Check

We had a new trainer at work for a while who had each of us run through a full game, with everyone else being players, and every time we made a mistake, the players weren't meant to tell the dealer what the mistake was, but simply say, "Check" to tell the person that they had made a mistake ("Check" as in "Check what you are doing", not the chess-"Check"). It was kinda fun to begin with, since we're still noobs and made lots of mistakes, but some people are starting to get a bit annoyed at the whole thing. It was kinda funny though when I said it to Kevin, and he kept looking at the chips in front of him trying to work out what the problem was, and everyone else was second guessing themselves and recalculating the payout, but his mistake was that he had let the wheel stop. >_<

Anyway, WG was complaining about the whole checking thing because he thought that telling someone they had made a mistake made it more likely that they would make another one, and most of the checks are for minor details anyway, and don't really affect the game (such as using the wrong hand for something), so it would be better to just tell the person what the mistake is.

I agree on some level, but I think the checking system is working for me. I find I'm paying more attention to what I'm doing because I don't want to go to the trouble of having to identify my mistakes, and when I get checked, it's usually for a few reasons, and I'm getting to know what those are, so I'm focusing more on avoiding them, whereas when someone was just telling me my problem, I'd fix it then, and then forget about it until the next time I did it.

I bumped into AG today for the first time in a while. Every time I talk to him, it feels like he's criticising something about me, and usually makes me feel like crap afterwards. Even if I do manage to come up with a good comeback, it never makes it out of my mouth, and it pisses me off to no end.

It would have been nice if someone had been there to say, "Check" to me while we were together, though I guess the nature of the relationship kinda meant we had to keep it a secret. I think that's one of the good things I like about having told people about MrMan5.5, I can get their opinion instead of just relying on my emotionally biased opinion. When we first starting dating, QC noted that we were really fast to set our relationship status on Facebook. She said people usually wait a month before doing something like that. I guess it was a bit fast, but for me, there were a couple of reasons for it. One reason was Charmeleon. After QC, the first person I told was Charmeleon, for obvious reasons, as being with MrMan5.5 made me off limits for booty calls, and I guess setting my Facebook status was my way of reminding him of the fact, and setting it in concrete. The major reason was because I didn't want to end up with another secret boyfriend who I had to sneak out of the house at the middle of the night to see, or make excuses about doing something with a "friend" (although if you think about it, it's technically true). If all of my friends knew about him, it was bound to slip out to my parents eventually - especially since some of my extended family members are able to see my Facebook, and would probably have asked my parents about it in the end, so it was motivation to make sure my parents heard it from me rather than from my aunt who heard it from her daughter, or something like that.

I haven't regretted telling them so far, and it makes things so much easier. If I'm not at home, they just assume I'm out with him, and they're fine with us staying out late at night since he has a car and can drive me home. Other than that though, one of the nice benefits is that I get other people commenting on our relationship. While I'm not entirely comfortable discussing all the details with people I don't know so well, some of them are able to comment on things that the people who know both of us fairly well tend to miss, and it gives me more things to think about. Plus, they're able to say things about him that people who are friends of both of us wouldn't. None of the feedback has been negative so far (so I'm not thinking about ending it or anything!), but the conversation sometimes leads to things I'd never thought about before, and then I tell MrMan5.5 about it (such as the whole scary girlfriend thing).

OK, I think I've waffled on for long enough - this post originally started out as a post of me just bagging the crap out of AG, but as Olek pointed out, that's not very constructive, so I decided to post this instead. Less drama, but hopefully in the future, someone with check me when I go and do something that'll be bad for me in the long run.