Un Petit Pain

Today I hit a milestone in my new team - 1 year since I joined! To celebrate, I made little pain au chocolat. The joke being that my team suffered through the pain of having me on their team. Yeah.... this is why puns are bad. I decided to make mini ones because Lenny seemed really reluctant to eat one, saying they're not very healthy, so I figured people wouldn't feel as bad if they were small.

I made enough to share with the whole team, though some didn't have egg wash because there are some no-egg vegetarians on my team. And some where plain croissants which I made out of the uneven bits of dough on the side. I have discovered that I find tiny pastries incredibly cute.

I left one on Emily's desk as she's amazing, and she asked if this was a continuation of the mo-cake. I didn't realise that the crescent-shaped croissants look like moustaches!

Speaking of moustaches, I had another awkward encounter with NiceMoustacheGuy again today. Ever since the compliment, all of our encounters have been incredibly awkward. Whenever we end up in the kitchen at the same time, I become incredibly engrossed in my mug (which was a gift from Commissioner Gordon, and has my name on it!), or make desperate conversation with whoever else is in the kitchen at the time. On the occasions where we have to talk to each other for work reasons, I take the first parachute out of the conversation that I can find. I complimented a friend's beard, and I think he must have thought I was talking to him because he turned around as well. Both men were looking at me wondering which one of them I was talking to, and they both have nice beards. I just mumbled something, took my empty mug and bailed. Urgh.

After I sent out the email about the pains au chocolat, and thanked everyone on the team for being so kind and welcoming, we had the following conversation:

NMG: Thanks for the croissant.
Me: You're welcome.

I must have given him a strange look, as I noticed he hadn't eaten any (not that I was watching him, only one person had taken one at that point, and it wasn't him), as he followed with:

NMG: I haven't had one yet. But I will. So thanks in advance.

I didn't really know what to say to that, so I just repeated, "You're welcome." Then we stared at each other awkwardly for a few moments, until I turned around and went back to debugging.

A part of me feels like the compliment was a mistake. I don't know whether or not the entire thing is just in my head, or maybe our conversations have always been this awkward and I just never thought about it, but I feel really nervous talking to him now. I needed his help recently for something I was working on, as he is the expert, and the whole thing felt normal, but I was on edge. It's just whenever we end up talking, and there isn't a specific goal to achieve, it feels like we're both trying to talk to each other, but neither of us can work out what to say. Which means my brain was running at full speed trying to come up with something to fill the silence.

There are too many other problems for me to solve at the moment, so this one is going on the back-burner. I just wish I wasn't so awkward with conversations. Now he probably thinks I like his moustache and his beard.