*sigh*

The proposed night out with KfW2 is in danger of being cancelled. The night we were planning on heading out has kinda been hijacked by a friend of KfW2's whose birthday it is. Well, I don't know if it is her actual birthday on the day we had planned to go out, but that's the day she's taking for her celebration. KfW2 guiltily confessed to me earlier that this had happened at lunchtime (while I was out for lunch with GfW).

I kinda brought it on myself because I had said to KfW2 to invite her friend along to our night out, the friend (who I kinda know, having met her a few times as she work in our firm) had said that she was planning on going out the previous week for her birthday, but if we were heading out, could combine the two (or words to that effect - I'm paraphrasing here a little). So KfW2 assumed that I would tag along for her friends birthday. However, I don't think I will... firstly, I don't think it's KfW2's place to invite me to her friend's birthday, even thought it'll be held in a pub/club and isn't private (I'm funny that way - see this post) and secondly, the choice of pub/club is something I don't like - the music is far too dancey for my liking. So, I said that I probably wouldn't go.

KfW2 had started the conversation by suggesting I would be angry (at the choice of venue) but I think she was slightly taken aback when I said that I probably wouldn't go (as I don't know her friend very well) even before the venue bombshell was dropped. I think KfW2 is feeling a little guilty now... and I don't think she should - a birthday for one of her closest friends is a more than acceptable reason to change plans. It's not like she simply had a better offer at the last minute and took it, which really would grind my gears.

There are two weeks to go, so things could change. KfW2's friend could directly invite me out which would probably make me reconsider my position (yes, I really am funny about that) or the venue could change or KfW2's friend could change her mind about the date...

Like buses...

It suddenly occurred to me that it's almost two years since I met Date No. 1. TWO YEARS! If I'd realized that at the time, I'd have shot myself. This coincides with a one of the messages I got recently turning into a conversation - swapped messages leading to IM-ing, leading to her giving me her number last night.

Imagine being on a website where the sole purpose is to meet someone of the opposite sex and only meeting two people in two years? While, I've not yet met this woman, I've enjoyed the conversation and might well ask her for a coffee or a drink next week. That'll be after the weekend though. It's a busy one. I'm out tonight with QC2, tomorrow with GfW and on Saturday with (amongst others) KfW and KfW2.

She's an night owl, so I'm guessing that she'll be online tonight when I return from seeing QC2 and we'll continue chatting. I have an idea that I might send her a quick text on Saturday before I leave the house and see what develops from there. She has her own social things this weekend, but taking the contact off line and into the real world is the next step and Saturday seems a good time to do it. She doesn't yet have my number, so a quick message is the ideal way to give her my details.

Fun times ahead.

Lots of things on this weekend. Was already out last night with my brother-in-law for a few pints with his brother. It was a quiet-ish night with me being in work today, but the unexpected nature of it meant that it was good fun.

Tonight, I've got a gig to go to - Stereophonics - which I'm looking forward to. I'm going with a few old work colleagues from the past, including GfW.

Tomorrow is M's girlfriend's birthday, where DSC has demanded I go on the pull, along with the very long shot of NM being in the pub we met in last week, plus a mate's band is playing too. Saturday should be a really good night and I'm looking forward to it already.

A last minute addition to the weekend is meeting G on Sunday night. M will be out as will FP (shifts permitting, of course) plus various wives/girlfriends.

All in all, it's a packed weekend... the first of about three or four on the trot. It's going to cost a small fortune, but I'm hoping it will be great fun.

Busy times ahead.

It's a busy few days coming up. I've got an interview about a college course early next week, followed by an outdoor gig the following weekend, with GfW. DSC and her friend are also attending, albeit separately. The week after that, I have another outdoor gig with a few people from work. The same weekend there's a kind of wedding reception for FBS where I'll be meeting up with D again. The weekend after that is my cousin's wedding and again the weekend after that is DSC's friend's birthday.

Those are all plenty of good opportunities to meet new people, but I still quite fancy a crack at DSC's friend.

DSC also mentioned in a recent conversation that she thinks I need to meet someone...

"I think you need someone... even if it's just for the company"

Maybe she's right? There's only so far that friends can take you, after all.

More goal talk

There's been one setback and one move forward in my current list of goals.

The setback is that a guy I was hoping to move into a new place with has kinda changed his mind. Maybe it was the fact we'd spoken about it under the influence and he didn't really mean it, but he seemed keen enough.

I'm disappointed because he'd be a good person to live with and there are some really good, affordable places on the market right now. Ah well, back to the drawing board.

The positive side was that GFW was looking for a gym buddy to motivate him into going to the gym. That means that we'll be heading to the gym perhaps four times a week at lunchtimes. The lunchtime thing is important as that makes motivation much easier than my original plan of getting up at 7 AM to try and get a gym hour before work.

Slow news day

Things have been very quiet recently. I have been extremely busy at work, so my social life has pretty much been fucked... though I don't really need work as an excuse these days. It really is shit.

I don't really have any further news from last reports, save my asking USHW for random sex (nothing unusual there.. it's a monthly occurrence for a bit of a laugh, it's not like anything's ever happened) and vague thoughts about getting in contact with FA1 again.

I've seen GFW a few times. We've had chats and stuff, but it's been purely business (as much as a friendship can be), trying to sort out each other's professional lives.

Weirdness

My aunt (my dad's brother's wife) died last night. She wasn't ill or anything, she just collapsed late in the evening and never properly recovered. I'm not even sure what happened, just that she collapsed in her home, fell over, hit her head and that was it. The paramedics tried for quite a while to resuscitate her, but to no avail. In fact, my parents had been down visiting her only hours beforehand.

I don't know what I should feel. Death hasn't been a big factor in my life, so this is the first true taste of it with someone relatively close to me. In fact, when we were younger, my cousin and I were extremely close. It's only within the last ten years or so that we've grown distant, more due to his apathy at maintaining a friendship than anything else.

That's weird in itself and I've been in a little daze all day.

What has compounded the weirdness a little was that I got a text message last night with a time stamp that pretty much matches the time that my aunt died from GFW, a co-worker I'm very friendly with, announcing the arrival of his first child, a baby girl.

Weird.

:)

I left work yesterday at about half past four, heading to the pub with a few work colleagues for a few pints. It was our work's monthly beer festival which I'm sure I've mentioned before.

It was a good laugh and I got in some good perving at a girl who works in our department (though not my team). I wasn't the only one perving and we ended up in a discussion about work totty and dating co-workers. She had a weird day. She wasn't in work yesterday, but turned up at 5:30 PM for a few drinks and disappeared again at about 8PM, only to show up again at about 10 PM.

Actually, the girl in question is extremely appreciated within my small group of co-workers with whom I socialise. One friend, GFW, has actually pointed out similarities between this girl and V, which is true in a superficial kind of way - they're both brunette, slim, toned, very pretty and they kinda, sorta look similar. They both look good in everyday attire (their work clothes, though I still maintain that V used to dress dowdily for work in the bar), they both look great in casual clothes (both wear jeans and t-shirts in dress down mode and look fantastic for it) and last night, I saw the co-worker return to the bar in a dress or skirt (I was kinda drunk) which showed off an amazing pair of legs. Oh, and she's single and seemingly has no qualms about dating co-workers. It was a good night.

I know what you're thinking (well, not YOU, but USHW when she reads this) and I'm not making a play for her.

Fond memories.

I had a dream last night about a night I'd spent with V a few years ago. I've no idea why I dreamt about it as it's been months since I last thought of V, but I thought it was worth blogging. It was one of those nights that you wish would happen all the time and that would never end while you're experiencing them.

It was well after 3 AM when I arrived back in my apartment and it would be fair to say that I was pretty toasted. After all, I'd been drinking pretty constantly since 4 PM the previous day. GFW (a work colleague) and myself had gone for our usual post-work drinks at the local bar. The barmaid, V, liked us. She gave us free drinks, usually. Yes, I know, the bar staff always give free drinks in America if you tip decently enough, but from what I could tell, V went above and beyond with us.

This evening was no exception and by the time GFW and myself left only a few hours later, we had a good buzz on due to beers and vodka cocktails. That evening, I was hosting a poker night at my apartment for the first part anyway, then we were going to see what was on. It was Hallowe'en night, so I think the idea was to see if we could go somewhere a bit fun.

V had already told myself and GFW about a place she was heading to and invited us along if we were interested. We asked her to pop in to our poker game before she went to her own party and said that we'd consider it.

GFW was definitely considering it. For some reason, the assumption was there that V and I had a bit of a spark going on. To be honest, I'm not sure if that was entirely accurate. V was an attractive girl, though. Whether anything was ever on the cards was a matter of speculation. I certainly wasn't convinced (though was always on the lookout). I do think the rest of the guys were more than convinced that it was only a matter of time. I'd hoped that the fact that V hadn't shown up at our poker night for a drink would perhaps make the guys less enthusiastic about V and myself getting together.

When the poker ended around midnight, I was already gone with the best part of a bottle of gin in me. We split into two groups. One set of us went to a local Polish bar while the rest of us tried to find V's “party”. We did eventually find it, due to some single-minded navigation by our driver who took us the wrong way initially.

When we arrived at this party, it was just a bar, albeit quite busy. We met V, who was propped up at one end of the bar, dressed as Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz and bloody hell, did she look good. I mean... Oh. My. God. She always looked good at our local bar, but she never dressed up. I don't remember her in anything other than floral patterned long dresses that I always thought were too 'old' for her. I never said that, though.

We got chatting to V and found out she was a guest of the guys that owned the bar, a husband and wife team. They offered us free drinks, so we had a few shots and bought a few beers. Then the bar owner came out and offered us hash brownies, which went down a storm. By this stage I was probably about as wrecked as I'd ever been in my entire life and we were already drawing a bit of a crowd. I can't remember why, we weren't doing anything that would draw attention to ourselves at this point – myself and GFW were chatting to V and the other guys were chatting amongst themselves.

Then we got stuck into the helium balloons...

Once we started inhaling the helium and talking in high pitched voices with Irish accents, then we drew a crowd and, dare I say it, livened up the party a little which at that point had been several groups of people all talking within their little groups. A couple of drinks later though and it was time to call it a night. The guys that owned the bar were calling last orders. Myself and the guys were about to go home but V wanted to go elsewhere. Suddenly, despite having made a good impression with the locals, they were concerned that V went home rather than tag along with us, a group of relative strangers. That was fair enough and we called it a night. By this stage it was around 3:15 AM.

I was contemplating a shower back at my apartment around ten minutes after leaving the bar when the phone rang. At that time of the morning, I was expecting it to be someone from home who had mixed up the time difference, but it turned out to be V. Weird. We got into a conversation, but it didn't seem to be anything important. I made a decision. I mentioned to V that it was late, but if she wanted to chat, she was more than welcome to come around to mine for a drink. If not, could we perhaps leave this to another time – meet for a coffee or go for a drink?

Given that V was probably as toasted as I was, her decision was to come for a drink. I gave her my address, cracked open a beer and waited.

It seemed like ages until V arrived. I think, by the watch, it was nearly 45 minutes. That's definitely an age when it's half past three in the morning, you're waiting for a girl that you're interested in and that your mates are telling you is unquestionably interested.

When V did eventually show up, there was another 'wow' moment. V turned up in a simple white t-shirt and a pair of jeans, completely different to what she wore at the bar and obviously different to her Dorothy costume. In the short period of time that I knew V (including the times I saw her after this night), this was easily the best I'd seen her looking.

I offered her a beer, but she preferred vodka. I poured the drinks and V produced some blow and some grass, which we indulged in and settled back. It's hard to describe how it went. Chatting to V in the bar was easy, though it's hard to get settled in when she had to go off and serve other customers. At my apartment at four thirty in the morning, the conversation was just, well, effortless. V sat on one of the armchairs while I spread out across the sofa and we just chatted. Every now and again, V would be gushing in her praise of how great I was. I'm all for a bit of ego stroking and this was no different.

I can't remember too many times where I've been in a situation with a girl I'm attracted to where I've been at ease enough to simply sit there and chat and yet that's exactly what happened. Maybe that's where I made a mistake.

It was after eight when we called it quits and it was already daylight outside. I was disappointed, of course, because it's not often I'm in that kind of mood and we were swapping a lot of personal information and there was a little idea at the back of my mind that something might have happened.

It didn't. I walked V to the door where I got a great hug and a kiss on the cheek. Before I could do anything else, V grabbed her coat, put on her shoes and left. I don't regret anything that happened (or didn't) that night. It was a great night and the kind I wish would happen a lot more. Part of me thinks that perhaps I should have made a move at some point during the evening/early morning, but I was really enjoying myself too much to even consider it until it was too late.

It was a good reminder of what a good night really is, but a bit depressing that I don't see a lot of nights out these days, never mind the kind of night described above. It's a good memory, though.