One might think that my unusually prolonged absence was caused by having, say, a life over the weekend. Or that something bad had happened. Or that I had a lot of work to do.

One would be wrong.

Well, not about the work part. Just about the DOING of the work part.

My absence is the fault of two combining factors, neither of which are me, and I'm not taking any responsibility, pretending instead to have been a mindless drone victim of outside circumstances.

Factor Number One: a Sick Boy.

Factor Number Two (the far more embarassing of the 2): SSX Tricky for Playstation 2.

Now, one of these alone probably would not have managed to suck hours of my life down the drain. As it is, I think I have reached my SSX Tricky threshold after succumbing to a fit of rage at the blasted thing last night.

But, as anyone who either is a boy or has ever known one knows, Sickness renders what had once been a cool, buff, macho individual, known for his jar-opening and Large Item-carrying skills into a quivering pool of whiny goo, apt to make sniffly noises and point dramatically to his nasal region if requested to do anything requiring more energy than, say, watching paint dry.

This leaves it up to the Girl to do all things (a Girl who, I might add, manages to go to WORK and pretend like everything's kosher with a collapsed lung, let alone a fucking SNIFFLE), but, most of all, pet the Sick Boy and keep him Entertained.

Well, I'm making sound worse than it was. He was sick and thus we were hanging out together more than normal because he didn't feel like working in his present nasal condition (I don't know, maybe he was afraid his wealth of snot would drip onto the keyboard. Or maybe he uses his sinuses in his coding more than I had previously appreciated).

Yeah. So Friday night we were up until eight o'clock in the morning attempting to master the 360-degree Filet O'Stalefish with a Gleeful Melancholy (WHO comes up with these names?). Then last night we caved in early, retiring the snowboards at five am.

This from two people whose idea of wintertime fun is laughing at the people who would actually choose to spend large sums of money in order to go slowly up and quickly down hills on sticks.

Groan. And now of course my sleep schedule is more fucked even than usual, having woken up in mid-afternoon both yesterday and today.

AND I have piles of crap I should really do that I haven't even begun to think about yet.

New Subject.

I think one of the people who works for Large Unnamed Client is developing a crush on me.

See, none of our clients (actually I think a couple people have figured it out over there, but they're cool) know about me and Boy because we're business partners and that can scare people...the whole "what if you guys break up" problem. Which leads me in conversation with business-related people to just sort of not exactly say I'm in a couple without exactly saying I'm single. Because if I talk on and on about my Boyfriend, people then ask about him, and once you get past like a couple details about him/the relationship it's really damn easy to put two and two together, especially if you're known either of us for more than 5 minutes.

So, I've developed this strange sort of conversational tic of leaving him out of my conversation. He does the same thing. Anyone who has been in a longterm relationship might have an idea of how tricky this is. Also I have a bizarre tendency (that no one seems to notice, at least) to switch between first-person singular and first-person plural.

Thus, I can have conversations that sound sort of like this:

We live in Brooklyn. I moved into my apartment about five years ago in March. Last summer we went to upstate New York for a couple weekends, where I bought a bunch of stuff for the house. I have family there that we hadn't seen in years.

Weird, no? I wind up sounding a bit like a multiple-personality whose second personality may or may not be Queen Elizabeth.

At times people have mentioned the 'we'...as in "who's the 'we'?"...in which case I have been known to say that I mean me and my dog. Hah! My DOG! Like people regularly discuss their life in terms of themselves and their pet.

Anyway, hopefully client will just not be overly aggressive. I think we might have had what one might call a date on Friday if one wasn't me. I had meetings with 2 of them all afternoon, and it got late, so I asked them (BOTH) if they wanted to head to a pub for a drink and a bite. They did, then non-crushing guy left to go home early and I wound up drinking with #2 (only until like 7.30pm, so don't get any major ideas there) and talking about those things that men talk about (or ask about) when they're interested in more than just business...music, life, etc.

Ah well. He's an all right guy. Just hope it doesn't get messy.

More later if I'm not too busy performing the Tail Wag with 540-degree Rodeo Melancholy.

- onehanded