Celebrate!!!!!

Guess what day it is kids?

It is my Blogiversary

Not that this is a big deal, especially when I have a hard time posting once a month.

My life is not so different from month to month. My department has been making a lot of great progress on our projects. Although I am feeling a sense of accomplishment, I am also feeling burned out. I think my whole department is. We're even starting to get on each other's nerves, which has never happened with my group of "performers". I need to do something for them, but unfortunately I have to get approval to do ANYTHING to boost morale.

My mom, and cousin have been hounding me to go to maine this summer. They are renting a couple of houses for a week. This would make it much more affordable, but I think I would rather just escape away from everyone for a week. Anyone got a couch needing an occupant?

An old friend and I patched things up recently. She and I aren't dating. We did date for about 4 weeks a number of years ago. That ended, but we stayed friends. Then we had a falling out. That was aout 3 years ago. We've contacted each other over the last few years, but up until a few weeks ago we had not seen each other. We met for drinks and it was like the friendship had never been stopped.

Last week she invited me to a friend's wine party. I haven't been getting out much, so I felt it would be good to meet some new people. I then found out that this is a singles group she belongs to. She said "there will be lots of single ladies to mingle with". This actually sounded more and more like something I needed. I picked up a nice Pinot Noir.

Well, I had a great time. No, I didn't get any phone numbers. I didn't even try, to be honest. It was just good to meet some people and kind of refreshing to just start a conversation with someone out of the blue. I did meet a few very attractive ladies. I made a good impression with a number of people, so hopefully I will be invited to more events of theirs.

I do want to share this...


Untitled from Graham Butler on Vimeo.

I am confused

Women are a constant source of confusion for me.

I met a woman a couple months ago, actually, she IMed me in Yahoo out of the blue. I tell her she is my stalker. I've kept this on a just friends basis because I wasn't really wanting to "date" anyone. I had just broken up with MS, so she understood, and was fine with just being friends. We probably talk once or twice a week, so i started learning a lot about her, as well as she learned about me.

There are a lot of things going on in her life that make her a bad candidate for dating. The fact that she is married is not the biggest of problems. I won't go into all of it.

She really seems to like me, but gives me plenty of space. She gets flirty with me, but then tells me that it takes a lot before she would trust a man enough to have sex (not that I was trying). From further conversations it was pretty obvious she wanted to "go out".

We met for dinner right before I went to Michigan for Christmas. No pressure for calling this a date. We were just meeting and talking. No different than us chatting on the computer.

After this I got very busy, but continued to talk to her on IM, as well as an occasional phone call. There was never any pressure or guilt laid upon me if I didn't talk to her for a week or so. I would get an IM, just saying that she hoped I was having a good week, or something like that. I appreciated the space as well as the occasional "hello".

I like having women friends. Part of it is probably the sexual tension that is naturally present. But I think most of it is just the different kind of things I can do with a woman friend, that guys don't really do together. Although I will go to a movie with my guy friends, it doesn't happen often.

I think another aspect of it is I can talk pretty openly with a woman about my love life, where I can't with most of the guys. It's just not "manly" to talk about relationships. With her it is different. I'm not as open about these types of discussions.

She got very flirty with me on the phone a couple weeks ago. I played along for a little while, but for some reason I felt guilty about it. Almost like I was leading her on in a way. So I got serious with her. I was very candid with her about things going on in her life that I had a problem with (from an angle of dating her). She didn't take it well. She got very upset with me, and told me that she was amazed at how nice of a guy I was... up until this conversation. The fact of the matter was that I was just telling her my feelings about my hesitation to be anything more than friends with her. Trust me, there is a lot here.

She started crying, which is like torture to me. I wasn't trying to insult her. She had to have known that the circumstances she is in is not conducive to being in a relationship. I told her she was over-reacting, but we all know that once a woman gets this upset I was just dumping gas on the fire.

A day or 2 later she sent me an e-mail apologizing, and saying she hopes we can still be friends. I was fine with being friends as long as the drama was gone. The last couple weeks have been drama free... pretty much back to normal.

We went out to a movie last night (only our second time face to face). There was no drama, and we did have fun, but it's just not feeling right. I feel like I am in limbo land, somewhere between dating, and friends. It's very odd, and will probably just fizzle.

I think I've become cynical.

Delays, and more delays

****** UPDATED ******

See the added photo of the face...

It's been way too long since I posted.

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. I had a good time hanging out with my brother and his friends. Lots of booze, food, and football. I started drinking at 10:30 when I got to Mike's house. I was immediately handed a very tasty Bloody Mary.

Football that day sucked (for me).

I had the pleasure of playing host to a friend of mine the previous weekend. I had tickets for a comedy show the night she flew in, so we went to see Rodney Carrington. I needed a date since I bought the tickets months ago and MS and I are no more. It was a great show.

We did some sight seeing the next day. Something I don't do much of here in Colorado Springs, but I couldn't have a friend in town and not show the the Garden of the gods. Here are a couple pictures.

I love the soft focus effect here... but actually I think that was because my lens is dirty.


A picture of me, since it is so rare that I like a picture of me.



Can you see the indian face on the rock formation? The Ute Indians named the park. Obviously we white people translated the name.

Check out the rock climbers sitting on top of that out cropping
Now can you see the face?

On to Christmas...