It's Snowing!!

I thought the weather people were mental when I saw snow in the forecast, but it looks like they were right for once!!

Chores be damned, it feels like a good day to whip up some soup, toast some granola and catch up with what's cluttering up my DVR before an early dinner with Melissa at St Anselm in Williamsburg this evening.

One Of My Recent Matches. Hmmm!!!

Seriously Match.com????


To be honest as someone with a stats background I am more offended by the poor quality of their matching algorithm than anything else. Sigh!!

Perhaps the universe is telling me I should just give up on dating. I think the last prospect I mentioned was Will of the West Village. We exchanged a few emails, discussed meeting up and then....never heard from him again. The men of New York who date online seem to be a thoroughly flaky bunch.

It's a miserable Saturday morning in New York anyway - absolutely pouring with rain, with predictions for a snow storm. It's hard to believe that in the first week of October we were enjoying temperatures in the 70s. The month started off unseasonably warm and is ending unseasonably cold. I hope this is not the last of the beautiful autumn weather we've enjoyed for the two weeks in between.

Between the rain and a poor night's sleep - I was awake between 2am-5am, my mind whirling about all sorts of crap - I've decided to skip the gym for once, maybe I'll do a double class tomorrow, in favour of laundry and other chores. I feel I deserve it after my second Project Fit check in last week went better than expected. I didn't lose any weight to speak of - just 0.2lbs - which is probably a daily fluctuation, but I did lose 1.3lbs of fat. Yay!!

Ok so Megan is Alive

Call off the sniffer dogs, just received an email from the dirty stop out Megan with just 3 words...

"OH HOLY GOD..."

I'm guessing it was a large night at the karaoke bar and that someone is going to need a lot of Gatorade today ;-)

I'm just happy she's not dead in a ditch somewhere.

All The Fun Of A Blocked Toilet!!

1am on a Friday morning and I get up to use the loo and what do I see...water pouring out of the toilet and across the bathroom floor!!

Daaaaaaaaddddddddddd!!!!

Ugh, clearly my father's help was not an option what with him being 3000 miles away and all and Megan wasn't around to advise being out at a karaoke* with some colleagues so I set to work with my trusty funnel cup plunger. I suspect I only have myself to blame for the incident as earlier I'd snuffed out a large spider with the aid of two large pieces of kitchen roll and flushed the lot away and well...isn't kitchen roll bad for the loo being highly absorbent and all? I wasn't taken any chances with the spider though, I didn't want to put it in the rubbish bin and have it creep back out to seek revenge Death Wish style - shudder!! - so I like to make doubly sure they are dead by sending them to a watery grave and the system just couldn't cope with my super absorbent high quality Brawny kitchen paper!!

Anyway after about 50 plunges and...nope, still not clearing and oh great....the bowl is still filling the water.

I consulted a bunch of videos online - YouTube is the best eh, you can find out how to practically anything!!! - I set about attacking the loo with an unfurled wire coat hanger.

No joy!!

Sob!!

Since the bowl kept filling at a fairly rapid rate and I couldn't locate the 'flapper' to close it and stop it I had visions of having to stay up all night and periodically remove water from the bowl until such time it was appropriate to call the landlord and request the presence of a plumber.

More online research later and I discovered a handy tip from The Art Of Manliness - the art of modern womanliness more like - which is to pour a few cups of hot water in the bowl along with a squirt of dish soap and let it sit for a few minutes and then use a funnel cup plunger - apparently when I purchased a plunger from the hardware store this is the very variety I bought and supposedly it's a good one. A complete fluke!! - and...

...plunge away

What do you know, it did the trick. Success!! And this with the added hindrance of a massive zit on my face**.

Who knew dish soap would be so effective????

Phew!!!

The thrill of successfully averting disaster is flowing through my veins, although would I have preferred to have a boyfriend help me out on this occasion? You bet your arse I would. I'm old fashioned that way.

Anyway after all that excitement I'm off back to bed.

*Karaoke!!! What's that about? I just don't get the appeal.

**Seriously it's like a boil or something, it's hideous. I attacked it with a coating of Borghese mud mask which usually does the trick, but it's stubbornly resisting. For once I am hoping like hell not to run into either the contractor or creative hottie while going about my daily business at the office.

Update: Woke up this morning and no sign of Megan. Uh-oh!! Do I need to be worried that she didn't come home last night. Fingers crossed she'll show up at the office, if not I'll freak and I really don't need any more excitement after last night.

I just love love love this band

Another great tune from the Bombay Bicycle Club, along with a sweet video of people salsa dancing. The woman in the floral dress has some moves. I take no responsibility for the god awful advertising that proceeds it.

I am surrounded by love and everything is fine!!

Actually that's a lie, everything is not fine, but I need to practice my affirmations, although I don't think they are working so well!!

Not much doing here, same old, same old mostly work and working out, although I did buy a beautiful - and somewhat expensive at $298 - silk lace dress online, the 'Veiled Alder Dress' in Black from Anthropologie last week which arrived yesterday and is absolutely gorgeous.


Admittedly I did feel quite guilty about the splurge which occurred during a bout of self pity regarding my terminal single status last week and about 10 seconds after hitting the 'place order' button I'd already resolved to return it. That is until I tried it on, and oh good Lord, it's like it was made for me and the neckline isn't as high as it appears online, so it has more sex appeal than the photo above would suggest. I love it and cannot wait to wear it. Naturally all guilt about spending a chunk of change on a frock I shall probably wear only a handful of times has dissolved in light of how flattering it is ha ha!! Actually it's not going to break the bank since I've fully paid off all my credit cards but I have a saving goal for the end of the year so I've been Mrs Frugal of late, although my parents did give me $600 to buy myself something for my 40th, so I've decided that the dress is my birthday gift from them.

Megan had her own spendy day on Monday buying not one, but TWO dresses from Diane Von Furstenberg. Seriously it's very uncharacteristic behavior for her, she is shocked at how much I'll spend on my AG jeans - $160ish. Um, hello, no judgements, I wear each pair two-three times a week to work so on a cost per wear basis they are a bargain - as she never spends more than $50 on jeans from American Eagle, but since she moved in with me - she's between apartments having moved out of the place she was still sharing with her ex-fiance - she's been shopping at DVF and, after dropping close to $700 on two dresses, went and tried on a ton of pairs of jeans in AG, so I think I'm having an influence, albeit a bad one.

As for her influence on me...well after a rocky Friday - I had a wonderful start to my day when I spotted the hottie contractor who is overseeing the refurbishment of the conference room on our floor. Phew, he's VERY attractive and in fact looks a LOT like my crush, Mr. Art Director Creative Cutie who works on the floor above, so similar in fact that they could be brothers. Never let it be said I don't have a type. They both have high cheekbones, are of medium height - like 5' 8" to 5' 10"ish, I'm not a fan of overly tall men being only 5ft 1 myself - with lean toned bodies...could someone fan me please, I'm suddenly feeling quite warm. It was a good start to the day anyway and I was in an energetic mood as a result, but then mere hours later I was upstairs visiting one of my account teams and encountered the real deal, Creative Cutie himself, and well my mood just plummeted. I think I'm just reminded of a missed opportunity when I see him and I can't help but wonder what all the staring was all about last year*. I mean why stare if you have no interest in doing anything about it?

"Perhaps he stared because you remind him of his dead ex-girlfriend," mused Deesha.

Um, thanks for that cheery thought Deesha. Do you think maybe you've read one too many Gothic romance novels?

Anyway after my sighting a black cloud settled over me for the afternoon and I couldn't seem to shake it with happy tunes, not even Swedish House Mafia could lift me from the doldrums, and throwing myself into work wasn't sufficiently distracting, so as a consequence I went home and Googled 'affirmations' in an effort to think more positively.

Affirmations!!! Me, reading affirmations!!! Seriously that hippie clap trap is sooooo not me.

"That's like something I'd do" said Megan when she got home.

I KNOW!!!!!!

Admittedly the affirmations helped, but honestly it's like there's some Freaky Friday shenanigans is going down in my apartment right now with the usually mellow Southern Californian Megan displaying all the traits of a retail obsessed Brit whereas I'm turning into a bloody hippie. If I ever buy a Caftan and prayer beads please shoot me!!

So it was a 3 day weekend for some of us in the US this weekend, being Columbus day and all, so on Sunday Megan and I rented a car and drove up to Beacon, NY - we considered taking some surf lessons in Montauk, but the surf forecast was 0 feet, so not very good and Megan wasn't overly thrilled at the idea of getting up at 6am to drive out there, nor at the idea of surfing in cooler - 60-something degrees - waters since the poor lamb has only ever really surfed in the more tropical climes of Bali, Costa Rica and Hawaii. How awful for her ;-) It was a nice drive upstate anyway, we enjoyed the foliage and visited the Dia: Beacon - although I was less impressed by the art than I was by the building - and enjoyed some scoff at Homespun...


...and some ice cream at the creamery a little later. It was nice to get out, although I was extremely tired having woken up at 4am and was unable to get back to sleep. I dozed in the car on the way back to Manhattan and as the radio was playing songs that are familiar to me from my gym classes I dreamed I was doing star jumps and woke up with a start when my arms and legs flinched to the side as if I was going to do a star jump in my sleep. Do I work out too much do you think? It was very bizarre anyway as I'm rarely asked to do star jumps in class. On Monday I just got out and about and enjoyed the amazing weather - as well as a killer Pilates class taught by a substitute instructor called Iona at the NYSC on Varick Street and then met Megan for an early dinner at Buvette on Grove St in the village, which was excellent, a new favourite.

Yesterday I got a message from an OKCer who wants to "get to know me better." I clicked through to look at his profile and he's 23!! 23!! Also he dresses a bit like Dappy from N-Dubz if his photo is anything to go by, so um, no!!

Dappy himself!! Actually I have a hat like that, but I don't wear mine in public. Mine was handmade by my Quechuan Mommy during my Peruvian home stay.


I don't know, perhaps it's overly judgmental of me, but I don't see myself throwing on my fancy Anthropologie frock to go for dinner at Buvette with Dappy's 23 year old doppelganger. To be honest it's been a bit tumbleweeds of late although I also got an email on Sunday from Will of the West Village - another medical professional like my dog walking date of a couple of Saturdays ago - who sounds altogether more promising, although good on paper tends to be rubbish in real life, but hey ho!!

*He used to come down to the floor I work on to play ping pong with his buddy and when I would pass to run to the loo - I drink a ton of water, so I'm in the ladies every 30-45 minutes - he would stop playing and just stare which made me completely paranoid. I'm not one of those women that thinks 'that guy is staring at me he clearly thinks I'm hot" no siree I'm more the "that guy is staring at me, what's wrong, is my blouse undone am I exposing myself, do I have something on my face, did a bird do a turd on me" and so on. It's paranoia run wild. It wouldn't have been so bad had he smiled, but no, he just stared and said nothing, but goddamn it he is soooooo cute.

Taxidermy Labrador??

So I had a Match date on Saturday, the first one in a while. In fact I can't remember the last one, I think it may have been with the bloke who made my stomach churn by dipping the fork he was eating from into the wide neck of the ketchup bottle repeatedly!! Ugh!! Yup I think he was the last one. I did get a few winks and a couple of messages, but I was in San Diego for a week and then my parents were in town and I was just too busy to pay too much attention to it. I find I have fits and starts where the online dating thing is concerned, although I'm trying to be more consistent with it.

Anyway Saturday's date sounded a bit more promising based on the emails we'd exchanged. He's a doctor - the girls were all "ooooh a doctor," but I don't think dating doctors is all it's cracked up to be since they are usually up to their eyeballs in debt and if I am going to date a poor man I tend to favour the artistic type - who used to lead tours to remote bits of Acacia National Park. He sounded promisingly outdoorsy on paper and I was quite looking forward to meeting him.

I'd suggested grabbing a coffee and taking a walk in the park, casual-like for a first meeting, and he responded that that would be nice and asked if I was interested in taking his dog for a walk. Now I love a dog, and this one was particularly nice; a very well behaved Border Collie mix, I was more than happy to take him for a walk, but it turned out to be a bad move on my part because my date was very distracted as a result, continually throwing his dog - which he had off the leash in Central Park at 3pm on a Saturday afternoon - a Frisbee and talking back to the people maintaining the park, when a couple of them told him his dog should be on a leash. If I am honest I found him to be a bit on the disrespectful side to the park workers - "It's not like they can do anything about it," he complained, "they just like to throw their weight around, but they have no power to give me a ticket." - and wondered about being on the receiving end of his attitude.

Hmmmm!!

I'm also a law abiding sort and could completely see the park workers' point about the dog being on the leash, even though the dog was incredibly sweet and very obedient. We cut the date short anyway as it started to pour with rain almost as soon as we met and after 45 minutes my jeans were drenched to my knees. "I'm going to literally have to take a rain-check," I told him.

"Yeah, it's not great, sorry about that."

"Oh no problem, it's not your fault, you don't control the weather. Anyway it was nice to meet you," I told him shaking his hand.

That was Saturday and it's now Thursday and I haven't sent him an email and he hasn't reached out to me and so I don't think a longer date is in our future, which I'm more than okay about. Not to jump to a quick judgment, but my gut just says we're not compatible and I'm pretty sure he was about as interested in me as I was in him. I also felt as if I got a glimpse into an aspect of his personality in his defiant response to the park workers regarding his unleashed dog that did not sit so well with me. He also had a fairly disinterested vibe. I'd made an effort to ask him about his work and interests outside of his job, I always do, which is probably why I often get asked out on second dates when I had an awful time, but the effort wasn't really reciprocated. "I really enjoyed our date" they often say, "shall we go out again?" and I always think "Of course you enjoyed the date, you spent two hours talking about YOURSELF." Give me strength, a bit of give and take please!! Of course if a guy was hot I'd totally go on a second date, self absorbed or not, I'm shallow that way.

Anyway I'm trying to hang on in there with the online dating/dating in general, but it's by the skin of my teeth at the moment. It's a good thing I re-subscribed to Match in September and still have 5-months to go otherwise I would be cancelling. I'm really questioning whether I am bothered about being in a relationship at all? Yesterday on OKCupid I was listed as a favorite of a man in South Dakota with a No Country For Old Men haircut who looks like he is sat holding a taxidermy Labrador. "That dog's legs are awfully straight," said Megan when I showed her the photo. I was too perturbed by it to click through to the site see the larger image and check whether the Labrador was indeed stuffed and also...South Dakota....1500 MILES AWAY!!! 1500 MILES!!! This is only the latest in a relatively long list of men from far and away who have approached me online. Off the top of my head I can remember hearing from a man in Idaho, two men from North Carolina, two from Canada and one from Switzerland who, despite my lack of response, sent me a note trying to meet up with me - and no doubt many other women - when he was in New York for a week long vacation.

Um...no!!

Seriously???