A lovely and lazy day off!!

It’s been a weird old week; there’s been a lot of apathy at the office. People seem exhausted and out of sorts, I’m not sure if they’re overworked or suffering with a touch of the winter blues, but when I’ve stopped to chat with colleagues in the hallways there’s been a lot of deep sighing and chat about a lack of motivation.

Personally I’ve had a quieter week as far as client deliverables have been concerned which is good, because I developed and taught a 3hour training course on Thursday morning and getting everything ready really took its toll. Thankfully it’s over and done with now and seemed to go well, but I was feeling in need of some recovery time, so I decided to treat myself to a day off. I have 4.5 carry over days to use or lose by the end of March and I know that if I don’t take the opportunity for a day off when work is quiet then work will get busy and I’ll miss my chance to use them.

It was a last minute decision to take the day off so I didn’t really have any plans to do anything special. I did consider going for breakfast at Balthazar if I woke up in good time, and I did wake up early enough to get there before they stop serving breakfast at 11am, however it was to the tune of snow shovels scraping against the pavement. It’s coming down quite fast, settling too, and I didn’t quite have it in me to get dressed up to go out, so I missed out on sour cream hazelnut waffles with warm berry compote and had a bowl of Cheerios instead. I think they’re expecting 6-9inches of snow to accumulate in the city. Eeeek!!! I love snow; I especially love feeling warm and cosy inside when it’s snowy outside. It’s almost noon and I’m still lounging about on the sofa in my jimjams catching up on emails and half watching last night’s episode of ‘Lost’.

Anyway not much doing this week other than work work work, although I did get an email from Bill – the southern chappy I had a date with a couple of weeks ago to say he might be back in New York in April...

"I may be back up in April. A friend will be hosting his brother and sister-in-law from Germany and they are going to visit some cities along the east coast to include NY and I’d like to catch up with them. It would be nice to see you again if you happen to be available. They would just be up for a day or 2 but I would plan to stay longer if you’re around?"

It would be nice to see him, but I'm just going to see what materialises. It's funny, because while I liked him when we were hanging out on our date, I also remember being quite glad that he lived 4 states away. Tel Aviv was back on my mind - after I'd noticed he'd checked my blog a few times recently, well either him or someone else who works for the same small company he’s at as the name popped up as a network host for a visitor in my tracking - and I wasn't sure I was ready for a date. I’m cautious like that after a break up. Some people just jump right back in and start seeing someone new, but I like to readjust myself emotionally before jumping back into the fray, however I was quite surprised last weekend to find myself wishing Bill was around to hang out with. Maybe I'm looking back on our date with rose tinted spectacles, but Bill was a lot of fun to be with and I did like his enthusiasm for exploring New York. He's similar to me in that respect. I’m pretty sure that if I said to Bill 'let's go for brunch at Ici in Fort Greene on Sunday and explore the neighbourhood' he'd be up for it, whereas some of my other friends would be more likely to say "Brunch in Fort Greene? What do you want to go all the way to Brooklyn* for, there's a perfectly good diner around the corner?"

I liked Bill’s willingness to explore, he was great company too. I’m just not certain of his romantic expectations if he does visit in April, or mine for that matter, which is fine, uncertainty makes life interesting, but why let seeing how things go get in the way of some good old fashioned over analysing. There are a couple of things that puzzle me about Bill you see. He seems to like me, he said so numerous times on our date and was very tactile with me – slightly more tactile than I was comfortable with to be honest for a first date. I couldn’t work out whether it was just because he was naturally quite forward or didn’t want to waste time taking things at a slower pace when he was flying back to North Carolina the next day, but either way I tend to prefer to take things a little slower. Me, I’m all about taking things slower; moving too fast has only ever proved disastrous for me in the past, but I went with the flow on the date and he reiterated how much he liked me when I saw him briefly on Monday. Nooooo, I did not see him on Monday because he stayed over on Sunday night. Honestly, what kind of boomeranged legged slapper do you take me for? No, I saw him on Monday because the pal he was staying with was leaving on a business trip at 6am that morning and he didn’t have a spare key for his apartment, so Bill also had to get up and leave at 6am with his big back pack and wander the streets of New York until his 4pm flight. Not fun and I felt badly for him walking around with all his stuff, especially as it was freezing cold that day, so I told him he could drop his bags at my office for a few hours if he wanted. He took me up on my offer and turned up at my office at 8.30am – good timing as the nosy buggers I work with would have had a field day if he’d got there at 9.30am when they’d all be arriving at the office – and I met him in the lobby to take his extremely heavy back pack off his hands and packed him off for breakfast at Balthazar to keep warm while he waited for the shops in SoHo to open. Balthazar opens for breakfast at 7.30am on Monday-Thursday and it’s a perfect spot to enjoy a leisurely breakfast and people watch. I knew he’d love it in there. I met him later for coffee in Starbucks when he came back to pick up his bag and he held my hand tightly and told me what a great time he’d had and said how much he wanted to keep in touch.

Since then….well it’s been pretty quiet on the North Carolina front. I heard from him the next day when he was back in work…

”Thanks again for showing me around Chelsea and SoHo. You were a wonderful partner in my little mini-adventure. Just walking around and ducking into an English grocery [Myers of Keswick] and trying new things were exactly the kinds of experiences I was hoping for during my visit. I enjoyed our dinner very much. It has been quite sometime since I have been able to relax and enjoy a nice meal with such attractive and engaging company. Let's definitely keep in touch! I hope to come back up in the next few months.”

A nice note right? Is it naïve of me to assume he meant it about keeping in touch? I’ve been kind of surprised you see that except for the brief email to say he’s planning to visit in April I haven’t really heard a peep. I suppose I expected slightly more, not grand declarations or anything, just a little more back and forth, to get to know him a bit better over email, especially if he does visit in April and expects to pick things up where we left off. If he’s expecting date number 2 rather than just hanging out with me as a friend and free NYC tour guide then I’ll be needing me some email woo-ing :-)

Anyway I shall finish here and focus on Lost, since it’s not a show you can appreciate while multi-tasking. I have to brave the snow later tonight as I'm off to a Knicks game at Madison Square Garden with three people from work. We won tickets in the trivia quiz last week, I’m not much of a sports fan, but I thought I may as well go. I’m not sure how long it goes on for, but we may have to dash out before the end as we have tickets to see Eddie Izzard at 10.30pm at the Union Square Theatre. It should be fab, I can’t wait.


Photo by my gorgeous gay husband, Miles. Isn't he artsy? It was taken last St. Valentines Day – this smattering of snow is pitiful compared to how it looks outside right now - and only just emailed to me today, the lazy bugger ;-)

*It’s funny I’ve had a Brooklyn hankering all week. I’m sating it by having brunch with my friend Nigel on Sunday. Nigel lives in Carroll Gardens and he and I like to get together every few months and share our latest stories of the single life. He’s thrilled that I’m willing to make the trip out to Brooklyn as everyone usually makes him come into Manhattan.