Ugh, back at work after a welcome three-day weekend. At least it's a short week.
I went on my first real date on Friday, the first since meeting Tara I suppose. Her name is Pam, and she's a 33-year-old lesbian living in Midtown. She works as a stage manager for theater productions, and she's getting her MFA in Brooklyn and working as an acting teacher for undergraduates. She's originally from Pittsburgh and has been here for about 10 years.
We went out to dinner at my favorite Ethiopian restaurant (well, the only one I've been to, thanks to Lori) and later got ice cream at the Cold Stone Creamery nearby, despite the near-freezing temperatures outside. She seems like a nice person, although a bit reserved like me. I'm not sure there's much chemistry there, but I think we could be friends. It would be nice to have a friend in the theater business, if you know what I mean.
The rest of the weekend was nice and quiet, except for one major hiccup. My family was over Saturday night for our movie night, and I was retracting my theater screen when it came off its mounts and fell down, smashing the front of my 37-inch LCD TV. It still works, but the crack in the screen disabled about 15 percent of the total screen area in the bottom right corner. It's still watchable after you get used to ignoring the damaged area, but obviously I'd like to replace the TV someday. At least I still have the projector for movies, which is most important to me.
Also on Saturday, my new computer speakers came in the mail, and I hooked those up to my portable DVD player in the bedroom to have music at night. This weekend I spent a lot of time at Borders buying all kinds of music by Bryan Ferry, Roxy Music, Men at Work, Porcupine Tree, Death Cab for Cutie, Garbage, and Tara gave me some music from No-Man, which is P-Tree frontman Steven Wilson's side project. Plus, I also got the 25th anniversary edition of Purple Rain on DVD - I've been getting into a Prince vibe lately for some reason.
Sunday night everyone came over to my apartment so I could cook them some fried vegetarian dumplings I found at my local Chinese grocery store. I made myself some kim chee ramen with eggs. Afterwards we watched I Am Legend on my big screen, a SAG awards review DVD that a co-worker gave me. It was a little less scary than I thought it might be, but as I'm not good with horror elements to begin with, that was plenty. It was a very intense movie, and afterwards I felt like I'd just finished lifting weights or something. I had to watch some of Miyazaki's Spirited Away to settle myself. Bee did the same by watching another movie at home.
Last night Tara came over so I could give her a manicure while we listened to Roxy Music's Avalon in SACD surround sound. This has got to be one of the Top 10 best makeout albums ever, and it's a shame we wasted it doing nails....
