Feelings ... nothing more than feelings ...

Wow. It seems not possible to blog about one's dating travails when a man can terrorize and kill middle-aged women taking a Latin impact dance class in Pittsburgh on a random Tuesday night, angry over never having found someone to love.

As Yahoo! News reports, excerpting the shooter's online diary:

He complained of not having a girlfriend since 1984, not having a date since May 2008 and not having sex for 19 years.

"Women just don't like me. There are 30 million desirable women in the US (my estimate) and I cannot find one," he wrote. The page ended with the words "Death Lives!"

There's no place for wry commentary in this situation. When you're someone who frequents online dating sites and have either not responded to or turned down a substantial number of unsuitable men, I shudder to think that someone I've rejected could be a man like this.

His purported reputation as an “anti-social” (from the same article) reminded me of an op-ed in Monday’s Boston Globe about “male relational dread.” The author, a (male) doctor, tried to explain, in so many words, why certain men can’t verbally express their craving for emotional connection. How, despite wanting that closeness, they push away partners asking them to talk about it. One eerie line in light of last night’s shooting:

“But scratch our surface and you find that we men desire connection every bit as much as women, and get sick and even do sick things - think of all the destruction wrought by male “loners’’ - if we don’t experience it.”

It is at this point that I feel the need to do 2 things:

1) Link you to the Morris Albert classic, “Feelings” – heartbreak in a song … an example of how to react to loneliness rather than random violence.

2) Add levity into this non-levitous (for so many reasons) day with, after interminable hiatus, some Jermaine and Bret … in this instance doing the "Angry Dance” – yet another appropriate way to deal with inappropriate emotions.

4 days, 4 nights

The best of President's Day Weekend in San Fran....

.....a Top 10 List in No Particular Order

(except for #1. which really is #1.)

10) It is obviously cool to view the biopic of the Mayor of Castro Street at The Castro Theatre on Castro Street.

The film earned all its Oscar nominations, too.

9) It is obviously cool to buy a Dave Eggers' hardcover for very cheap at a bookstore 1 block over from his pirate shop.

8) This is the number, roughly, of $3 Shiner Bock pints drank at the 500 Club.

Yum.

7) This, roughly, is the number of glasses of red wine drank at my cousins' apartment.

Yum, again. (See #6.)

6) Here was our Saturday night feast, per person, in this order:

1 glass syrah, 1 fresh mozzarella and cherry tomato sandwich, 1 baked spinach ball, 1 glass syrah, 2 fried risotto balls, several mega asparagus (steamed), 1 glass California red blend, 1 scoop cream-based carbonara, 1 inch-thick pork chop baked in homemade pesto, 1 glass cabernet sauvignon, 1/8th of chocolate cream pie (homemade), 1 round of sot-brained laughter at the Flight of the Conchords new episode, 1 ridiculously sound night's sleep.

5) My amount of guilt over zero-level participation in Week VI of the Bikini Challenge:

Zero.

(And no. No sit-ups were harmed/executed in this diet meltdown.)

4) Even on second viewing (and while on some level it works because the owners wear tie-dye), still can't quite fathom that Ben & Jerry's is the corner store at Haight & Ashbury.

3) Running 15 miles on a Saturday morning in SF is just like running 15 miles on a Saturday morning in Boston.

Except the hills are steeper. The ocean faces a different way. Nylon shorts were possible. And the palm trees! (yes!)

2) This is the number of Pacific Ocean views.

First, on a fogless afternoon from the height of Twin Peaks, with D & Kh, the distance painting the scene with calm.

Second, on a fogless morning, alone, running south on the Great Highway, waves higher than the cars on the road.

(Thank you, fogless weekend.)

1) This is the number of times Gustav Holst's "Jupiter" came on the plane's radio on the flight home. Appropriately, at 34,000 feet above Wisconsin with the sky black in the east and pink in the west and thick clouds seemingly steps below. That middle section....where it feels as if you, the listener, should be floating in orbit, too.....celestial bodies all around....

Do it again, God! I'll take those perfect 2 minutes, whenever, again, you want to provide them.

(Random addendum: This is blog post #216. It was posted on 2/16. Someone give me a high-5!)

Well, I could have been doing THIS rather than being on questionable Date #2B

Thanks, Missy, for reminding me that if you sit home alone with your roommate, you might unknowingly get spooned.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtfQg4KkR88

Mood: not entirely conversational

This girl's psyche has been tried today.

On April 21, I ran the Boston Marathon... six weeks after being diagnosed with everyone's favorite over-training injury: plantar fasciitis, a severe inflammation of the foot tendons. The only cure for this is rest. At the time I visited a podiatrist who said...."ok, so you're still going to run the marathon. But keep in mind if you leg through it.....think of if you want to run or not after April 21."

So I legged through it and, I thought, went on with my life.

But the arch pain in my right foot has returned with a vengeance this week. General walking is not comfortable. This resulted in another chat today about it, this time with a sports medicine doctor, about what to do. He decreed: to heal the tendon, put the kibosh on nearly every impact or stretching activity you currently do. No yoga. No biking. No running. No walking at any great length. And no high heels. Probably for two months.

At the same time, all other components of life felt disturbingly unresolved.

The monthly paycheck arrived in the bank account today, but it is already spent. Tried to book a ticket to Minneapolis in June, but held off because the price has gone up $100 in the last week. Can't figure out how to get to D.C. for Memorial Day weekend without spending as much as a plane ticket. Pants feel tight around the waist.

The last straw was when some twerp newby from one of our clients' offices called at 5:30 demanding vague asset allocation information for the rep of a rep of the client. We snapped at each other.

In a perfect world, I would now like to visit a potato field 5 miles south of my hometown in North Dakota.... sink cross-legged into the dirt, and let the wind blow over me until the sun goes down. But I'm in Boston. And I should really go to the gym. To do time on the recumbent bicycle (allowed, yes!) to offset the calories contained in a drown-my-woes Frappucino from a couple hours ago.

Am I allowed to cancel my scheduled phone conversation with the comedian tonight because I've been in a foul mood most of the day?

(No, you say. You are not allowed to wimp out. )

Perhaps I should be thankful that he might, just possibly, make me laugh. Which of course is the entire point.

(Thank God for match.com! you say.)

One can hope.

So appropos of nothing, here is my absolute favorite YouTube video, which DOES happen to be a comedy routine. ...a couple of kiwis from New Zealand singing rap-style folk songs. (4.7 milion hits in the last year can't be wrong.)

In case the conversation falls through later, I'll need something on hand to come back to later tonight and laugh at.