One thing I noticed about you was that your personality in person (when you've been around just me) is very different than your personality online and how you were at Rachel's birthday party. I would imagine that was because you didn't know me and you were either giving me an interview or teaching me how to drive a stick. :P So, this conversation might be because the people at work don't really know you. Not that I do, but I saw you around close friends and saw the difference.

P.S. I'm still having a hard time with hills. I still try to avoid the steep ones as best I can and still occasionally peel out on them. :P

Thanks for your insight.

Let me know when you want to tackle hills some time. :) Now that you've had more practice, it should be easier to learn.

Oh, and if it's in my car, we should wait till after I have a little work done, as it's hard for me to drive sometimes.

Boys are a totally alien species, yes. *grins*

But some of them are actually ok.

I think I just don't get most people in general... :P

I had noticed your "stoic" expression also. Figured it was just a Toddism =)

This gets into pretty deep waters, philosophically speaking. Because really, how do you verify that someone does or does not understand what you're thinking? Or vice versa. We can't really take the thought processes out of people's heads and do a diff. All we have to go on, ultimately, is a personal impression of whether we feel we understand, or whether we feel understood. That can obviously have a lot more to do with our personal perspective than anything else.

People who are unfamiliar with you (you've known the guys at work, what, two months?) may see a stoic expression and be reminded of the fact that they don't know what's going on behind it. Someone who's known you for years and years may see the stoic expression and find it familiar, which familiarity conceals for them the fact that they don't know what's going on behind it either.

That being said, people of all sexes and age ranges do things that make no sense to me. At least some part of that has to be due to the fact that they have a lot more information available to them on why they make the decisions they do than I do. Possibly some of that information they themselves are not even consciously aware of.

While it is true that generalizations can be made about male versus female patterns of thought, it's important to keep in mind that these are generalizations. As such, they tend to be relevant in a general sense. When you're dealing with specific individuals, you really can't count on their thought processes taking a stereotypical stream based on their gender.

Also, typical female gender roles in our society (and many others, to my understanding) lead them to view social interaction as something of great importance. Consequently, women tend to develop greater insight into the tiny social clues we all unconsciously project about our internal state of mind. On the other hand, success in social interaction often depends on concealing one's internal state of mind, and women tend also to excel at that. That may go pretty far to explain how most of the women I've known felt more comfortable around men.

So at the end of the day, here's my dime-store psychology conclusion: you personally feel more comfortable around women than around men. As a consequence you (consciously or unconsciously) take defensive measures around guys you don't feel are necessary around women. Moreover, the comfortable feeling you get in the company of women reassures you that you understand and are understood. When a women does something you don't understand (or misunderstands you), you classify it as an anomoly and comfortably forget about it.

I was thinking more along the lines of, what have you experienced about me as far as seeming closed or open, fathomable or un-?

But your in-depth analysis was cool too. :)