So Mark (clever, handsome devil that he is) has managed to find this blog by googling some of the SIPs which were in a month's worth of posts I sent him. So, hi, honey. I won't go back and sanitize the silliness, drama, sadness, flippery, and so on, but now blog with perhaps a bit more discretion and a little less gushing.

I've been really phoning it in in terms of work of late, but that's okay, I think, because it's very phone-in-able, although I would say this week is rough given the parents coming in, and that entire report card mess, which involves all sorts of paperwork--it always astounding to me how people just don't get this thing called mail merge.

That aside, it's been a good week as far as the dating and so on are concerned (do you hear that, Mark?--Okay, I'll stop the shout-outs, it's annoying), but it's odd to think hwo quickly the sharp snappiness in kendo can leave you with just a week off. Saturday was also extremely pleasant weather-wise (with eventual facebook photos to follow), but it's sad how the Manhattan girls find ordinary people's ordinary lives so damn "festive."

So here is my life after 5 today.

Ran downtown for my presentation. A/V problems like mad. Mac Minis are cute and wireless keyboards are hot, but the lack of hotkeys renders GSP almost stupid.

Did some adlibbing, made some jokes about cravats and the Siamese. Rob and Laser were mostly appreciative of my jokes, which were hedges against something or another.

Several choice moments include the following jokes: (I did not tell any jokes about what's green and really far away? What's really far away and hard to wash off?) A teacher complains her kids can't even draw parallel lines and I'm like, "What, their rulers have only one side?" "Why did the parabola go to the guidance counselor?" "Because she lacks direction!"

I'm told the best joke I told was about how the vanishing point moves whenever you turn around. This joke cannot be transcribed.

We didn't make jokes about urban kids are already familiar with traintracks, thankfully.

Some pints later, I try to stagger Midtownward for Mark, sadly leaving Rob in the lurch and Laser a bit confused, but somehow got lost by heading into Battery Park City, but the ruins of the WTC made me further and further away from the subway, so I took a cab (thank goodness for ExpressPay) to near the dojo, whereupon then I hopped on the train to Mark.

It was good seeing Mark. It was great seeing Mark. It was necessary and overdue seeing Mark. I've missed him unreasonably. Tonight was reasonably light and relaxed and just catching up, shooting the breeze, and flirty, retracing our first date steps somewhat on this our tenth, talking about the headlong, heady pace and how much we can see a future together, as much as we are leaving our own lives intact as possible (just don't ask me how many times I've skipped practice in the past few weeks). It's almost enough to make me revive that old song, "When My Boy Walks Down the Street," but that was another country... And this time it's somehow much more reciprocated, nourishing, and sustaining and there is longing which is not based on what is not but what we don't have right now because of work, life, family, and such. Happily in love.

So seven dates later Mark and I are still going strong.

The funny thing, however, is desire. Desire is when you can't have exactly have what you want--when you long and yearn and crave it at a distance, growing ever fonder, and storing up the things you say, or interrupting your hum-drum day with cheesy affectionate emails which push the envelope of what is work-appropriate but well enough because the days just become distance between the next encounter whcih in public is so aggressively flirtatious and with body language which if anyone in New York City were ever to pay attention would warrant at least a bashing or two or the more intimate and private moments about which I won't even blog because the silences are so pregnant and full.

So for all you faithful readers out there:

Asianboi Rndp

AnDee is holding it together.
AllRick is waiting to hear from his literary Asian.
AwwStin is epononymously marooned, still.
HoEn lost his phone again.
RoChin is trying to quit alcohol.

And then there's Mark. I've only known him for a week, but I dunno... he's the kind I'd take home to meet the parents (which contrary to his belief, does not at all mean that he's boring and predictable--respectable and marriageable).