Playing the %s

I often berate old flames for checking back in with me after the fact, especially those who dumped me.  Having no patience and mocking them for being alone on a holiday and getting either nostalgic (or horny) or regretful.

Well, that was me today. Facing a solo holiday weekend (which I'm actually looking forward to, mind you) and slightly curious, there I was after work ... back-checking the old flames who still have OKCupid profiles.

Yes, many of them still have profiles.  Yes, I'm being flamingly mildly hypocritical.

OKC "matches" folks based on many factors, but most specifically by age, location, and "match percentage." This is reached when respondents answer anywhere from 20 to 2000 questions on all manner of topics, ranking each question's relative importance. Through an algorithm that I cannot summarize in more than 25 sentences, OKC takes the results of:

1.  Your answer, compared with

2.  How you’d like someone else to answer, and

3.  How important the question is to you.

Your answers are then compared to everyone else's on the site and when you look at a profile, the resulting match percentage supposedly summarizes how much your and that profiler's answers made each other happy. "Friend" and "enemy" percentages are also gleaned .... a calculation that, even after a thorough scouring of both Google and the OKC website, I don't see explained.

Anyway, it was fun to revisit how I matched up with some of the more memorable men I've encountered. No surprise to see who tops the list (and why my heart still breaks a little every day).

C-2: 
86% Match / 78% Friend / 21% Enemy

But even those I had either spectacular flame-outs or fizzlings with were uniformly positively ranked:

Sunday-Night Man: 
79 M / 67 F / 27 E

The Almost-Date: 
79 M / 73 F / 30 E

Young Politican from Brooklyn: 
76 M / 71 F / 27 E

Mr. Reach The Beach Relay: 
72 M / 77 F / 25 E

Likewise, I knew immediately that these were not going to be possible, which also bore out:

Mr. Craigslist: 
51 M / 59 F / 38 E

Canoe: 
36 M / 51 F / 54 E

Besides, they're all now in the past.

Since I'm feeling on the feisty side this weekend anyway, I decided to search for some high-% men, write them, and point out that we're perfect for one other. See what happens. In a test run a few minutes ago, I came up with some starting data by searching the pool of:

1.  Guys who like girls

2.  Aged 35 to 45

3. who live within 25 miles of Boston and

4.  have been online in the last month,

5. who show a photo and

6. are single.

I found:

My Best Friend: 

Age 39, Watertown

81 M / 94 F / 10 E

The most private thing I’m willing to admit:

I have a crush on Michelle Obama...

My Worst Enemy: 

Age 36, Boston

28 M / 33 F / 90 E

The most private thing I’m willing to admit:

i love desperate house wife

Perfect Match: 

40, Somerville

94 M / 88 F / 15 E

The most private thing I’m willing to admit:

I'm not nearly as serious as this profile makes me sound.

Hmm.  While it should follow that I need to now write my Best Friend and Perfect Match to beg for our imminent togetherness(es), I should also note that above-mentioned Perfect Match is someone I already took the initiative to contact back in February ... and who never replied.

Hmm indeed.  Wonder if it is worth trying again.

...and it's only Wednesday

It's been quite the week.

So far:

1) The New Yorker acknowledges online dating on the same day that I get a message from an OKC guy calling himself "Guy Noir."

2) Meteorologists acknowledge the following extended weather forecast for the Boston area:

Saturday, July 2: Beach Weather
Sunday, July 3: Beach Weather
Monday, July 4: Beach weather.

3)   I acknowledge that the Marine Corps Marathon is 17.75 weeks away, and if I'm going to do an 18-week training plan I'd better start running, even if it is Beach Weather.

4) Biking to work today, circling around on Trinity Place towards the Stuart Street Starbucks, I nearly knock over House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio (dressed in a golf shirt and emerging from a town car), relieved the state troopers flanking him didn't think I was doing it on purpose.

Etc. Etc. Etc.

I knew Bill wasn't going to be satisfied with a cryptic and über-crusty Guinness photo as the only description of my weekend:

Bill: What was up with the blog entry? Did that guy no show?

Karin: Nah. It’s a more involved story ... We hung out both Saturday and Sunday. Didn’t end well last night at 12:30 and I was pissed so I drove over to Foley’s to unwind with a Guinness. Surprisingly, just doing that rather than going home and going to bed being angry was a good approach. I e-mailed him today and apologized – he was a bit of a quirky guy in person and the fallout came because of my frustration with that, which is hardly his fault. He doesn’t seem aggrieved and said he’d write more later. Which is fine. It was good for us to hang out. We’re definitely not worth dating or even romantic involvement, but we do have a lot of shared interests and I’d like to stay in touch.

B: Sorry it didn’t work out so well. Sure this guy is really worth your time?

K: Well, yeah, enough so. Considering our level of interaction the last 3 months, I don’t want to make an enemy and don’t want it to end badly. Even if we just get square and then the relationship trails off because there’s nothing romantic going on….so be it. Better that. Interesting guy, smart guy, definitely eccentric – which, again, is something not entirely apparent until you hang out. Kind of like what happened with C-2, I’m glad to have erased ambiguity. Frustrated to have wasted time on a level, but it’s all a learning experience and this taught me something about me too.

B: Well, what’s wrong with cutting ties now? If you’re going through the motions just to “not make an enemy”, it just doesn’t sound right. Don’t waste more time if there is no potential, your time is too valuable.

K: We’ll see. I’d like to end it on a good note if nothing else. I’m a bad person when it comes to regrets.

B: Well, you probably regret too much in general. You’re a good person that way in that you care about how you treat others, sometime regardless of how they treat you.

K: I know. He didn’t treat me badly. He didn’t misrepresent himself. It just took meeting him to understand that him being quirky made for great e-mail exchanges but less chemistry in person. I didn’t have the patience for his real-life persona. So I don’t have to. I think we’ll just go back to swapping YouTube videos.

Actually, I did that last night, sending along this link of the great mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson singing Handel. It closed the loop on our brunch at the Algiers Coffee House, where we sat for 2 hours on Sunday afternoon dissecting the text and origin of the Bach cantatas playing in the background. Which, again, seems like the kind of relationship he and I should and could have. Those 2 hours of Bach minutiae, in that (speaking of quirky) Harvard Square relic, were easily the best 2 hours of the weekend.

Lesson learned.

(The regret comment probably requires reflection and a separate entry at a later date.  As does my curiosity about whether or not he thought I was an eccentric, too ....)

Meanwhile, The New Yorker yesterday revealed this 10,000-word essay by Nick Paumgarten on online dating, with a heavy focus on OKCupid -- interviews with and discussions of the dating lives of its creators and all.

Well, it's about time .... 2 of my most regular reading habits in one handy location! (Highbrow and lowbrow meeting in the middle, perhaps?) Mr. Paumgarten is gifted and clever and did a mountain of research. I particularly enjoyed learning about the Technical Automated Compatibility Testing (TACT), the first known "computer-penpal" service that originated around the time of the 1964 World's Fair. Nonetheless, that everything (but TACT) sounds like something I've heard before, even in a piece of this length, is a testament to both my well-documented history and the over-ripeness of still writing about it.

Mr. Paumgarten is married. For research purposes, rather than creating an fake online profile, he made coffee dates with women who had OKC histories. His conclusion rings of accuracy .... particularly the highlighted line at the end...

"I talked to men, too, of course, but there is something simultaneously reductive and disingenuous in most men’s assessments of their requirements and conquests. Some research has suggested that it is men, more than women, who yearn for marriage, but this may be merely a case of stated preference. Men want someone who will take care of them, make them look good, and have sex with them—not necessarily in that order. It may be that this is all that women really want, too, but they are better at disguising or obscuring it. They deal in calculus, while men, for the most part, traffic in simple sums.

"A common observation, about both the Internet dating world and the world at large, is that there is an apparent surplus of available women, especially in their thirties and beyond, and a shortage of recommendable men. The explanation for this asymmetry, which isn’t exactly news, is that men can and usually do pursue younger women, and that often the men who are single are exactly the ones who prefer them. For women surveying a landscape of banished husbands or perpetual boys, the biological rationale offers little solace. Neither does the Internet. "

And here's a take on a gender issue:

"Good writing on Internet dating sites may be rare because males know that the best way to get laid is to send messages to as many females as possible. To be efficient, they put very little work into each message and therefore pay scant attention to each woman’s profile. The come-on becomes spam and gums up the works, or scares women away, which in turn can lead to a different kind of gender disparity: a room full of dudes. “There is a fundamental imbalance in the social dynamic,” Harj Taggar, the investor at Y Combinator, told me. “The most valuable asset is attractive females. As soon as you get them, you get loads of creepy guys.”

Finally, this story was my favorite: a woman in her 70s, with a PhD, married and divorced twice and who lives ... outside of Boston. She's in her 70s, I'm in my 30s, we're both internet dating, we're having similar experiences.

"She met a mathematician who lived in Amsterdam, and flew over to meet him but discovered within minutes that he suffered from full-blown O.C.D. She drove up to New Hampshire in the rain for lunch with a man with whom she’d been carrying on a promising e-mail and telephone correspondence for a few days, but he told her that he found her unattractive. She met a financier on Yahoo’s dating site. They got together for coffee at Café Pamplona, in Cambridge. (K: Just down the street from the Algiers, of course!) He was handsome, charming, and bright. He was also, as a friend’s follow-up Google search revealed, a felon, and had served time in prison in a RICO case. “I did see him again,” she said. “And then I realized how crazy he was. He wasn’t nice, either.” For two years, she has had an off-and-on affair with a forty-seven-year-old man she met on Yahoo, and she recently met a man on Match.com who showed up for their first date wearing a woman’s sun hat, slippers, and three purses. He invited her to accompany him to Norway to meet the Queen.

“You have to learn the rules,” she said. “But there are no rules.” More often than not, she initiates contact. “At my age, I have to.” She also feels that, in her profile, she has to shave a few years from her age and leave out the fact that she has a doctoral degree, having concluded that men are often scared off by it. She has gone online as a man, just to survey the terrain, and estimates that in her age range women outnumber men ten to one. “Men my age are grabbed up immediately by friends,” she said. “Or else they believe that younger women are more interested in sex.

“I’ve learned, forget about writing,” she said. “Meet a person as soon as you can. Anyway, the profiles you read, they’re like bathtubs. There’s no variation.”

Well. That happened.

And furthermore.

Guinness is, seriously, like medicine. 

Thank God.

(And thank you, J.J. Foley's, when healing is required.)

6/27/11 - 1:33 a.m.

Visitor (maybe)

So as improbable as it may seem to both you and me, Piano Man is scheduled to visit Boston this weekend -- arriving tomorrow afternoon not to stay with me, but ostensibly to spend time with me -- although since his work (suddenly) got crazy this week we haven't been able to confirm the schedule or activities or, really, talk much at all, and I'm on edge for the inevitable last-minute "Oops, It Won't Work After All" notification but am also happy to anticipate a dinner companion, at least for one meal before we decide how well we do or don't get along. 

I'm wondering how we will.

Self-Portrait

My Wednesday-night class at MGH's Benson-Henry Institute required me, last night, to draw a picture of myself "using several bright colors." 

I think those are supposed to be Skittles in my right hand.

I'll also be required to do this in August, when the sessions end.  Remind me to draw more toned legs when that time arrives.

Statistical diversion

Everytime someone in Boston hears for the first time that I'm from North Dakota, he or she inevitably follows with a crack about awful weather.  I always respond that it really isn't that much worse, just more intense and longer-lasting.

But I now have to respectfully disagree with my own past assessment.  Between Montana snowmelt and a wet spring, flood conditions are pretty cruelly kicking North Dakota's ass.

First, the Devils Lake region, a crisis years in the making that is displacing thousands of farmers. Then Bismarck's torture-drip of Garrison Dam releases, thanks to obscene snowmelt in Montana, allowing the Missouri river to cover the southern half the city through the summer. Then, at this very moment, Minot is experiencing levee breaches on the Souris River expected to inundate the homes of over 10,000 residents (including a number of friends and schoolmates); a full quarter of the city has been mandatorily evacuated.

Holy crap.

(And like Forrest Gump, that's all I have to say about that. Except that North Dakotans are notoriously community-minded and stubborn and, once banded, will soon be kicking the flood's ass. I have no doubt.)

Because anything I write today will be trite in light of this catastrophe, it seems the perfect day to bring up the fact that I this week -- after 3 years and 825 posts -- discovered the "stats" tab of this here blog: it essentially tells me what pages are most clicked on and from what referrering websites the clickers come. I can see in a day, in a week, in a month, or for "all-time," the most popular individual posts.

So. 

The All-Time Top-5 Most-Clicked Single in the City posts (in ascending order) are:

5) Friday (or a short tale in 19 scenes) -- 03/19/2011  In which I go to Symphony Hall in my yoga pants. And get ditched by an accountant.

4) The cliché of a Monday -- 11/09/2009    This was one of my many undistinguished gripe-fests, ending with a ode to Boston Public Works for getting the Southie Christmas tree stand out 2 months in advance. I can't figure out why it would ever attract a second reading, unless the BPW has it linked to their employee website?

3) Just a Couple Girls Cross-Posting -- 12/06/2010   Not surprised at this one because it involves traffic from my cross-posting-friend's blog which has a sizable readership of its own. It also includes, I think, the only time I've used the word "douchebag" in a sentence.

2)  Rules for Going out in Southie on a Tuesday --- 05/09/2009   Owing to my own vanity, this could be (by far and away) the next most popular (500 separate hits!) because it involves a photo of my legs in heels and pantyhose. But using that logic, why does the finale of the Bikini Challenge, with its far more revealing pose, not even rate in the top 50? The appeal of this one is also a mystery ..... if you're one of the people clicking on it a lot, let me know why!
 
1) BBC 10: Ode to Storrow -- 03/05/2011    What can I say? When a post gets picked up by The Universal Hub, 677 people read it.

Weird groove

In this weird groove lately
(so disagreeable in this solstice).

Wouldn't call it a crisis, or depression
or even unhappiness.

Might call it unmotivation
(yes, a made-up word).

It's how thoroughly I don't care
if I actually do the things I've set myself up to do.

It's about everything, just about,
starting with getting out of bed in the morning.

Followed by blogging, then running,
then taking care of a sore throat
as to not lose my voice again
(which I did, anyway),
then working, then choring,
then socializing, then paying bills,
then going to bed at night.

These all seem difficult, somehow,
(these things that are good for me).

These are not difficult.
My life is not difficult.

Maybe it's this fun with (lack of) sleep thing?

But, I'm attending at class at the MGH Benson-Henry Institute
to try something called "mind-body" meditation
so I can go to sleep better at night
and stop finding simple things difficult.

(Turn off the brain.
Calm the thoughts.
Find the focus.
Find the positive.)

Class started last Wednesday,
meets again this Wednesday.
Haven't yet done any of the homework,
and I feel unconcerned about this,
but don't like me for it.

Which is the dichotomy keeping me up tonight:
nonchalance and guilt and how they
seamlessly coexist.

And no, it isn't lost on me
that I'm focusing on this dichotomy
instead of taking care of what's causing it
and I know it.

Which goes back to why
this groove is weirder than I enjoy.

Good dad ...

.... and bad daughter for not saying it sooner.

(Laying low) in the city of champions

Two friends posted these status updates on their Facebook pages this morning:

Mike writes:

"Boston, Massachusetts: Superbowl XXXVI (2002) Champions, Superbowl XXXVIII (2004) Champions, 2004 World Series Champions, Superbowl XXXIX (2005) Champions, 2007 World Series Champions, 2008 NBA Champions, 2011 Stanley Cup Champions. 10 years, 7 championships! Boston, city of champions, YOU'RE MY HOME!!!!"

Matt writes:

"In my ten years in Boston I have witnessed 3 Super Bowl champs, 2 World Series, 1 NBA champ, and now a Stanley Cup. What city should I take my sports luck to next???"

While I have embraced the Red Sox and the Celtics (Kevin Garnett!) through their successes, I'll confess that the Bruins have rarely made it onto my radar. In fact, when in Minneapolis over Memorial Day, my (hockey-loving) brother-in-law commented one morning, "Wow, so your team is in the Stanley Cup finals!"  I didn't even know they had made the playoffs.

So went my rationale for not jumping in and "revelling with long-suffering fans in the promised land" last night, despite the children "running down the streets of Southie with sparklers."  Sure, I was tired and needed to go to bed anyway. I also thought, perhaps, the true Beantown loyals would see straight into my faux-celebratory-you're-just-out-here-for-the-public-drinking hypocrisy, and I wasn't in the mood for a swearing match. 

Cool, though, for everyone here who does really care.  Sincerely.  A Championship City isn't a bad place to be.

Good help is easy to find

It isn't every day in a girl's life that the rear wheel of her bicycle pops off-chain in mid-pedal at a random Southie corner when she's already 20 minutes late for work.

It isn't every day, either, at that random corner, that a contractor (about her age) will be sitting in his van waiting for a job to start when he sees the girl's bike malfunction and, by the time she has flipped the frame on its end to investigate the chain disaster, come over to offer help, saying, "I was wondering how you were going to fix that without getting totally dirty." And then take over and completely fix it, blackening his hands.

And who knew that while the girl watched random contractor at random corner fixing her bike not a minute after it malfunctioned, a second man (about her age) would walk down the cross street and stop to say, "You got that under control? Do you need any help?" Followed by another random contractor (about her age) in black pick-up pulling over to ask the same question. Who would, upon hearing assurances that all was well, yell out his window "Do you need anything to wipe your hands with? I have this whole stack of napkins here...."

Followed, then, by a fourth man (about her age), walking a nervous Chihuahua, who stopped as the girl reassembled herself for the bike ride to work and said, "Hey! How's it going?"

Seems like my key to meeting folks in the hood is to have something go wrong.

Thanks, gentlemen of Southie.

Kiss for the road

Before you chastise me
for doing it again,

Let me confirm
I didn't plan to end up
again
sharing my passenger seat with
C-2 
on an early Monday morning,
kissing
(and doing other things).

I didn't know until Sunday
that
he was in town until Monday.

I didn't know
he'd apologize
for never being around
or
tell me
he and his girlfriend were
on the outs.

I can confirm,
however,
that he had kissing me
on his mind
from the moment
he texted
and
invited me to Foley's.

I can confirm
I had the same
from the moment
I got the text.

I can confirm
the kissing
still wins every award
and that
physically connecting
to a lover
after too long apart
is like stepping into a
hot bath on a
cold night.

At one moment,
me lying back on the seat,
him lying full on me,
me grasping at his hair,
I said,
"I love being just like this."

And I meant it.
What else to say?

It doesn't mean
I didn't realize
this was just
for old times' sake,
that he was leaving,
that he might be back
sometime
and
he very well might not
and
even if he does,
it doesn't mean anything
more than
kissing.

Expectations are
temporarily
safely
uninflated.

Even if
the kissing is
very, very nice.

Always a bridesmaid....

Last weekend was Joshua's wedding, August of 2009 was Justin's wedding, and in 6 months I'll be standing up for Cousin J and her husband-to-be.

These 3, among select others, are 3 of the dearest people to me. I'd be lying if I didn't confess to mixed feelings at their marriages ... in all 3 cases, gratefulness for their loves and the undeniable fact that our relationships by necessity will / did / could change.

It is a difficult emotion to express without it coming out like jealousy.

Which is why when I read this "Coupling" column in the Boston Globe this weekend, I could relate:

"Surely I can’t be the only person who feels like weddings are a bit of a rejection – two people announcing in public that they love each other more than they love you."

But instead of succumbing to unhappiness, she goes on to suggest that there should be likewise celebration of friendships.

"Can we just take a moment to marvel at the fact that there are people in this world willing to chip in for your birthday cocktails and hold your hair back after you disappear them, even though there is zero chance you’ll ever give them grandchildren – or hickeys?"

Which I liked. I know I've oft marveled at Joshua (scholar and singer), Justin (performer and producer) and Cousin J (traveler and tough-love) in this space. None of them have given me hickeys. But even though things have of course changed, none stopped being my friends since finding their better halves.

Which for a cloudy Monday, isn't a bad sentiment to marvel at.

Friday Happy

Last September, Claudia and I had way more fun than allowed in singing along to "American Pie" with the Boston Pops during their free anniversary concert in the Common.  To wit:

Yesterday I randomly re-encountered this song via YouTube; it's gone viral so you've probably already seen it.  Seems the city of Grand Rapids, Michigan, created a 9-minute single-tracking-shot version of the McLean original, featuring thousands of the city's residents lip-syncing along.

Screw men. I'm totally in love with this song and, by extension, Grand Rapids. I get so happy watching this it makes me (almost) want to move there.

Another reason I'm glad to not be on Twitter...

Since you can't open any website in the Western world this week without reading about Anthony Weiner, the Congressman from New York and his body photos (naked chest with no head as a pick-up technique, of course!) and his wronged wife and now-wronged political career ....

.... and this here blog focuses on body photos and silly men and wronged women and how politics could (or so far, has not) save my dating life ....

I don't feel strongly on the subject of this man and his life and his ability to be in Congress, truly. This is not because he's a Democrat and I'm mad because I don't want Democrats to be caught being so patently stupid. It's my conviction, cliched as it is, that there are more important things than the story of a man sending sex messages to a woman not his wife and lying about it, as if it doesn't happen 5 million times a day, in patently more tasteless and debasing ways.

In fact, on Monday when breaking news flashes began popping about the press conference where he admitted to his indiscretions, I just wanted it all to go away. I managed to avoid reading about it at all until yesterday, when every pundit with a command of English had something to say, and curiosity overcame reticence. In doing so I came across Salon.com blogger Glenn Greenwald -- who I also usually avoid because of his general over-the-topness, despite obvious intelligence -- and was glad I did, because I found his take on it (first paragraph below) summing up well my current opinion:

"There are few things more sickening -- or revealing -- to behold than a D.C. sex scandal. Huge numbers of people prance around flamboyantly condemning behavior in which they themselves routinely engage. Media stars contrive all sorts of high-minded justifications for luxuriating in every last dirty detail, when nothing is more obvious than that their only real interest is vicarious titillation. Reporters who would never dare challenge powerful political figures who torture, illegally eavesdrop, wage illegal wars or feed at the trough of sleazy legalized bribery suddenly walk upright -- like proud peacocks with their feathers extended -- pretending to be hard-core adversarial journalists as they collectively kick a sexually humiliated figure stripped of all importance. The ritual is as nauseating as it is predictable."

It plays well into my opinion that public figures never do well to kick other public figures; it leaves them baldly open to ridicule when they, too, are found to have sinned. The folks all excited about kicking Weiner out of a job (see: Dems and Repubs and media figures alike who let another Congressional Rep, Michelle Bachmann, run around spouting nonsense daily, unchecked) should have to come clean about their own extracurricular sex lives. If only all our personal foibles were so harshly dissected as this one ... and if politicians were routinely held accountable for actions that actually affect anyone besides the people directly involved.  Weiner has been serving the constitutents of NYC in Congress for 12 years .... New York City, folks ... and this is the only thing he can be accused of doing that warrants resignation?

My friend Jodi posted on Facebook today yet another great take -- from Undecided, a blog written by a friend in Santa Barbara, which also cites a compelling Time magazine article -- expressing amazement at that Weiner's chest and jockey shorts get more attention than broader issues of sexism:

"If this were the sort of country where the women of Yale and Walmart were given as much play as Weiner’s weiner, where corporate pay–and maternity–policy demonstrated that women were valued, well, I wonder if powerful men–and the women they sext–would behave any differently. And I wonder this, too: What’s it going to take, to make substance as sexy as scandal?"

For a more humorous take, check out TV My Wife Watches, where I knew Evan would have to weigh in on something both media and chest-related .... even though he is usually discussing women's chests. He hired a guest blogger to dissect Weiner's indiscretions in his "Wednesday's Wifey" feature, and as a long-time online dater, I couldn't help but agree with her incredulity:

"Many of his online girlfriends have confirmed that their cyber-relationships started off with simple conversation starters like 'you’re hot' or 'wow what a stud.'

"Is that honestly all it takes to seduce a man!? I’ve been trying to figure out men for SO LONG. A little bit of leg but not too much. Let him know you’re smart but also a little vulnerable. When he walks you home, just pop your nipple out for a second. Easy on the fart jokes. And all this time, the only thing I've ever had to do is say 'Wow, you're hot'!?"

And finally: this.

Anyway. Probably enough discussion of a subject I didn't think warranted discussion.

Sauté

This castigation of Sunday-night Man was, really, my last great verbal purge towards a guy I dated.

(Give me credit for being a less vitriolic single woman than I was almost 5 months ago. Or, rate this accomplishment considering almost 5 months ago was my last real date? Word.)

Sunday-night Man had just finished culinary school when we met. He also didn't lack ego or self-regard for his talents. Not surprising then, the night I hosted him at my apartment, that he took over the stove with his improved ideas for the chicken dish I had planned. "Hijacked" is a better word for it: he went on to do the whole meal. Me, dewy-eyed and forgiving because a man was cooking my groceries.  Didn't mind his critique of how ineffectively I sauteed vegetables in olive oil, followed by a play-by-play of his own wrist technique.

(You might recall I thought he was an ass about it.)

Last night I was working together a pan of squash, mushrooms and onions to add to my store-bought spaghetti sauce, and found myself quite without thinking, effectively sauteeing in the style Sunday-night Man showed me: jerk the pan back towards you to flip the goods, not push forward. Something I rarely remember to do.

Seriously. The result was tasty and evenly browned.

Nice to know that even men who unceremoniously dump people can be good for something...

Depends on your definition of the word

From an unsolicited message this weekend, my new favorite OKCupid pick-up line

(for real my favorite and for real, a message):

"Are you available for short term data?"

Joshua's getting married!

Spiky-haired
Michigan boy
Loping down my street
In the Fenway
That sunny July Sunday
Eleven years ago.

A memorable August.

Watching Al Gore get the nomination.
Discovering Bacardi shots.
Dancing every night
(or so we recall now).

Since then:

Hanging
Studying
Shooting more shots
(most often tequila)
Dancing some more
Moving away
Moving back
Studying a lot more

Coffee-shopping

Frisbee-throwing
Talking about dates
Political ranting
Drinking more
Singing more
Moving away again
And finally back
for good
With a job that's a Job.

Happy day.

Today is another such day.
A new day, really, since
The boy is getting married on it.

The last time we talked
we theorized our friendship
had no reason to change after today.

I'm going to hold him to that theory.
And wish them both the very best.

Dateline: Orlando 06/02/11

6:30 p.m.....the best part of the business trip.