Category: Friends

Sometimes We Borrow From Ourselves

Ok, I just gushed out my day in an email and decided to just rip it off and paste it right here.  So suck it, losers! (kidding.  obvs):

“So guess what I did today. I “broke up” with an online date girl. I should paste some text from the email so you can rate my effort. Or some from her last email so you can see why it was inevitably going to end badly. I think this way I get to be a very small asshole and she gets to feel righteous for a week and then forget about it all. Wanna know what event precipitated this admittedly already-in-the-works dumping?

Ok, I’ll tell you! So we email each other while at work, right? yeah, so she asks me what I’m doing this (past) weekend. And, because I have a pretty full lineup, I tell her exactly what I’m doing. It was basically booked thurs and sat nights. So I suggest dinner either early and limited on sat or sunday (she has some sstuff going on friday and sat nights). She says, yes. I ask which she prefers. She says sunday and I say good, sunday. Then on friday she texts me something like have a good weekend and i text her on saturday that it’s gorgeous outside whoopeee. no response, which I’m personally a fan of, except I know it’s probably significant. So sunday comes and I have brunch with some friends and then i text her hey, are we having dinner? no response. So I email, hey, in case your phone is dead, are we having dinner? and then i call (i hate calling, but to be the one with the justice on his side i’ll do it) and leave a message: hey, i’m thinking you’re not into dinner, but i still am, let me know. so she calls back and it’s 7 by now, and i don’t answer. because it’s her turn to leave a damn message right?

Only she doesn’t. She doesn’t! I mean why the hell call in the first place?!?!?!?!?!?! Veeeery significant. So I reluctantly call back and she answers. She’s all on the offensive: “I am sort of used to actually communicating with the people I’m spending time with” or something like that, “So when I didn’t hear from you on the phone I assumed it was off…..” painful silence “So I ate already”

And I said oh it’s fine and then she began to launch into what seemed like a wind-up for a tirade against me (I’m sure about how I’m not sending clear signals or trying hard enough to keep her interested… I’ve gotten that before and it turns me WWWAAAYYY off), so I cut her off with some stuttered “it’s ok’s” and “you don’t have to explain’s” and she shuts up….

and then apologizes and says if i want some cold pizza i can come over. And I double down with, naw, it’s cool I have some leftovers i can eat. And then it’s awkward for a while and then we stumble through a reschedule. [and now that I’m writing all this i think i’m going to paste it word for word into my blog, along with this comment… and while I’m editorializing for my blog in an email to you, I will also point out that i think my ex knows the address to my blog, which sucks because i don’t want her to read about my exploits, such as they are, and get hurt]

And then I realize it’s time to end the thing. And then I also realize that I don’t have to be the perfect gentleman and always end things on the phone or in person. In fact, an email saves everyone the discomfort and has the added benefit of being more likely to happen sooner, you know? Like having to do it in person makes it SO MUCH EASIER to put off the messiness. So I composed a lovely email and sent it to her, making sure it would get there when she didn’t need to focus on work or whatnot because I can’t help being condescendingly sensitive.

GAAAASP. done. I hope you enjoyed reading that. but seriously it felt pretty self indulgent.”

Technowhosie?

I’ve got several things to touch on with this post, but I doubt I remember them for more than the next 4 minutes, so here goes a list:

Maintenance payments:
These are the thing that keeps home ownership from being the unequivocal “good thing” that we all believe it should be.  For all my rent paying readers (hahahahahaha: readers! with an “S”! HAHA. ok.) who may not know, it’s a monthly fee that pays for shit like the super (who charges to fix stuff in your apartment, btw) and heat and water and gardening.  And it is ALWAYS going up.  We just got another increase.  I can’t handle it.  My monthly maintenance is more than my car payments used to be (I sold the car to be able to get this place).  And we’re getting hit with–now follow this one closely–two one-time assessments of 200 bucks.  Assessments are how the building gets more money from you without raising the maintenance fee.  It just gets collected in one lump sum.  Twice.  Assholes.

Karaoke:
Went to a friend’s birthday thing this weekend.  What do you call it when people meet up at a bar for a person’s birthday?  It’s not exactly a party, is it? Anyway, we started at this place called the Dove Parlour, which was overblown and maybe not all that great.  But then the party relocated to Planet Rose.  And here’s the thing; it’s a karaoke bar.  In fact it has no other reason to exist or be frequented.  It’s almost like people blow in off the street solely to belt out a song and then they flitter off again.  The people in the place are all there waiting for their selections to come up, and along the way they get rowdy for crowd pleasers, singing along to the hits.  Anyway, I popped my karaoke cherry.  It was magical.  It was definitely like the first time you try sushi and realize there was nothing to be afraid of in the first place.

Let me pause here to get a little philosophical.  Or at least introspective.  I was hanging out with a different style of person from the usual that night.  There were absolutely no hipsters per se along for the ride.  Everyone was in general characterized by a pointed lack of guile, very little irony, and possibly (i’m inferring here) musical taste that could be classified as unsophisticated.  This is part of my project to shift the type of person I spend my time with away from the ultra image conscious hipster stock I’m used to.  And it was incredibly awesome.  I wouldn’t have sung in a group of my old friends.  Never ever in a million years.  Too much judgement happening.  This group at Planet Rose was incredibly positive and it was a good feeling.  I heartily recommend it.

Technorati:
I don’t really know what it is, other than a blogging ubersite that keeps a list of active blogs and makes them searchably accessible to a buuuunch of people.  So I got on it and listed HIE with them.  I also added he ability to leave comments, and an RSS feed for those of you who know how to use them.  It only has my recent posts, though, so it will take some time for it to flesh out.  There’s also a button to add it to your faves on technorati.  I have no idea what that means.
But please leave a comment if you read this to let me know you’re out there… that means you, my one reader.

Checking In?

Well I’ve had quite a few blog-worthy developments in the last few however long it’s been, and I can’t say I’m all that hyped about writing about them.  And maybe that’s what I’m going to write about.  Or whatever.

So.  Since Feb 3, blah blah a ton of shit has happened.  I got on the okcupid for a while.  Which if you couldn’t figure out just by the name is an online dating site–distinguished by it’s status as completely free.  Dudes don’t have to pay to send the ladies emails.  Not only that, it has a facebook-like chat interface thing, so people can constantly harass each other.  There’s a whole mes of other titillating time wasters on it and I’ve gotten a friend of mine hooked (so sorry), but I have since closed my account (sorry, mystery prospects, you’ll have to never meet me and be ok with it).  A few plainly bad dates and one crazy stalker later, and I think I’m ready to fucking throw in the towel on the dating thing.  I think I might have mentioned the whole dating thing last entry… that’s how much I pay attention to my own words.

I made it through Valentine’s Day without giving some nice girl the wrong idea as well, but I may have pissed off a few (passively).  Oh well.  I refuse to take someone out on that day who I’m not semi-serious with, or at least seriously infatuated with.  It’s special.  Reserved for last minute dashes to bed and breakfasts upstate and endless gifts delivered from mail order catalogues specializing in edible arrangements.

And then there was the housewarming brunch.  Quite a terrific success.  I had people come all the way out to Bay Ridge to celebrate my new home, exactly (almost) one year after I signed my papers and got the keys.  I have to say I was a nervous nervous wreck the whole week leading up to it.  AAAnd the first hour, when no-one showed up.  And then people began to trickle in.  Thank God.  I made a shit-load of tiny pancakes called ebelskiver.  They were a hit.  I almost made the mistake of not buying alcohol.  Thank God for S, who convinced me to jog to the liquor store the night before on the off chance they were still open (they were).  Long story short, there was even a second half to the day with pizza ordering and Rock Band playing.

After all the lead-up to it and the cleaning and the painting (had to finish) and the fretting over who would come and who should be invited, I have much less inner compulsion to get my face out there in front of people.  Unfortunately that’s the wrong damn attitude to have now that I’m finally making progress on having and keeping a social network of good people.  Super hard to do in Bay Ridge, and near impossible if you love being a hermit like i do.  This weekend: acrobatic theater in the upper west side.  I hope I can keep the smile going.