Fly away

Another bit of a fascination today, this time travel-related. I've been mostly daydreaming about visiting San Francisco. Again, like my last travel daydream, it's doing it in style. First Class travel - flights hotels etc. plus a few weeks of sightseeing, chilling and enjoying myself.

I don't know why SF was the focus today, but I've spent most of the day thinking about it.

A boy can dream, right?

Dreams

Another weird dream last night, and this one's rapidly disappearing from my memory, so the bits I can remember are:

• Being coerced into arranged a date with a girl off Tinder by someone... possibly USHW or KfW2
• This girl actually existing. We matched once, a year or so ago, but she unmatched quickly afterwards. No matches since.
• When the date rolls round, I'm with a group of people house-hunting.
• Tinder Girl doesn't know who her date is and chats to everyone but me.
• USHW or KfW2 kick my ass and tell me to go chat to her.
• I do, and we leave the others behind to go on our date.
• In a nice bar, she admits that she used to be a man.
• The date goes well and we end up having sex in a hotel.
• I ask for her number to see her again.
• She gives me her number but says that she's not often in London, she lives in Oxfordshire.
• I tell her this may be an issue because I live elsewhere, too, but somewhere that would make further dates/a relationship difficult.

Somewhere around here, I wake up, confused.

Status Update: week 13

No point in waffling on. The magic number this week is 230.4 lbs. That's the heaviest I've ever been. Or at least the heaviest I've ever been recorded, which I guess is the same thing. Though, with a lot of booze and snacks taken last week due to a few birthday parties, it's not overly surprising given recent numbers.

Calorie counting has started again, too.

Mists of time

I've spent all day today thinking about QC2, for completely unknown reasons. There are no "anniversaries" around now between her and I to prompt anything. It also provoked a feeling of missing her. I had a trawl through the BN archives to see when we last spoke, and it was in August of 2014.

That's actually a few years later than I had thought, but a part of that is the fact I've not actually seen her since early 2013.

I'd love to get her for a drink or a coffee and have a chat.

No Surprises.

Unsurprisingly, it took S about 2 seconds to mention that his cronies were coming out last night. And that they'd already decided where we were going. I wasn't really in the mood for what they were talking about so I bowed out. FC and MRS FC went out, I think. GM stayed at home.

However, CC sent a text and suggested we did breakfast... or rather brunch by the time she rises in the morning. I agreed, and I'm sat here now just waiting for her to drag her arse out of bed.

Temptation

There's an outside chance that I could be out tonight, with S and possibly FC. S tried to arrange something last night, but I couldn't, due to work-related reasons and FC wasn't interested. GM has ruled himself out due to having no money.

I'm not sure I'm in the mood tonight. if it was just S and FC, then I could maybe be tempted out. But you can almost guarantee that S will invite his cronies along and one of them is a fun repellent.

However, if we go to the place opposite FC's house, I could maybe tempt FP into coming out. That's a thought.

But I got practically no sleep last night - my stomach was misbehaving again in a serious way, then I got a work-related phone call at 6 AM, so I'm pretty tired.

A shower and a shave might perk me up, but I'll wait and see if S gets in touch.

How long?

I can't remember if I've mentioned before, but there's a girl who keeps appearing on my Tinder feed every few weeks. She's tall, pretty, athletic and pretty much ticks all my physical boxes. Alas, there has never been a reciprocal right swipe.

Oh... did I mention that she's a friend of my sister's from her university days?

Still... every time she pops up, I keep swiping right.

Sometimes though, she has a habit of not using her own name, and given that she can look quite different (she uses different photos every few months), sometimes I've swiped right before I realise who it is.

The same thing happened today. A girl pops up, pretty with an amazing smile. I'm about to swipe right when... is that my sis's uni friend? Yes! Yes it is!

So, again I swipe right.

I mentioned my sis's university friend to USHW a while ago. Probably a good few years ago at this stage, which provoked a conversation about how long crushes can last. After all, I was attracted to her when we were in our late teens, and here I am, still attracted to her in my forties (though our paths haven't crossed between those times, so it's not like I was nursing this crush actively all that time).

Same with E3 and a few girls from school who are still, IMO, as attractive/more attractive now as they were back in the day.

Well, now it's just a waiting game to see if the Tinder girl swipes back.

Status Update: Week 12

No weigh-in last week. I had the day off work, so a lie-in threw my routine somewhat and by the time I remembered to post and stand on the scales, it was Monday evening. I decided that if I didn't do a weigh-in at breakfast time on Monday, I'd skip it until the next week.

Plus, there was the slight issue of pretty much spending the week boozing and at 200 calories per can (roughly) and a lot of cans, I wasn't expecting the news to be good.

The same applies to today's weigh-in. KfW2 showing up with cake (which I finished), S popping in for a few beers and, well, drinking on my own means I wasn't expecting anything positive from the numbers. Oh, and the ice cream and general lack of calorie counting.

I need to kick on with the exercise. My back issues are getting worse and mentally, I feel very muggy. That's an issue because I have a lot of learning and training to do over the next six weeks or so. Part of it is undoubtedly pandemic-related, but part of it is definitely due to lack of exercise etc.

Saying all that, the number this week is: 229.6 lbs. I was certainly expecting a lot worse!

Random witterings.

"She is the most approachable unapproachable woman I've ever seen"

That's a quote I saw on a YouTube video I watched earlier where Charlize Theron answers questions and eats chicken wings in various different hot sauces.

In fact, this one:

And it's a great interview - it seems a lot more candid and less defensive than celebrity interviews that I've seen.

But the quote itself reminds me of something that GM said when I introduced him to KfW2 and he was subsequently gushing in his praise (is praise the right word?) of her afterwards. I might have mentioned this before, but it echoed the quote above.

EDIT: The entire series is fun, go check it out: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAzrgbu8gEMIIK3r4Se1dOZWSZzUSadfZ

Memory lane.

Listening to Radio 2 earlier and they were talking about it being the 20th anniversary of Coldplay. That means you're talking about 2000, give or take a year.

But I recall being in a car with QC2, talking about the band and our preference of songs. She preferred "Yellow" whereas I liked "Shiver" better.

But that can't be right. We stopped being co-workers in '97 and while we continued to see each other socially afterwards, I'm struggling to remember why we would have been in a car together, on a Sunday afternoon (if my memory servers me correctly).

I can even think of the road we were on as we had that specific conversation, but literally nothing else of that day. Bearing in mind I had a massive crush on QC2 for a long time, the lack of additional memory surrounding that incident is strange.

Oh dear.

Taking a lunchtime browse through tinder and who pops up? Nope, not any of the usual suspects like my sis's foxy uni friend or CB... It's actually S's girlfriend. Or is it ex-girlfriend now? He's notoriously secretive about this stuff. I've sent out a message to The Crowd to see if it provokes him into saying something.

Just stuff about "Just, y'know, stuff".

I should clarify that last night's somewhat melancholy post was not a re-surfacing of the non-platonic feelings regarding KfW2... it was a more general kind of loneliness that I was feeling.

Little touches like her bringing cake (and this morning apologising for not calling round last week per her original timetable) are things that remind me that I want to meet someone who will treat me like that. Who I can treat like that in return without raising eyebrows. Not even FA2, who was my longest relationship, was as thoughtful as KfW2 is.

A year or so ago, I bought KfW2 a little gift of a photo frame with a photo of her and her kids. She wasn't in a great place and had shared with me previously that she was always taking pics and had few of her and her kids. It wasn't expensive - the whole package, including the large photograph, was about a tenner.

And I fretted about that for ages. Was I over-stepping a line? How would that be seen by someone who didn't know us?

Ultimately, I put that aside and gave it to her and she seemed to love it, but it did bother me for longer than it should have.

Just, y'know, stuff.

KfW2 showed up tonight. It was meant to be Sunday, but there were complications. Complications that I meant to ask her about this evening, but with her manic kids in tow, we never got around to having a proper, adult conversation. She was an hour late, however, she brought cake, so all was forgiven.

I did get a hug though, and I'm going to admit, it was difficult to let go. I've admitted in previous posts that I am extremely touch starved and the pandemic/lockdown has only reinforced the loneliness. Sometimes I think that because I am single and live alone that people think I am equipped to deal with this.

And they might be right to an extent. But it doesn't mean that it eventually gets to me too, even with KfW2 visiting.

Ultimately, under the circumstances, it all comes down to being single and lonely again. The pandemic is a reminder that while I do have some good friends, I have no-one of my own to be there, someone to spend evenings with instead of sitting at a PC for 18 hours a day. Someone I can hug for as long as I want without it being weird.

Just some stuff

Surprisingly, the guys never turned up. in fact, they still haven't. My brother-in-law has made all arrangements, but we're still none the wiser about when they're going to show up.

In other news, KfW2 phoned last night. She'll come and visit me over the weekend, she said. At least I think that's what she said... the line was terrible. A thought popped into my head that she'd come alone, but I've no idea why I jumped to that conclusion. Hope, maybe? Regardless of whether the kids are with her or not, it'd still be great to see her.

That's life...

I have the rest of the week off work and I'm going to get a lie in tomorrow. Unsurprisingly, my sleep has been awful recently, even after the six mile walk from Monday night.

So, yeah, a lie-in. What are the odds that the guys who are meant to be working in my back garden pick tomorrow to show up at 8 AM with a digger? Pretty good, I'd say.

Walk on.

With the good weather threatening to break at any point, Nerdy Girl and I arranged to meet. It's slightly unbalanced... her choice of meeting place is a few hundred metres from her house... but two miles from mine. I toyed with getting the bus or cycling over, but decided against it. I regretted that decision later.

We walked for about 90 minutes and had a pleasant conversation about, well, rubbish really. It really was all small talk. We parted ways back where we met and I started to walk home, except I could feel a blister forming on my foot.

As luck would have it, there was a bus coming up the road, so I jumped on it. Doubly lucky, it actually got to within a quarter of a mile of my house. Result!

I stopped recording as I got on the bus: 6.6 miles, 13,500 steps and 885 calories burned. Had I walked the rest of the way home, that would have been 8 miles.

I got a Chinese on the way home. I'm blaming Nerdy Girl for talking about it while we were walking... and because by the time I got back into the house at 8 PM, I was not starting to cook dinner from scratch.

Ah well... it was nice to get out of the house, to see someone "new" since the lockdown and general get some exercise. My feet are killing me though.

Status Update: Week 10

The magic number this week is 227.8 lbs

It's a little surprising because, if I am being honest, the whole weight loss thing was not really a consideration this week. Motivation (or lack thereof) was a factor, as was frustration.

This week could be a write off too as I have a couple of personal things to attend to that's probably going to result in beers and food.

Today's weather is decent, so I might try and get Nerdy Girl out for that promised meet up/walk that we've discussed. That's going to be at least a 4 mile walk (2 miles either way to our meeting point), then whatever we do in between.

Just chatting

I'm in a Whatsapp group with a load of people that I used to work with, including KfW2 and Stalky Guy. I would regard all of the people in the group to be friends, with the exception of Stalky Guy.

So when a guy sent a message out of the blue yesterday that said:

"I'm going sound like an idiot, but I miss you guys and gals. It's an insane amount of time to be away from people."

There were a few replies. One guy is loving it, the others seemed to be coping rather than thriving.

I posted my own message.

"I've loved the money and time I'm saving, but I miss seeing people in person and I do actually miss being in work. I work better with people around me, I think."

The thriving guy was quick to reply, and his message sounded like he was trying to make a competition of the circumstances.

"I'm more alone in the office than I am at home" (He has a wife, kids and dogs at home, in the office, he's a one-man team).

Was he trying to equate the fact that he doesn't speak to anyone in the office to me actually sitting on my own in my house? I've gone a week at a time during this lockdown without seeing another human being. When KfW2 gave me a hug last Monday after leaving my house, that was only the second piece of physical contact with another human being since the lockdown - nearly four months into it.

I think his message in both content and tone ended what might have been a frank conversation, and possibly one that everyone needed.

No more bedtime cheese.

Another dream. I'm remembering these dreams, I think, because they come in the final phase of sleep that I get, that's not really that deep. My sleeping patterns are weird - I fall to sleep quickly, but will wake somewhere between ninety minutes and two hours after dropping off. I'll fall asleep again and wake another two hours or so later, then turn over again and awake, finally, somewhere between 7 AM and 8 AM.

It's this last phase where I'm remembering my dreams.

This time, KfW2 was getting married, somewhere foreign. I was there, for the wedding and for some other, business-related, reason. USHW was also there, as a guest of KfW2. In the dream, literally minutes after touching down on foreign soil, KfW2 had somehow managed to find a new man, dump her fiance and insist on getting married to the new guy.

Obviously, everyone's appalled at this behaviour, but no-one can find KfW2 to try and make her see sense. My time is torn between trying to find KfW2 and whatever business thing I was also meant to do.

USHW keeps me up-to-date on the KfW2 progress via video calls. Eventually, she is found and the wedding goes ahead with the new man, though the atmosphere has obviously changed for the worse. I wake up in the middle of the wedding reception.

That's just weird. It was KfW2's actual wedding anniversary a few days ago. I suspect it was actually KfW2's anniversary of meeting her now hubby. Or re-meeting him. She's kinda sentimental that way, so doing it on the same date/day is very her. And I do know it was around this time of year that he showed up at her house, wine in hand and they've been inseparable ever since.

Boots ahoy!

I've started watching a programme called "Upload" on Amazon Prime. While I'm only three episodes in, I'm really enjoying it so far.

The synopsis from IMDB:
"A man is able to choose his own afterlife after his untimely death by having his consciousness uploaded into a virtual world. As he gets used to his new life and befriends his angel (real world handler) questions about his death arise."

And it's funny, and seems to be setting me up for a punch in the feels and thus is giving off a vibe like "Now and Again".

I'm also enjoying the deceased character's girlfriend's penchant for wearing short skirts and over the knee boots. I do love a skirt and boot combo on a woman. Shame I can't find any pictures.

Heart to heart.

Another night, another dream. The majority of it is beyond me, but I remember lying in bed, naked, with FBS wrapped around me, also naked, and we were just talking.

It was reminiscent of an actual night we spent together, then spent most of the next day lying in bed, talking, only rising in the middle of the afternoon. And despite us both being naked, it wasn't a sexual dream that I can recall.

While the details weren't exactly the same as my memory of that day, the vibe was similar and the thought of being wrapped around a naked woman was pleasing. As was the memory itself.

A good drilling.

No sooner had I published the last blog post than CC arrived at my door. She wanted to borrow my drill. She had mentioned something at the start of the week, but had gone quiet since then. Before I had a chance to say anything, she walked past me, into the house, and made herself at home.

Every time she turns up to my place these days, she's in yoga pants/fitness leggings and a tight exercise top. And judging from the amount of return labels she's printing, she buying a lot more of them too. This new look shows off her figure a lot more than her old jeans/baggy jumper/Ugg boot combos.

Just a pity that I'm not a fan of her personality.

Go me!

Last week, I bought a shelf at Homebase. today, over my lunch, I actually managed to get it onto the wall. And it's level, too.

It doesn't feel as sturdy as I would like, but that's the shelf rather than my handiwork.

I'm chuffed to bits.I'm useless at DIY. I came close to failing every woodworking class I ever did, only really passing due to my design and research bits.

In my adult life, I've done precious little. Decorating, yes, DIY, no. I managed a couple of things for FBS and FA2 when we were sleeping together and that was sheer luck more than anything else.

I've owned my own home for over four years, I'm over forty and I reckon you can count the amount of DIY things that I've attempted on your fingers and toes.

So putting up a shelf is a big deal for me. I'll celebrate with a beer later.

Walky, and talky.

Nerdy Girl sent a text earlier.

"Have you forgotten about me? A better offer?"

It was our semi-planned meetup for a socially distanced walk. I hadn't forgotten... I'm still recovering from the gardening last weekend.

I explained that to her, and we tentatively agreed to meet early next week, if the weather is agreeable.