Last Wednesday, while in on-site meetings all after noon, my cellphone buzzed a few times. I had to silence it due to the meeting, but after I got back home, I found calls and messages and emails from my friend Thane. Thane is a good friend I made here in Austin back when I first moved here. Many years ago he moved to the DC/Baltimore area, and we only get to see each other every couple of years.

Anyway, the volume of messages implied something urgent, and sure enough, the content of the messages was rather time-sensitive. Turns out he was in Oklahoma City for a conference that ended prematurely, and wanted to know if I would be willing to put him up for a visit. He needed to know if I was available fast, so he could make his airline ticket changes.

Now, there are only a handful of people in the world who could give me 12 hours notice of a weekend stay, and he's definitely one of them. So I called back ASAP and gave him a "Hell yeah" answer.

The next morning I picked him up. Even though I had to work both Thursday and Friday, we did meals together, and I set him up with some DVDs and stuff (I introduced him to The Venture Brothers of all things :-), and of course we had evenings together.

Friday night we went out with friends of mine downtown and pretty much painted the town red. Saturday we did brunch, went to Zilker Park, walked Town Lake (recently renamed Lady Bird Lake) through downtown, and ended the day out at the Oasis, watching the sun set over Lake Travis while drinking Mango and Guava Margaritas.

It was all over too soon, and I drove him to the airport to catch his flight back to his loving partner in the cold frozen North bright and early Sunday morning.

Thane is such a great guy. Besides being fun, he always manages to say exactly what I need to hear, just when I need to hear it. We always have great conversations, both deep and completely frivolous. Having him visit out of the blue like this was one of the most pleasant surprises I've had in a long, long time. This year is looking up :-)

Last weekend was really rough, but this weekend was fine.

I spent most of the week working of course, but I also got away to see a movie and to have dinner with friends. And of course I went out Friday! I also went to brunch with a friend on Sunday, and then out for Sunday happy hour too. And seriously, through the therapy of good friends and not letting myself hole-up in my house and wallow, I'm really doing okay now. The shock, the anger, and the hurt are pretty much in the past now.

Nobody is more surprised by this than me, to be honest. The last time I was dumped, some fifteen and a half years ago, it took me months to recover, and calling it years wouldn't be unreasonable. It's nice to see I've grown emotionally and am more able to handle and deal with set-backs and shocks to the system like this. Shake it off, and move forward... don't wallow, don't look back, but just get on with getting on with life, and know when I deserve better.

All of which, of course, doesn't change the fact that I still want to know what the hell happened! :-) I mean, really... after two days of silent treatment (and having not seen him in almost two weeks) I go to his door to see what's up, and get it slammed and locked in my face without a word. What could possibly justify that in his mind? I'd love to find out. But I'm not counting on it. And I'm certainly not depending on it. It would, however, be a nice parting gift, should it ever come to pass.

But back to my week... I saw "Cloverfield" on Wednesday night, and it was pretty okay for what it is, which is a straight-forward monster-movie with a little "Blair Witch" twist. Unfortunately, that twist, while initially interesting, left me feeling mildly motion-sick about half-way through the movie. Eh, it's worth a matinee if you're into monster movies. If you're not, it's certainly nothing special, so nothing lost :-)

I also made a lovely Chocolate Amaretto Swiss Roll for dessert to bring to dinner with my friends on Thursday night, and Friday night, we all went out early, got drunk, and spent two hours stuffing our faces at P.F. Changs.

Sunday I had a great conversation over eggs and pancakes with Amy, and later that evening went out with more friends at happy hour, and even ran into a lot of people from the cruise. I had a great time, and a very interesting talk with another friend I've never been that close with before. I honestly think that's changing, and that's a good thing, because I've always liked him and his partner. And of course I stuffed my face on free happy-hour food.

Which brings me to my last point. The one drawback to getting over the depression as quickly as I did is that my weight loss plateaued at about 7 lbs, and is likely to regress from there the way I've been eating lately :-) Oh well...

You can't have everything I guess. Nope. You sure can't.

Ugh, last night was bad. Waves of tropical sobbing squalls all evening, and lots of tossing and turning through the night.

Today is better. At least to an observer on the outside. Inside it's still pretty stormy.

A group of three local friends -- Amy, Gary (a former co-worker and office-mate), and Laurie (who just became Gary's fiance', congrats to you both!) -- took me out for brunch at the Star Seeds Cafe'... one of my local favorites. I had scrambled eggs and pancakes (the only food I've had all day in fact), and it was good. I put on my brave face, and though I was on thin, brittle ice which came very close to cracking several times, I kept it together. I hadn't seen them in forever (my fault, mostly), and they've never met Brian.

Being with people was good. Being with friends was better. Being able to laugh, was awesome.

After brunch and much conversation, we went out to see a movie, "Charlie Wilson's War". What an excellent film. It was thoroughly entertaining and I highly recommend it. I needed a good laugh, and this movie provided it. In addition, it's just a very intelligent movie, based on a true story. If you haven't seen it, try and catch it before it goes out of theaters, or at least plan to rent or NetFlix the DVD.

My last big episode of 'getting dumped' was fifteen and a half years ago. It was far worse than this one (if you can believe it), and I was much less emotionally equipped to handle it. I bring this up, because I have a rather strange reaction to getting dumped ... I lose my appetite almost completely. Back in September/October of '92, I dropped down to 140lbs. To give you some idea what that means, I'm 6'4" and at the time I pretty much hovered around 170. That's a lot of weight to drop, when you're already pretty skinny.

Over the last few months, I've unfortunately packed on some decent poundage. Between the Cruise (all you can eat!) the Holidays (fatty foods and sweets!) and dating a lot (dining out several times a week), lots of work stress (I'm a "stress eater"), and just plain old growing older with a slowing metabolism and very little physical activity, I porked my way up to about 194 as of last week.

The "official" (if you can call it that) breakup is only 24+ hours old (though I was getting all screwed up wondering what was going on during the days of silent treatment before that, as any member of the MUSH can attest to), and I'm already down to 187. So if there's a silver lining to all this, at least I can look forward to fitting back in my regular pants (I had to go out and buy 'fat pants' for the last few months) and maybe getting back into shape.

I should market this "getting dumped by a boyfriend" diet. Nothing has proved more effective, for me at least. :-/

I promise not to let it get out of control though. If I start getting below about 178, I promise I'll force myself to eat something even when I'm not hungry.