happy travels

i'm out of state right now visiting family. traveling while single is pretty cool. i've done it for years & really find it fun in its own way. there's something very liberting about it. if you haven't done it before, it's a scary thing. but you get used to it & like all things, learn to really enjoy it.

airline travel alone can be quite relaxing (if you 1) have your boarding pass b4 you get to the airport and 2) check no bags). other than having to drag your luggage everywhere by yourself & not being able to leave it with someone while you run & do whatever, it's pretty cool to travel alone. i dig it! only caveat: must have someone on the other end to pick you up or meet you at some point...

plus while being single you get lots more attention from pilots & other various and sundry unshaven, sexy, travel-worn guys. not bad. ;)

my christmas pie upon which was heaped gobs of compliments by non-apple-pie-enthusiasts as it wasn't too sweet or too dry or too cinnamony, and the apples were all cooked & it was light & and just right.

merry christmas!

today i'm baking an apple pie for christmas. we're having a very non-traditional christmas dinner with everyone's favorite food that they wanted to make. my choices were gorgonzola spinach salad & apple pie. then we're having baked artichoke with garlic dip and garlic mashed potatoes (a la cheese cake factory style) and various and sundry other christmasy things.

i'll let you know how the pie turns out. if you're single, good-looking, smart, talented and sweet to me, you just might get lucky. and get some. pie, that is.

tomorrow i'll put up a picture of my christmas pie.

moving right along

there comes a point when you're my age (34) that you figure your life may not turn out the way you thought. (marraige, kids, house w/ picket fence). so you start working toward alternate plan b...which means all of the above in an order optional to your particular preferences. though it makes sense to get the car before the house, and the house before the kids, and marraige somewhere before the kids, we now have the option of bucking society's preferences and doing it all wrong.

i just might do that as i have stable job with probable actual "career" making reappearance after long hibernation during the economic downturn. this morning i found out that i can get prequalified for the amount of house i want ($ amount that is, not SQF being in boston!). might be a good thing to get all that in order & get self some equity before addressing the kids issue...

it's an odd thing to be contemplating buying a house by yourself. one tends to imagine it filled with loving family. but then there is the point where you want an investment and you are TIRED of strangers tramping over your head in a 3-story and banging things at 1:37 a.m. and then of course, you have to plant yourself in one of the most expensive cities in the US where home/condo ownership is NOT cheaper than renting but only about 5 times more expensive and there you are saying hmmm. yes, i too could pay $349K for a condo to have some little dog with pink toenails run around on the floor overhead...or...i could buy a house for the same amount and not have the little dog with pink toenails run around on the floor overhead. see, that's where the house makes sense, no matter who lives there. excepting the little dog with pink toenails.

won't you not be my friend

whoever thought that men and women can be platonic friends is wrong. women can perhaps. perhaps. men? no. men don't bother unless they want to sleep with you. though they may not do anything of the sort, if you're not good enough for that, you're not good enough to be a friend.

so that means all my guy friends who are straight...have to go. why? because when they get s.o.'s, i will be hated by them & they will be forbidden from associating from me anyhow. so. might as well admit it now & just walk away.

i used to be friends with quite a few guy friends, but for some reason or another, very few remain. and true to my theory, i tend to have/will/might date/d them.

i'm tired of being single. i'm tired of being hated by women. and i'm tired of being dissed by my former guy friends b/c they have no choice. time to date someone. that's my new years resolution!

funnybone

a recent poll in cosmo shows that men think the #1 thing women really want is a sense of humor. i don't get that.

i like it when men are funny, but i don't require it. Sure a good laugh now and then is great, but you can find that a lot of places. Perhaps compatability is measured by laughter or something. I think laughter signifies a mental connection but it doesn't make me fall in love with anyone. It's not like I think, he's the funniest guy i ever met. damn, i want him.

oh well. i guess guys realize that when you are having fun with them you tend to smile and laugh over non-funny things -- simply because you're happy. i assume they mistake that for them being funny, being the wonderful performance-oriented creatures they are.

whatever the reason, laughing is good. but being funny in itself, not so hot. unless she already likes you, it's not like it will make a diff...

one smart chick

i don't remember the name of the girl on average joe (cuz i'm a woman), but she's a bright one. she asks good questions and the answers are oh so revealing.

in the last episode she canned the suave but slimy south american because he dated druggies and waited for 6 hours to catch a cheater. good move. and the guy who was so insecure he needed her to bolster his ego. not a job a woman wants to have. (somewhere between insecure and being a jerk is the correct ratio, boys)

and she asked a bright question to the cute, curly haired underwear model. what kinda girls do you date? him: duhhhhhhhhhhh, i dunno, all kids. and what do you usually talk to them about: uhhhhh, nothing. i think she gave up after that, calling him "young". i would have used another term, but she was very gracious.

the wall street trader is a real winner. i hope she ends up with him. he's gonna work his butt off (literally) to cover his weaknesses, and that bodes well for taking care of her well. plus, he's brilliant. quick, articulate, funny, sweet. he's a real pick. rooting for him all the way, whatever his name is...

schizophrenic

men continue to attract and perturb me.

but...i guess that's the nature of the game. a guy i'm seeing now is proving to be absolutely dependable and that's quite a turnon. sometimes boring is good.

and sometimes exotic is good. my attraction to foreign men never has quite gone away, though i no longer date them. their ability to say "my wish is your command" oh shit, that was a freudian slip. i meant to say "your wish is my command" as one cute armenian said to me. but literally, of course, he would mean the first over time. ha. anyway, foreign men can look you deep in the eye and say stupid things and it comes across just so rico suave. i really did not say this either. anyhow, my belabored point continuing, american men that want to be taken seriously can't say these things. it's like a snow man putting on suntan lotion. just doesn't work. looks stupid, sounds stupid, and you sure as hell know he's a player. whereas if they're adorable and accent-ed, somehow it all makes you melt into a puddle...

other men i see greatly perturb me. the factor being: with some pride they congratulate their s.o.'s on putting up with them. this i cannot figure out. if you think you're hard to live with, change. if you can't change your attitudes, at least try to modify your behavior.

one of my friends is a proud "reformed pig". that i like. know you were once a pig, but be one no longer. that's a nice mix.

meaning: be a pig to someone else and treat me like a princess. or else i may just act like one...

phase out

thank goodness i've gotten over my protracted phase of dating people just for the hell of it. now at least i'm dating people that have substance, are actually potential somethings, and who actually WORE the Original Seventies Styles before they became Retro.

whew. nice.

don't look now

if you watch the bachelor at all, you see a bunch of girls chasing this guy who is very ho hum about them. mr.-bob-someone-out-there-is-probably-better-than-you can't make up his mind. if you look at body language, he was WAY more into kellie joe than he was estelle. i think his family had a bit of say in that final decision because they sure didn't seem to like k.j. in any case, god forbid that i ever get like that.

if you aren't after me boy, i'm outta there. as one of my friends told me about an ex who chased him, "gees, if i'd wanted her, i'd have gone after her!"

nuf said.

mesmerized

today when i was buying lunch at my fav mexican place, some young gorgeous thing looked deep into my eyes as i got up to the register. i could hardly concentrate on what i was ordering. as i knew i wasn't the cat's meow today, i figured it was his m.o. and tried hard to pretend i didn't notice that when he said "your change is 96 cents" i was all flustered. i couldn't even remember how much money i'd given him for about 30 seconds. i walked away to get jalapeno peppers, trying to protect myself from looking lovestruck.

made my day. i don't care what the hell he thought of me, or how many women he did that with, damn, he was fine.

odd how a look can give you bedhead. much like cologne, except cheaper.

single's weekend in

last night played scrabble with my late grandmother's game. i was given it after her funeral when i remembered aloud the fun we had making up words. it was nice to have the game we used to play when i was little. the wooden pieces are now polished with time, dog-bitten on some corners, and watermarked. i love it. also was fun to win both games, with words like foxy on a triple word score, vacated, feudal, plains, and other such scrabble funsters. think my highest score was 45 for one play.

am reading fun stuff like steinbeck's tortilla flat (just bought cannery row), william bradford's diary, william martin's backbay (just finished cape cod), arthur hailey's overload (loved hotel), crichton's timeline, grisham's king of torts, and clancy's executive orders. not all at once. but that's my new list. got a few new others as well for fun, but am working on finishing all works by steinbeck, crichton, clancy, martin, et. al.

then of course i'm meditating upon myself, my dates, where i'm going in life, and what i will be like when i get there. am taking advice of friends who tell me i don't know what i want, and figuring out what that might be. all in all, a very thinky time, full of good coffee and good thoughts.

there's nothing like a good cup of coffee on a sunny morning in a bay window with great music playing, a new book, and the radiator hissing. the only better thing would be a fireplace on a rainy night with a cat, a cup of hot chocolate, a big pillow, and another good book. of course you add a warm body to both of these scenarios and it all gets better. but you have to make sure you get along with them first...i'm working on the warm body part. all good things come in time. ;)

even another superbowl win by the pats...