My, I’m out of the habit of writing here. I refuse to let GFMorris.com become only a set of all posts related to my 2006 resolutions!

Someone brought up first impressions today on the Rumor Forum, and I was reminded of something Stephen and Misty said to me about six months ago or so: that, at first, they thought I was a complete jerk, and that they’d never be able to relate to me. Now I’m over at their house at least once a week, and usually twice. In fact, when I mentioned earlier this week that I’d dropped in on the Creekmores on Saturday, Misty said she went all, “Awww, he usually comes here!”

While this entry is a vain, shameless attempt to get Misty to tell the story of their first encounter with me, I’ll note that I barely remember that they were there that night. What happened? Well, suffice it to say that the second Lord of the Rings movie was coming out the next night, so all the geeks gathered together to watch the first movie … the extended version on DVD.

For those who’ve never had the … “fun” … of watching a movie with me, let me tell you: since I suffer from Nerd Attention Deficit Disorder, the act of watching a movie and doing nothing else while watching it is anathema to me. When I watch TV at home, I am always doing something else: working on the server, writing, consuming feeds, something. Gilmore Girls is not able to get my full, undivided attention: mainly because I spend every episode writing Kari an email about every bit I do and don’t like about a show. [Mostly what I hate.] [[And Kari is a sweetheart not only for reading those emails, but responding to them. Have I told you lately that I love you, Kari? Totally in that "you put up with all the insane emails I send you" kind of way.]]

Anyway, yeah … Geof + movie + no distractions = FIDGETING. LOTS AND LOTS OF FIDGETING. The Granades, poor folks, were new to town, looking for friends, and they had to put up with my endless twitching through the movie that never ended. [Did I like it? It was ... okay. Not my thing, really. I appreciate all the awesomeness, but I don't enjoy it. I feel the same way about figure skating---I recognize that there's a lot of skill and grace going on, but ... meh. If folks are going to be on skates, they should have sticks in their hands and be chasing a puck. Just the same way, I have friends who find hockey fascinating but don't enjoy watching it. C'est la vie.]

I’m aware that this is not the only instance of a bad first impression that I gave. I can easily get wrapped up in myself or whatever I’m thinking about, and I lose all self-awareness. [No, I haven't read the bit in New Scientist about how the brain shuts down self-awareness when it gets overloaded that Marginal Revolution pointed to today ... I've been too focused today to get to that. Okay, now I'm lying ... because I linked to it, I decided that I had to read it really quickly.] Thanks to my NADD and all the crap I’m always thinking about—some trivial, some not—I am not very self-aware. Because of that, I know I make bad first impressions.

So, feel free to share your first impressions of meeting me in the comments. I won’t edit or delete a one of them.