Summer Sidling

I love words. LOVE them! In fact, when I was at student council camp in high school (shut it), we had to do this esteem-building exercise where everyone sat in a circle and we each took turns stating a talent or skill we possessed. Everyone talked about their athletic prowess or artistic talent. When they came to me, I proudly shared that I had the ability to absorb new vocabulary quickly and put it to use almost immediately (read: NERD). And then people wonder why I didn't have my first kiss until freshman year in college.

But in the course of authoring this blog, there have been moments where I have basked in the warm sunshine of my sprachgefuhl. No that's not a typo- it was the word of the day. Behold: \SHPRAHKH-guh-fuel\ noun: an intuitive sense of what is linguistically appropriate.

The love pariah is feeling very sprightly on this Monday. One reason is the weather. It's not exactly warm in New York City but it's sunny and that sure beats the crap weather we had through most of April. Secondly, this weekend I made some new friends. All boys and all fun (see doctored photo). When I was in college, I had my close girlfriends but also a posse of boys that I hung out with platonically. I miss those days. There's something about playing wing woman to a man that's both empowering and endlessly entertaining. Especially if the guy who's back you've got is hot. In this case, there's potential for more but I'm not inclined to ruin what could be the ingredients of a perfect summer for the instant gratification of hooking up with an accessible hottie.

Isn't that always the case? We want what we can't have and when what we thought we wanted is right under our nose, we're ambivalent. In fact, I'm not even ambivalent. More like blase about all of it. But guys are so much cooler when you're not playing the dating game. For instance, two of them followed up with both phone calls and text messages after we hung out on Thursday. Then we went to dinner and out dancing until 3am on Saturday. On Sunday, again more texts thanking me for a great time and asking that I email all the pics. Interesting. There's something to this. Let me ruminate about it all and I'll return with some interesting and/or simply amusing observations. Prediction: it's all going to go to hell in a hand basket when one of the guys sleeps with one of the girls in our newly formed social partnership.