The big news roundabout these parts is that now that the summer is nearly over, my roomie Joe’s shift as a school custodian has shifted from a day shift to an evening shift, so now he will be working from 4 PM to midnight every weeknight.

And as amongst my quartet of friends, he is the one with the least flexible schedule, this means everything else we do needs to shift around to accommodate.

And when I first heard this, I was happy, because it benefits me personally in two ways :

1) He can still drive me to and from my weekly therapy appointment, they just have to be scheduled earlier in the day now. We are aiming for something like 11:15 am in order to give him plenty of time to sleep after getting off work at midnight, and yet be far enough before his shift to allow for getting ready.

and 2) it means that he will be getting home at a simply marvelous time for us to get together to watch the Daily Show/Colbert taped between 11 pm and midnight. This is a social ritual I greatly enjoy and with the previous shift, it was hard for us to sync up and so we often had to catch up on the weekend or snatch a spare hour whenever we could. Now, it will be so easy to do.

And those are pretty good news for me. But it is not without cost (what is?), and that cost looks like it might take the shape of Denny’s.

See, with our previous schedule, Joe didn’t work at all on Fridays and so it was a great day to get together in the evening at Denny’s between 8 pm and 9 pm, have a meal and enjoy one another’s company, then return to the apartment to watch the marvelous melange of video goodness that Felicity brings to us.

Our other two social nights, Sundays and Tuesdays, we just did the video part, because I, for one, cannot afford to eat out more than once a week.

But the shift to 4 to midnight is going to throw a spanner in the works there. We could get together after midnight at Denny’s of a Friday night. One of the things I love most about Denny’s is that they are open all night, which is great for us hungry night owls.

But what I am guessing will happen is that our night out will shift to Sunday, the next social day when Joe has no work and we can do the whole shebang. And that opens up the possibility of doing something other than Denny’s.

Normally, on Sundays, if we do eat out, we go to ABC Country Kitchen. It’s a great place, with good food, a decent price, and great staff.

But we have developed a real relationship with the folks at Denny’s. We get along great with them, and they treat us extremely well. They know our preferences for things like extra napkins, sandwiches with no sauces on them, and the music turned way down low, and are happy to accommodate us.

I like to think that is because we are such good customers. We are friendly, polite, pleasant folks who are easy to get along with and never get mad over little mistakes, which from what I gather from sites like Not Always Right makes us practically saints in the annals of customerdom.

And of course we tip, but no more than average. So it must be that we are so nice.

You really do get back what you put out in this life. Not always, but most of the time. It’s not karma or vibes or positive ki, it’s just the human tendency to share mood.

Come in angry and hostile, and you will get that right back at you, and if you are woefully deficient enough in self-awareness, you will go away thinking that barista was rude to you “for no reason”.

Well nothing happens for no reason in human relationships. It may happen for a very shitty, unjustified, psycho reason, but there’s always a reason if you look for it.

Anyhow, we could easily go to Denny’s on Sunday night instead. We might not meet the same staff people and I would miss the crew from Friday nights, but we need not deprive ourselves of Denny’s.

I am more worried about the other two social days. We are all night owls, so there should be no problem staying up past midnight to hang with Joe after work, but that still leaves a lot less social time before we are all too tired to have fun than before, and that just plain sucks.

But oh well, whatever the changes, we adapt. The transition period is usually unpleasant and annoying, especially if you are someone like me who likes a certain amount of predictability in his life and doesn’t like having to change.

Eventually, though, the new situation becomes the new normal, the old normal fades away, and you have successfully adapted to the change like any smart organism.

I am a fairly adaptable person, despite my enjoying of a broad kind of routine. I am good at understanding what exactly it is I get out of a situation so that when the situation changes, I can instantly evaluate whether anything substantial has changed or is the change merely cosmetic.

And I am mentally maneuverable enough to just dodge around the little potholes of life, and flexible enough not to have really strong preferences in a lot of things.

So a lot of change just doesn’t matter to me. I can go with the flow.

But deep down there will always be the heart of a tried and true stick in the mud stubborn Taurus to deal with, and I do not do “sudden” very well.

There’s just something about me that shatters into tiny shard of glass when my expectations of what I will be doing in the next little while are challenged, and I just can’t change everything that fast.

So I can adapt to change as long as I have some warning and some time to get used to the idea.

But don’t expect me to leap into action at a moment’s notice.

I just don’t have that kind of acceleration.