My Kitchen, Forest Hills, Queens, October 10, 2005 - You know those books that list the complete conjugations of 501 verbs in some foreign language? The ones that make you grateful for the relative simplicity of English conjugation? (Stop, stops, stopped, stopping, full stop. Well, there's all those irregular verbs... But I digress...) Those books tend to have a mostly-empty page for the verbs "to rain" and "to snow": there's no sense in learning how to say "he rained" or "they will rain", right? Except for this week. There's been so much rain and clouds recently here in New York that it seems entirely proper to note that I am raining and she is raining and we are all at this very moment raining.

The rain on Saturday cancelled a barbecue we were very much looking forward to, but the rain suits me fine just now. No need to be outside; I'm home finishing once and for all clearing out the rooms that will be demolished tomorrow and taping off the rooms that aren't going to be demolished. It's good gloomy-weather work. I unfortunately also have a good gloomy-weather mood: A close (and nearby) friend of mine who's also home all day today completely blew me off when I suggested we get lunch or something. Completely and totally. Apparently, I wasn't worth carving out even five minutes of time to see. It's quite an ego-shatterer.

Sue tells me I shouldn't take it so personally, but it's hard to take a "no, I'm just going to stay home" any other way. So I sat and stewed (and made stew, too) and wondered if the problem was me. Do people like me as much as I'd like to think they like me? Sadly, there's no real way to know.

Then again, I was out Thursday night drinking with a couple of friends. I was out Saturday night eating expensive sushi (and drinking) with more friends. This coming Thursday night I'm getting a group of about 15 friends to come out to Queens to eat yummy Indian food with me. It may not prove that everyone likes me, but I'll take it for now.