guy then a girlfriend that I still wouldn't want to try to get between.

Well tonight there was one girl in particular that I had my eye on. Maybe I should have made it my goal before it got to late or before I had a bit to drink, not that it didn't help. But dancing on the dance floor I was watching her. I think she actually noticed that. It is uncomfortable to think of people as noticing me; I tend to think I'm invisible, which is both bad and good. She said something to me, unprompted, which I think was "I see you." Maybe I couldn't hear very well, or maybe I'd drunk too much but I can barely remember it now, an hour later. It seems like it was a dream. I can't imagine, if that happened why I could go over and say more or what not. I was staring, and I tried not to. I think she did some looking back or at least noticing. And yet, I didn't even have the courage to ask her name. I know that opportunity will not come again. Things like it maybe, so I have to learn to be able to take advantage of the situation. It may feel bad at the time to be awkward and out of my element, but much worse right now to know that I missed an opportunity. Right at this moment I know why I have always been single. This is why. I don't know who she was or why she was even there, but I'm sad I missed the opportunity to be social. You could say the attendance fee to the party was a waste. This kind of depression that follows this kind of failure is the essence of what it means to be me. I have felt this all the time, a feeling that goes back to camp and age 10.