Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Cookies!

I know I said I would make the effort not to be a Single Girl Whining About Love Life Issues.

But.

One of my least favorite things about being single is that a tour of my bed more often than not reveals my laptop, an outdated New Yorker, at least one cat (usually with rear end on my pillow), a popsicle wrapper, and me. Very rarely, lately, another human being. And even then, not usually one I'm able to sleep comfortably next to.

So yeah. I kind of miss having a human bed buddy.

My old theater friend, Fran, luckily, was reading my mind this morning. Now an LA-based singer-songwriter, she posted this link on Facebook about how when a guy doesn't show up when he said he would, she makes do with cookies. And then, eventually, how she realizes she might prefer the latter to the former.

Other than thinking that Keebler Elves have cornered the market on sexy, I can relate.


I like to make the best of a shit situation.
I used to wash it down with a tasty libation
But now I've found another way around
My single bed and its cold and lonely covers.
I can warm it up without your smothering arms around.
Here's a little trick I've found.

I'm eating cookies in bed 'til you come over
Crumblin' up the sheets 'til you roll me over
You're sweet, but not like my cookies.
I'm eating cookies in bed without a lover
Lickin' up the chocolate beneath the covers
You're sweet, but not like my cookies.

Monday, May 30, 2011

Dichotomy

I'm certainly not naive or new to, well, just about anything.

It's why I'm finding it amusing at how much I'm amused by the dichotomy of life on earth in today's world, that on the same day I can become godmother to this adorable creature, Oliver ...

Godmother #1 (Cousin J), O-Dog, Dad, Mom ...
at the scene of the crime on Sunday, May 29

.... I get my first piece of pointless Skype spam. I didn't know you could get spam on Skype. I didn't know that anyone in Russia, much less one of the most attractive ladies in the world, was looking for me while I was hanging with my nephew, getting spit up on.

To: Greetings dear! I'm Natalia. I live in Russian Federation. Do you know that the most attractive ladies in the world live in my country? That's true! I invite you to a very good international dating site where hundreds of lonely hearts are looking for their future lovers. I dream about meeting a charming one I am searching for longterm relations or even marriage. Are you the one I am searching for? ;)

Kinda like a James Bond film, eh? Groovy.

Friday, May 27, 2011

Hiatus (brief)

Hey y'all.

I'm taking this opportunity to take few days off from blogging, because I'm going to Minnesota for the weekend to become this kid's godmother.

Oliver - 5 mos

I might have so much fun with my family I might never come back.

But, most likely, I will have plenty of fun with my family and will, thusly, emerge refreshed just in time for my next post here ..... which will be #800. That's 8x100. By the law of bloggerly obligation, a period of pre-writing contemplation is required to give this eight-century post its necessary gravitas. It will be epic.

Or, it might just be another picture of Oliver .... with me in it too.

Enjoy your memorializing. See you on the other side.

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Birthday Shout-Out: The Hungarian

You've heard of Balint.I've written about him here, here, here, here, here and here.  (If you search by his name, there's more.) You saw our shared travelogue through Hungary and Germany last summer.

He's the music director at my church, and a world-class organist, and also a best friend.

In 2008, the first year I knew Balint, my birthday fell (for the only time in anybody's lifetime) on the Saturday before Easter. We were thusly engaged that afternoon in a multiple-hour rehearsal for the next day's service, me in the chorus and he conducting. As we got ready to start, he welcomed the group and said that before anything else, he needed the orchestra to play something. Which turned out to be a 3-minute polka-style arrangement of "Happy Birthday" he'd composed that morning. That the chorus joined in on halfway through. All of which he recorded and, by 7 p.m. that evening, had burned onto a CD and handed to me. After we ate the cake baked by another friend, which he'd commissioned made.

He takes birthdays seriously, I discovered.

Last year my birthday was on a Monday. We were both down in the dumps at that time, for each our own reasons. But he said if I didn't have plans, he wanted to have dinner. So that night we went together to the supermarket. He bought the groceries and I chose the Trimbach Pinot Gris. We went back to my apartment, where he first fried the fish in crumbs and then baked it with roasted red peppers and cream sauce, and we talked and ate and drank well into the early morning, until we were both sated and in better moods. The way you want to mark the passing of another year but rarely do.

I have lots of good memories with Balint, and assume that they are only the beginning of many more. Because such is the way it is with those who have a lust for life and a loyalty to those dearest.

MY birthday, March 2011 ....
at Eastern Standard with Eszter
(yet another Hungarian)

Today is Balint's birthday. He's despairing a bit at feeling old. Yet, a bunch of us are eating sweets and heading out for drinks after (yet another) choir rehearsal tonight, margaritas being his beverage of downfall. I asked him early this morning if he was ready for the tequila and he replied, "of course!"

Because he takes birthdays seriously.

Best wishes, my friend.

Day 24 of 31: 2.57 miles
Day 25 of 31: 3.8 miles
May Total:  55.28
2011 Total: 267.48

Monday, May 23, 2011

Looking on the bright side (I guess)

From my latest ongoing e-mail conversation with Piano Man:

Piano Man:  here's that Demidenko guy whose "in dir" you liked so much:


Karin: Thanks. I like this guy, I think, because he's a little less frantic than Jacobs but a little more expressive than others. I'll have to hold off re-playing it at work. The girl who sits next to me is very sweet, although she mentioned on Friday that Bach piano and organ pieces "make her sad" and she was wondering if I could listen to other things...

PM: one word: earphones.

K: I've done headphones at work and it drives me nuts. It did remind me, on a level, it's OK to listen to something other than Bach on occasion....

PM: It is indeed ok. For instance, do you know the Mozart Sinfonia Concertante (violin, viola, orch.)? Awesome.

K: In a quest to find something different, I did remember that I like Pomplamoose. Found a bunch of youtube channels of them.


PM: chick music. ;)

K: Yeah. I'm a chick, I guess.

PM: I think so... *scratches head*

K: I don't really know how to take that.

PM: Well, why not just take it the best way possible?

Good answer.

Sunday, May 22, 2011

20 years down

Like a husband only remembering his wedding anniversary as the day arrives, so did I not remember until Friday that this May weekend marks the 20th year since my high school graduation.

(In the case you are just forgetting or perhaps were not alive at the time, I matriculated in the Age of Voluminous Hair.)

May 1991
Cando (ND) High School
Diploma with Honors

with Tonya Porter Anderson, still a friend today

Which thusly made me want to dig out the photos of other graduations. Here's from 4 years (and many all-night paper sessions and much less hairdo) later:

April 1995
Concordia College, Moorhead MN
BA magna cum laude in English & History

with freshman-floor friends Margaret, Suzanne & Lisa

And to the marquees of Boston's Tremont Street at the beginning of what came to seem like a whole other lifetime....

May 2002
Emerson College, Boston MA
MFA in Creative Writing
with Cousin J and Aunt B

A few days ago, my dear friend Mitch celebrated his completion of a PhD in Geography from Boston University. He invited Balint and me to his hooding ceremony.


I've known Mitch for most of the 6 years he put together this achievement. He's now freshly in the midst of figuring out what do with it, when his most-likely employer is a governmental organization looking to slash its budget. This picture reminds me how a graduation ceremony means nothing and everything: how it hardly encapsulates the emotions and effort and sacrifice that brought Mitch (and his cohorts) to that auditorium on that day but it overwhelms him (and us) to be reminded of them.

Kind of like forgetting that 20 years -- and how many more multipliers of emotions and efforts and sacrifice -- have gone by since high school. In all 3 pictures, I truly could not fathom what I was going to do next, except just keep putting one foot in front of the other. Which I guess is as good a metaphor as any for how I've handled things since.
Day 21 of 31: 5.2 miles
Day 22 of 31: 5.15 miles
May Total:  48.91
2011 Total: 261.11

Saturday, May 21, 2011

Friday, May 20, 2011

Help (oh help)

Last night at Courtside Karaoke was a night I might construe as "slightly too much fun."

As in ... glad for a hearty supper that helped soak up the tequila and 3 pitchers (oh yes, indeed) of PBR that helped celebrate the upcoming birthday of Joshua, who thankfully helped share in those 180 ounces of fun until past last call.

Snaps to Random Blog Reader, then, for saving me from having to think too creatively today. Last night she forwarded a link to a blog that compiles the Best Real Perplexing Pick-Up Lines from match.com.

Or, as the subheading suggests:
how to fail miserably at online dating. we couldn't make these up if we tried.
It is only because I'm both taking a break from cynicism and gave up on the overearnest unproductiveness of match.com quite some time ago that I can laugh at these. RBR suggested in her accompanying note that I could "probably relate to 90% of these."

Indeeed, she is correct. Some samples:

From May 20:  I was reading the most interesting article about how men and women fall in love differently. And it was saying that men (being the visual creatures that we are) usually feel an attraction first, but that women, by contrast, usually feels a “connection” first, then subsequently becomes more “attracted.” I mean, you know that kind of special connection you sometimes feel…that mysterious compelling click that takes place right THERE. Well, being the mere “male” mammal that I am, I must confess to being rather “attracted” to the photo in your ad, but then felt, “connected” to the words you wrote to accompany it. After all, intelligence is beauty in its purest form. Am I right?

From May 13:   Have you ever talked to a very submissive guy before? Would you give me a chance to entertain you?


From May 11:  I share your passion and affinity for great music, I am a very well dressed gentleman in great shape since I came out of the fashion business and I’m extraordinarily creative in my profession and I like a woman who knows what she wants in man just like a hungry lion who has an avarice appetite without Filet Mignon for a month.

From April 20:   You’ve just reaffirmed my wish to be a dog in another life. No, not the type of guy women refer to with disdain as “a dog”; I mean an actual English Bulldog. I mean they get it all: head-scratches, free food and drink, and as your picture shows, the adoration of multiple beautiful women. Other guys want to be Astronauts or Presidents; I want to be a dog. Ah, if only life were so simple. What kind of animal would you like to be?

From April 13:  What silly idiot let you get away! ;-) I have a feeling someone didn’t wear his helmut when he rode the short bus to school! haha just wanted to say hi ;-)
Day 19 of 31: 4 miles
May Total: 38.56
2011 Total:  250.76

Thursday, May 19, 2011

Sun = overrated

Title of yesterday's post from acquaintance blog Little Heathens:  "Little Miss F***ing Sunshine".

Coincidentally, we're on day 5 (and could it be more I'm not remembering?) of blanket cloud cover, spitting rain and fog, and we face at least 3 more.

Seems Boston gets one of these stinky spells every spring.

Weirdly, this year, it doesn't bother me.

I don't like biking in it, needing windshield wipers for my glasses from the traffic spray. 

It did, however, make me want to go to bed at 11 last night and sleep until 8:30 this morning ... a mood and a discipline both rare and necessary.

It does make me want to actually work when I'm in my office, rather than sit on a patio for cocktails ... an (otherwise) constant (and expensive) temptation in this neighborhood most of the rest of the summer.

It does inspire me to run 6 (or 7) miles around Castle Island when I get home after work, a breeze and clouds always preferable to sweaty sunburn.

It makes me totally game for drinking and karaoke tonight with Joshua and some Secret Garden cast folks, deep in the caverns of The Courtside's maroon-leather banquettes.

And, as a friend reminded me yesterday, rain now will make the flowers and the plants bloom in June.

So, for once, I'm not going to gripe about the grey.
Day 16 of 31: 2.63 miles
Day 18 of 31:  4 miles
May Total:  34.56
2011 Total: 246.76

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Digression to Devils Lake

Four hours ago I finished the last sentence of a lengthy post meant to go in this space.

Three hours and 55 minutes ago I hit the button that said "publish post." But post did not publish. Instead, I saw a screen that said, "This action cannot be executed." Pressing the back-arrow on the browser did not help, bringing up only a blank text box. There was no saved draft, even though this program auto-saves once a minute. As if I had not been typing, linking and pasting photos for many thought-provoking minutes I'll never get back.

Pissed off? Yes.

This mystery deletion has code-error rationale behind it, no doubt. Yet I like to pretend it happened for a reason .... perhaps I spent too much time wrenching together thoughts that weren't natural, concentrating on that rather than remembering to check for a saved draft. The result was most likely what labored composition always is: tortured and sentimental.

So it is fine that it no longer exists, even in the ether...

(Hooray! I like that reason.)

My post was regarding Devils Lake, North Dakota -- the state's largest natural body of water, 30 miles south of my hometown, Cando. More specifically that, as a glacial lake with no natural outlet, it has since 1993 risen more than 26 feet, quadrupled in size, and flooded more than 140 square miles of wheat country and the homes and towns and other manmade objects there-on. And the area had yet another wet spring.

I brought up the subject in this space specifically now because The Atlantic published an article this week from Lisa M. Hamilton titled "Where the Roads End in Water: The Lake That Won't Stop Rising." She interviewed folks in Minnewaukan ... a town currently under siege on 3 sides by Devils Lake:
"The lake itself is not shocking. In fact, to eyes like mine, seeing it for the first time, it looks unremarkable, benign even—flat, blue, shallow around the edges. What's unnerving are the signs that the land beneath was dry not long ago. Every few miles along the highway, a cross-street leads straight into the blue, the yellow center lines almost beckoning drivers to follow and submerge. In the town of Minnewaukan, just past D Avenue, Main Street itself disappears into the water ... "
"...Rows of grain bins beginning to rust as the flat water seeps through their concrete floors. Houses on high spots stranded, abandoned, for the lake that surrounds them. Where wheat fields once were, now there are waves. And the roads—one after another leading into the water, disappearing under the silver surface. No matter how many I see, each one gives me a chill."
I've seen these roads too. Driven most of them too. I drove the one below an awful lot. (In fact, I think I got my first speeding ticket on what's underwater ... junior in high school, my grandma's Chevy Beretta, my father in the passenger seat.)

So I got the same chills Lisa speaks of, because roads are not made to end in lakes.

Junction of Highways 281 and 19 north of Minnewaukan.
(Photo credit: bbend from Weather Underground)

I also thought you'd enjoy an article about my home.

Sunday, May 15, 2011

Randomness

Cause it's a dreary Sunday evening and I'm on 3 hours of sleep and am trying to keep myself occupied enough to avoid napping before bedtime ....

1) This here blogging platform went into glitchorama on Thursday and into Friday, and it wasn't even related to the 13th. Error messages everywhere. The powers-that-be behind Blogger ended up removing every post made everywhere (everywhere! on every site!), including mine, in those 30 hours to perform the necessary back-office maintenance. After which they ostensibly restored all the content they removed. This firstly meant I couldn't post or edit that day, and it affected this post by deleting a long comment from Student Driver about how it's probably best if Piano Man just stay a mysterious sex-based chat buddy, and that the reason things are funny between us is probably because I just don't really want to be with him. Which does seem kinda right. It secondly means I am WEIRDED OUT that random Google code geniuses can just remove and return my thoughts like that.

2) Speaking of Piano Man, on Friday I caved and checked in.
Karin: So now who's being quiet?! How are you?
Piano Man: I know, I know, sorry. Just been a tense week. How's yours going? (etc. etc. etc.) When the dust settles would be nice to talk. Cheers,
K: Tense? Why? What's wrong?
PM: My (name-omitted income-producing) project seems to be idling, which is rly bad for me.
The project he speaks of has been idling both before and since we met. During which he talked to me all the time and at all hours. So he's either now otherwise engaged. Disinterested, perhaps. Or waiting for my musical to end. Or else the whole situation just ran its course. Or not. Because he just texted me.

3) Very early this morning at the closing party for The Secret Garden, I sucked myself into a game of "how old do you think I look?" with a couple cast members. Drinking a second homemade cosmopolitan at 3:15 a.m. is the perfect occasion and time to claim to be the oldest person in a room full of extremely attractive people. One girl said she was sure she was older. Gasping with jaw hanging down, I asked her to lean over and whisper her age. "I'm 30!" she exclaimed. I gasped again ... but with some delight.

4) Speaking of the age issue, spring is the season on OKC when shirtless wonders point cameras into bathroom mirrors and send the headless results to women 15 years their senior. Between yesterday and today, 3 of 'em. Some ones wearing shirts (and backwards baseball caps), maybe not ready to bare anything, otherwise entranced me with their poetry (a sample):
(23, Roselle, IN): "damn your a sexy woman....like younger men?"
(22, Portland ME) "I know I'm a little younger then your baseline, but hear me out. Why would a beautiful women such as youself, wanna put up with all the BS on this site? I don't believe for a second you can't get dates off the internet."
5) Because I have seen that last phrase or a variation of it so many times, I Googled it in its entirety to see if it was part of a collection of online-dating pick-up cliches. No dice. But it did randomly connect me to the site Thought Catalog and an essay by Charles Warnke (21, Berkeley, CA) titled "You Should Date An Illiterate Girl." Which is totally literate. I just can't discern if I'm reading rant or ironic tongue-twister in his premise that it is better to date a woman who doesn't read because
"A girl who reads lays claim to a vocabulary that distinguishes between the specious and soulless rhetoric of someone who cannot love her, and the inarticulate desperation of someone who loves her too much. A vocabulary, god damnit, that makes my vacuous sophistry a cheap trick.

"Do it, because a girl who reads understands syntax. Literature has taught her that moments of tenderness come in sporadic but knowable intervals. A girl who reads knows that life is not planar; she knows, and rightly demands, that the ebb comes along with the flow of disappointment. A girl who has read up on her syntax senses the irregular pauses—the hesitation of breath—endemic to a lie. A girl who reads perceives the difference between a parenthetical moment of anger and the entrenched habits of someone whose bitter cynicism will run on, run on well past any point of reason, or purpose, run on far after she has packed a suitcase and said a reluctant goodbye and she has decided that I am an ellipsis and not a period and run on and run on. Syntax that knows the rhythm and cadence of a life well lived."
What a relief Charles isn't sending me shirtless photos, eh? I might not be able to hold myself back.


Day 13 of 31: 2.20 miles
Day 14 of 31: 4.25
May Total:  27.93
2011 Total: 240.13

Thursday, May 12, 2011

Rebuffed (or rebuffing?)

It seems both a good and bad thing to have reached a level of self-awareness in my interactions with men, in that I can see exactly what I'm doing and how it will probably play out. Even if I can't decide how I want it to. Current case: Piano Man, who for many weeks has been faithful in checking in just to say hi or see if I feel OK or to share a YouTube link of Bach transcriptions or ask if I want to talk on the phone later. I've gotten used to him writing and find myself disappointed if he doesn't. But through the drama and exhaustion of tech week, I wasn't always prompt to reply. Sometimes from sheer logistical complications; sometimes out of annoyance. Despite our geniune admiration for certain qualities in each other (which is there, no doubt) as well as real curiosity about what we could have in person, we reach towards each other in unequal measure. The more I know him without the chance to meet him, the more I think he at most would be an excellent friend to drink wine with, attend concerts with, and pretend to be erudite with, because he's smart, well-spoken, and interested in things I'm interested in. But the more he knows me, even if he's still glad to go multiple rounds about piano transcriptions, he even more wishes we would return to the first 3 times we talked, which were the 3 times we most graphically spoke about sex. When he wants to talk in person in the early a.m., he wants to talk about sex. I used to feel similarily, but I find without meeting him I can't summon the same interest. Perhaps because I want to mean more to someone than being the go-to-girl whenever the mood strikes. The last time we talked -- late at night, late last week -- we hadn't been on for 5 minutes and he tried to persuade me to get on Skype and undress on camera, and I was so not interested I couldn't fake it and I told him so. He joked that it was OK, that I simply "owed him one later." But he was then uninterested in talking further. Of course. So here we are. Yesterday we exchanged e-mails, but only at my instigation. Today, it's now his turn and he's visibly online and not responding, and now I'm frustrated because he's not writing. He hasn't texted since the last time we talked. Because he's now either distracted elsewhere or he has moved on. I know that I, in a manner of speaking, rebuffed him first by my antipathy, then by unwillingness to go where he was asking me to go -- so I should be OK with his inattention. One would think.

Always, with this confusion.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Friend who blogs

On April 27, Bill sent this Facebook message:
"You've inspired me to start my own blog. Here's the link. Its a work in progress, but I'm having fun with it so far...
Bill writes well, both with authority and self-deprecation. When we drink together (which has been fairly often over the years), he always exclaims over his beverage with the same fervor as Homer Simpson invoking the Duffman. So it's appropriate that Bill calls the site Man Drinks Beer and reviews one new (sometimes obscure) brew per week.

Daresay, I feel like a proud parent. Speaking of, here's yesterday's entry:
"With the hustle and bustle of Mothers Day and my wife's b-day this weekend, I neglected to leave enough time to go out and select a new brew to review. Somehow asking for time to go buy a beer to review for a blog didn't seem very important in relation to these other things. This left me high and dry on Sunday night, until I brought some laundry down to the basement and saw that one last bottle of 2010 Olde School Barleywine, just sitting there all alone on the book case. I dusted it off, popped it in the fridge for 20 minutes, and was ready to drink."
Hope Bill doesn't mind me advertising his work in progress.

Cheers!

Sunday, May 8, 2011

Grateful (VII)

I've been busy, doing musicals and work and such.  Balint has been busy... composing hymn arrangements for brass, changing apartments, buying pianos ... and he just returned from 10 days in Hungary, too. We hadn't talked in 2 weeks.

I was thusly glad that, while saying hi after this morning's church service, he suggested we go to Newbury Street for sushi. If you have the time, Sunday afternoons are meant for friends and a picturesque street full of blooming trees and tulips. The sun shone warm. A breeze blew cool. I was wearing cuffed-up jeans and hoodie, he his Sunday suit. The prospect of lunch spurred our walk and absence from each other, occurring while so much else had been going on in our respective lives, made conversation nearly as animated. Story followed story followed story. Him, me, him, me.

We had just passed Church of the Covenant when Balint turned and, appropos of nothing, remarked,
"When I think of why I like Boston and all the great things about it, I've come to realize that what really makes me like being here is friends like you.  So don't ever leave!"
I must remember moments like this in those other moments when my soul is not willing to be nearly so grateful.

Life can be good.
Day 7 of 31:  1.1 miles
Day 8 of 31:  8.0 miles
May Total:  21.48
2011 Total:  233.68

Friday, May 6, 2011

Opening night



Here's a fine spring morn'
Comin' clear through the night,
Come the day I say.
Winter's taken flight
Sweepin' dark cold air
Out to sea, Spring is born,
Comes the day say I,
And you'll be here to see it.
Stand and breathe it all the day.
Stoop, and feel it. Stop and hear it.
Spring, I say.

-- Lucy Simon & Marsha Norman
Day 3 of 31: 2.38 miles
Day 6 of 31: 3.80 miles
May Total: 12.38
2011 Total: 224.58
Photo courtesy of Ryan Shawgo

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Sox in the morning

It was into the wee hours this morning when I arrived home after rehearsal. Ravenous and wound-up, I grabbed microwave popcorn and settled crosslegged on my bed with a bottle of Smithwicks to check e-mail. No sooner had I checked in than so did my cross-country friend:

1:18 AM
C-2: Dude, you watching the Sox game???
Karin: ....ah, no....just got home from rehearsal. It's pouring here.
C-2: We just tied the game -- after going into the bottom of the 9th down 3 to 1.Top of the 10th now

A much-rain-delayed seven-hour game loss to the Angels. Together, 1000 miles apart, C-2 and I watched it. He via live stream on MLB.com;  me, via the same site's slower pitch-by-pitch version. When I explained I wasn't going to pay $99 for a subscription to the live feed, he replied:

1:26 AM
C-2:  go to foleys, silly
K:  Ugh. I should. I just biked home from Central Square wearing a skirt. In the rain.
C-2:  hot
K:  YOU should go to Foley's.
C-2:  perhaps i will
me: Good. You can pick me up. I don't feel like moving my car...
C-2: ok.  wait there
K: With bated breath, of course.

Eventually we shut down the flirtation and began to play-by-play. Some sample exchanges:

1:35 AM
C-2:  bottom of 10th
K: Indeed. Who's coming up?
C-2:  well, sadly NOT gonzales cause we took him out for a pinch runner in the 8th

1:39 AM
K: Youk!
C-2:  :)

1:43 AM
C-2: nice! lowrie double
runners on 2nd and 3rd
K: Full count....
Followed by a strike-out.
C-2: f***.
brb, gonna go smoke

2:02 AM  - Bottom of the 11th
C-2:  They're playing again in 11.5 hours
K:  Ellsbury homer.  I'm calling it.
Ellsbury strikes out.

2:05 AM
C-2:  maybe in the 13th or 14th
K:  Oh well. At least by then their pitching staff will be depleted, too, so the chances are better.
C-2:   hey, maybe the game will go right up to the next one! they just won't stop!
K:  What is the record for most consecutive innings?
C-2:  a LOT.  Dice K is warming up
K:  ? Really ?  You mean, for his start later today?
C-2:  yeah. haah. no

2:11 AM
K:  Torii's my man from MN....Used to go watch him.
C-2:  The fans are taunting him.  (Well, the 100 fans left)
K:  Oy, and he's going to get walked...
C-2:  he did.  grr
K:  This guy should be a cinch.
C-2:  sweet.  he was.
K:  You see everything about 5 seconds faster than it registers for me....
C-2:   :)

2:21 AM  - Bottom of the 12th
C-2:  oh f***  f*** f*** f*** f***   your guy was thrown out at the plate
K:  F*** is right.  Trying to get home from first?
C-2:  wow wow wow error.   runners at first and third.  F***  grounded out.  and we go to the 13th
K:  I need another beer.
C-2:  me too.  but i have none.

In the end we could have used the second beers. The Angels loaded the bases, put in 2 runs in the top of the 13th and that was all she wrote, at 2:45.

I share this exchange after being struck, again, how even in distance and with his girlfriend, C-2 and I just get along better than most. I have a show opening tomorrow night and staying up an extra 2 hours to chat a game in real time is not necessary. But it was fun without effort....something that's rare.

Of course I would have preferred to be at Foley's, watching it with him and I wasn't. But I'll take the comfort as a sign our friendship has legs, despite the distance.

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Porridge just right

I'll confess. I took Elle magazine's "Are You Too Picky?" dating quiz on my lunch break, ostensibly to "find out whether my standards are too high (or too low)."  Ten questions were asked, each offering 4 possible replies -- marked as (A) for the least picky and (D) for the most.

The breathless results...

1) How long ago was your last serious relationship? Your imaginary affair with Robert Pattinson? Still hot and heavy. (D)
(PS. He's 24 and looks as if the Hair Gel Monster attacked him. But there was no option for "never have had one, I think"....)
2) Your new guy picks you up at 8 P.M. You look fabulous! Then he takes you to…McDonald’s. You’ll have to find a sugar daddy on the side for this to work. (D)

3) You’ve always dreamed of having two kids. Of your own. Then your new beau drops a bomb: He has three rug rats from a previous relationship. The more the merrier! Hello, The Brady Bunch is your all-time favorite show! (A)

4) You love international travel more than anything. But he has a fear of flying. Suggest he get therapy. (C)

5) You meet a blind date at a bar. Things are going great! Then he stands up and you realize he’s only 5'2". Fine with you as long as he’s not threatened. (C)

6) Your idea of a deal-breaker is when a guy: Is still pining for his ex. (B)

7) Your last love interest most closely resembled: Paul Rudd. (C)
(PS. Actually true ... except Sunday Night Man sported a receding hairline....)
8) Your friends think your new suitor is a cad. What’s a girl to do? Keep dating him, but make sure you don’t blow them off. (C)
(PS. Cad? What's a cad?)
9) Education is important. Your ideal match earned his sheepskin at: A “public Ivy.” (C)

10) You think that most Kate Hudson rom-coms: Are fun to watch but a tad unrealistic. (B)

My score came by tallying the number of like-lettered to each response: 1 (A), 2 (B)s, 2 (D)s, and 5 (C)s. Which, you might rightly infer, in any measure, makes me perfectly average.

According to Elle, however, a prevalence of "Mostly (C)s" suggests:
"Congratulations! You’re showing discretion but keeping your expectations realistic."
Who knew?!

Monday, May 2, 2011

May Monday

Got home last night at midnight, grabbed a popsicle and turned on my computer to see the announcement that American forces had killed Osama bin Laden. Woke up today to the blanket coverage on the BBC and NPR on the clock radio. Got to work by 9, to find the New York Times (hard copy edition, sitting in Starbucks in Boston) featured upwards of 100 articles on the subject, all produced in the early hours.

(The scope and speed of the reaction by the public -- and the journalists and politicos, for that matter -- is almost as impressive as the raid.)

Anything I did this weekend (ran a relatively fast 10K, for example) or will do this week (help open this pretty awesome show) will pale in comparison to this news. In 10 years this weekend will matter .... although it will not because I scrubbed my bedroom windows on a Saturday evening or had a Guinness at Foley's (still the best poured Guinness around, IMO) with someone other than C-2 at 2 a.m. Sunday or came to a realization that I really do enjoy talking to Piano Man but we are probably just going to be phone buddies and I'm totally OK with it.

It's a beautiful sunny morning that feels like spring. It's set to be a busy day at the office. It'll be a busy night of rehearsal, again. It's all good.
Day 1 of 31: 6.2 miles
May Total: 6.2
2011 Total:  218.4