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And it's only a half day as well. Score! To be fair, this entire week has been a wash for me. I was only in for a couple hours on Monday, not at all on Tuesday, in on Wednesday but I didn't do much and I left early, in on Thursday but I really didn't do anything at all, and today is just a half day and then that's it. In fact this week has been such a waste that I'm going to have to take some work home with me to do at my leisure over the break, which isn't really a problem since most people I know are gone and I'm going to be squirreled up in my house until my relatives arrive.
I was thinking to myself this morning how strange it is, that in New York, for example, everyone comes back to the city for the holidays. It's awash with light and festivities and activities. The city hums and buzzes with a glowing warmth this time of year.
London is a ghost town.
Everyone leaves to go someplace else. And the city doesn't put on much of a holiday show. Perhaps a self fulfilling sort of prophecy. Still, it's a bit of a shame. Even though it's not my holiday, I've always enjoyed the Christmas lights and hubbub that surround it.
P, who will now be known as Mr.Cheese, has just left my place. Such an interesting evening. In more ways than I care to recount. Entirely possible that he will come across this place (hello) as I basically told him I have it, which I don't usually ever do. Seems fair though, considering I don't think I need to worry about how things will go between us anymore, and our conversation in three meetings has never been stunted or not open. Still, finding someones multi-month dialogue of all the shit they've been involved in and been going through can be a bit overwhelming. I'd look though. Just because I'm like that. I admire people who have the willpower not to look at things sometimes. Anyway, getting sidetracked.
As it turns out, Mr.Cheese is interested in someone else he just met. Not unusual. Or, given the afore mentioned unease, entirely unexpected. Disappointing, sure. But.. it's fine. It's not that it was a weird or uncomfortable evening. Just the opposite, despite the revelation. So he'll either stick around and settle into an unusual friendship with me as Mr.Ball has done, or he'll disappear altogether. Only time will tell. Still, given what was said, a truly curious evening indeed. Not one I'm upset about, but just curious about. I do hate thinking I'm a casualty of a 'just because I can' attitude. Lets hope that wasn't the case, otherwise I'd have to be cross.
Nothing is ever easy or obvious. I think that should be the new tagline of this blog sometimes. If it wasn't so late, I'd go write in my paper journal. There are things I want to say, but I don't want to say them here. Tomorrow perhaps.
The lamb was good.
I wrote an entry in my paper journal last night. It's been ages. Months. About six in fact. I will always like certain things about my paper journal more than the blog. I will write more personal things there than I will ever write here. I think that's why I wrote in it last night. My thoughts have shifted to deeply personal. And this just isn't the place.
In part I'm gearing up for the break. People are already leaving. Instead of me leaving my life, my life is leaving me- well, for a week or so at least. Everything will become slightly out of kilter. Skewed and off center. And then we'll all be back like nothing happened.
There is so very much to do.
This week hasn't gone at all like I intended. Was in the hospital for the annual visit on Sunday. Another kidney stone maybe. Hard to say. They don't know. That's what they think. I'm feeling much better now, and it didn't get as bad as last year which is a good thing.
Heard from P. Date is on for tonight. I'm cooking for us at my house. Isn't that forward. Still, part of what is really pulling on my thoughts is how bad (for lack of any better word) our conversations seem to be when we aren't physically together. Each of the two times we've met, there has been no shortage or interruption in the flow of conversation (unless you count some necking). But the email, the texts.... stunted. Short. I don't know what to make of that. Some people are bad at email, or text. I can accept that. But if you meet someone you're interested in... don't you want to talk to them more? I don't know. It leaves me with a very strange feeling, that's hard to reconcile with my memory of hours spent in each others presence. It's with this conundrum in mind that he's coming over for dinner. I guess I just have to see how it goes. But the lack of good flow of conversation or even interest, in between, makes me truly uneasy.
I'm sure it will be fine.
Everything could of course be somewhat exacerbated by the kidney stones and hormones. Though the hormones should be slacking off by now. Well, whatever. I'm just feeling really grumpy still. I wasn't for a few days when I was just hurting. Maybe it just got shoved off a few days while my side was killing me and I'm just catching up with what I was due.
Maybe. Anyway, hopefully I'm just being a grouch and tonight will be lovely like our past two dates have been lovely.
At least I know the lamb cutlets will be good.
In a large part I'm contributing my current mood to hormones. It's the right time to be incredibly grumpy due to hormones, and it would explain why I feel overwhelming annoyance at just about everything that is managing to cross my path. On the other hand, at least one thing is reasonable to be annoyed at I think. Though maybe not quite as vehemently annoyed as I currently am.
I'll start with the one that isn't. I'm very irate with SP right now. Okay, not very irate, but somewhat annoyed because she is making decisions that don't make sense to me. She's in a horrid situation, but on some level is being slightly martyr-ish about some of the decisions she's making. At a certain point, you have to stop letting yourself be the victim and fight back for your rights. I understand this isn't how she is, she's very principled. And even if she gets screwed, she will not make the decision that is 'wrong' if in any way the decision can be accounted for as 'wrong'. But I just think, fuck, at some point you have to put your morals aside and fight for yourself. Being a martyr isn't worthwhile. But maybe it is. Or maybe I'm just a less nice person. It's not that I don't admire her for sticking to her convictions, but I couldn't handle knowing that my own decisions caused me more and more grief if only I'd done something perhaps only slightly underhand myself, then I could at least not have that pain. I don't know. Like I said, hormones, so I find that I'm just annoyed.
The thing I think I'm allowed to be annoyed about is P. So, very good fun night Tuesday night. We hadn't made specific plans to meet up again, though it had gone so very well, I wasn't actually concerned about it. Until he went basically radio silent Wednesday, Thursday, and now today. I'm sorry, did I say something about how it was all going well. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck. There could be a perfectly good explanation. On the other hand, this is my world, and I constantly get the short end of the stick in this particular situation. I'm trying not to let my craziness take over, but I'm preparing for the worst. And the hormones are not fucking helping.
At least it's Friday. Except I have so much work to do between now and the xmas break, that really, that's just stressing me out and making me grumpy too. I need chocolate I think. And I need it now.
It seems to me that I need to come up with a name for P. Perhaps I'm jumping the gun a bit, but I feel he may be here for a little while at least. Still, I'm not sure a true name has presented itself yet. I'm toying with possibilities, but none seem to fit quite right, so I guess he'll just stay P for now.
We had our second date last night, which was cool. Met up by London Bridge as I'd had a meeting in the afternoon at the GLA, so that worked out well. Conversation with him is very easy. Which is a good sign. I never feel like I'm struggling to fill conversation gaps, or we are running out of things to say. In a way it's strange because I think that it surprises me in person how we get on, since our email/text exchanges are sometimes a bit short. But you know, change is a good thing.
Last week I was talking to D&V about SA and relationships. I was commenting that I keep urging him to make a list of ten things that he would want from a potential partner and not to get seriously involved with anyone who doesn't hit say, six of those things. He has a history you see, of ending up with people that are particularly unsuited to him. D&V turned the tables on me however and said, "Well then, what's your list?" I guess I should have seen that coming. To be honest my list isn't all that long. But top of my list is someone who actually wants to be with me. I know that sounds obvious, but I keep ending up with people who seem to have a 'take it or leave it' attitude. I always seem to be the one that's pursuing, and I want that more equal rather than one sided.
So this morning I'm talking to D about the date last night and how it went and I think I said something along the lines of, "...and he seems to think I'm interesting which I guess is a good thing." to which D replied, "Well, if they say stuff along those lines it's a sign they're interested in you... hey! Top of the list!!"
Yeah, but it completely freaks me out! I know I said it's the top of the list, but it doesn't mean I'm comfortable with it presented to me right up front. Still, I know it's really early to make any distinctions, and I tend to hold back and be reticent about these things anyway, but it does seem to be going surprisingly well so far. As long as my complete craziness and stubbornness and quirkiness don't descend and ruin everything.... well, it's always a risk.
I really just don't know what to make of any of this. But I'm happy I seem to be keeping my usual insanity generally under control. Suppose the only thing to do is go along and see what happens...
Was I not just here at work? I swear I had no weekend at all. I mean, I know I did- but it was so very busy, I had no time to rest. I hate when I don't get to rest on the weekend. It makes the next work week very difficult. And of course I have not one but two holiday parties this week, a meeting with the GLA, and a date. Where does all the time go?
Saturday morning I went to Broadway Market as usual, got a few things here and there, then headed home to get ready for a date with P. P is new, off a new dating site, and this was our first meeting. Was supposed to meet him at 4pm at CCK but when I got there, the place was heaving. Certainly weren't going to get tables. So when he arrived we walked over to Holborn and went to Bierodrome instead which was fine. Had two drinks over three hours and chatted away, then we decided to go get some dinner so we headed towards Covent Garden and ate at this French place I can always find but never remember the name of which is always good. Then we had to go back to Bierordrome because we'd not paid the tab, but that wasn't too bad because he could get the tube at Holborn and it was closer for me to walk to the bus. So at quarter to eleven he walked me to the bus to make sure I got on one, and we had a little nice kiss or two with no tongue and the bus came and home I went.
Sunday morning I slept in for a bit, then SA called and wanted to go to Spitalfields, so we headed that way. Ate at Canteen which is one of my new favorite places to go, then braved the extremely crowded market. SA was looking for gifts to send home, but only found things for himself. I got some bleu cheese and walnuts because I want to make this yummy sounding baked butternut dish tlsd was telling me about on Saturday. From Spitalfields market we walked through to Brick Lane, then ended up at Columbia Road where the Sunday market was ending, then we walked back to SA's place and I watched the final episode of Charmed and showed SA funny things on YouTube. I was going to go home to drop off my blue cheese, walnuts, and bag of rocks (from the flower market- and let me tell you, a bag of rocks is heavy!) but I ran out of time so headed off to MO's house from SA's house as we were supposed to have dinner.
The weather was shit so we decided to order in, but MO didn't have any delivery menus. Thank god we found this site. It's fantastic. I hope to explore who is on it in my area, though it looks like far less than for MO, but she's more central than I am. At any rate, we got pretty good Indian delivery, and hung out watching Scrubs and South Park and talking about how horrible buying property in this country is. Anyway, I didn't leave her house until after 10, so I just got home and needed to go to bed!
And now I'm at work, clearly being productive. I have a dinner tonight which should be alright, and P has asked for a date tomorrow which seems okay. I'm not at all sure how that's going to go yet, but we seem to have good conversation and he's really nice (and suitably kinky) so I'm willing to give him a chance, he's just young, and also, nice. And frankly, I'm not used to being with anyone who is nice and it is sort of freaking my shit out.
Anyway. That's what's new around these parts.
If only I was so lucky. At the moment it is Monday and I am at home. I got up on time, convinced I had gone to work yesterday when clearly I hadn't. Got myself up and went to take a shower. Usually it takes a while for the hot water to work its way through the pipes, so I waited.
And waited.
And waited.
And then I started to think, you know, the water is sort of warm, but it's not hot. And I've been waiting a really long time. I managed to sort of wash up a bit, then I turned the shower off and tried the hot water tap in the sink. Again, warm but not hot. I knew something was up.
Went down to the kitchen and ran the hot tap there. Usually with all this hot water going, you can hear the boiler click on. But there was no noise. Then I tried to look in the little window where you can normally see the pilot light, no flame. Tried to re-set it, no luck.
So now I've called a company to come out and look at it. Angry and worried that I'm going to be ripped off by some charlatan. Nothing I can do about it though really. And I just looked outside only to find that all the streets are cordoned off. I yelled out to the police-woman who was running tape across the road in front of my house to ask what was going on. I thought maybe if it was a larger gas or electricity problem that would help explain things.
She told me there's a suspect package on a bus. I assume at Hackney Central because I can't see any bus from my window. How are the boiler people going to get here now? Fuck.
