Dinner with Rick

On Sunday, since I had stayed up until 3 AM chatting with my parents the night before, I didn't exactly get an early start in the morning. But I did have a good time chatting with my brother, sister-in-law and niece when I woke up, and they were all having pancakes for breakfast. Thank goodness for Skype, which allowed me to do numerous rounds of singing "The Itsy-Bitsy Spider" with my niece, entertaining her through video in a way that never would have worked over the phone.

So it was much later in the day before I realised that I desperately needed to clean my flat for when my friend Rick was coming for dinner the next night, and that I needed to get some work done so that my boss would think I had actually done something in the past week that was productive whilst she had been on holiday.

Which was how I ended up staying up past 6 AM. Not Good. Need to work on better time management in the future.

So this morning, Body Pump at 10 AM was an absolute no go (would have had to get up on 3 hours of sleep), until finally at 11:30 PM I dragged myself out of bed, through the shower and to work. Got quite a bit done, although when I hopped off my last call at 4:30 PM, I realised that I was running tremendously short on time to do any grocery shopping. It didn't help either that I'd been distracted by a random and interesting conversation from my ex-boyfriend in the US. We've gone for years without talking, and after I wished him a happy birthday last month, here now he was initiating the conversation this time. Only a month later, an actual conversation to talk about...investing strategies. (And the Super Bowl results from the night before, to be fair). Random, yet a nice reminder that we actually did have some thing in common, our thrifty natures and awareness of investments. And a reminder that I need to rebalance my portfolio. Although as the ex pointed out to me, I should have done that three months ago, and dammit if he wasn't right.

I then raced to the grocery store with my cookbook, dashing through the aisles, picking up ingredients as I went. Took ages to check out, then ran home, threw everything together and into the oven (why on earth had I decided to make lasagna, which takes an hour?) and even managed to clean up the kitchen and put out some vegetable appetizers before Rick called to say he was at my front door.

We chatted a lot about frequent flier programs, as I realised that Rick is a real road warrior, in a way that I once was, but am not quite so much any more. He's never around enough to actually have long-term plans with friends, but as he points out, he has friends in every city in the world. He seems happy, and he said he doesn't mind his fractured social life, as right now, everything remains interesting as his career is taking off. Although gosh, it sounded just like every single conversation I've had with my seatmate on airplanes lately...how is it that frequent fliers always end up talking about the merits of various airline lounges and programs? I mean, it was interesting enough (goodness knows I could join in), but I just wish our conversation had been about something more...substantive.

We did chat a bit about my own dating life, as he told me that he thinks my social life is very unusual, in how much I go out and go to parties all of the time, and agreed with another friend's assessment that the people I like best in life tended to be Oxbridge graduate students. (He had asked me if I met any of my closest friends through Clubland, and I had to admit that it was really only the Young Dutchman, who when you really think about it, went on to become an Oxbridge graduate student, so the fact that I met him through Clubland was kind of just by chance. He was still of a certain type that was more likely to be mine).

We had a great dinner, and I realised that as much as I worried about how Rick might take it, me inviting him over for dinner at my place, pretty quickly I realised that what makes Rick a great friend is that, well...we've been friends for so long, and he's such a smart guy, that such a misunderstanding would never happen. Such a change from the miserable guys I was dealing with on Friday night.

And so, finally at 11 PM, as he was yawning like crazy, I sent him home. He's off to California now for quite some time, so I won't see him again until the April Bank holiday. Glad he enjoys his road-warrior life, but happy that it isn't mine anymore!