it's raining men.

so i did sneak over to alex balk's birthday yesterday. lacey came with me and brought a friend from work and because new york is tiny and everyone seems to know each other we heard someone yell, "colleen!" at us as we walked in the door. yeah, some folks at the front of the bar knew lacey's coworker.

i thought balk would be a couple inches taller but otherwise he was exactly what i thought he'd be: not fashionable, smelling of smoke, unfailingly polite and a bit on the shy side. and i'm still crushy all over him.

the bar itself was soooo cozy. and it had christmas lights! everywhere! and it was nice to not be at a gay bar. maybe it's just because of the holidays that everyone is feeling warm and open, but i met a good 20 people last night. every time i turned around some other guy or girl was starting up a conversation, introducing themselves. it was all very strange and small townish. and by the time i left i felt quite at home and a bit of a regular. maybe i just need to journey over to the east side more often.

as for the crowd, lots of boys were in attendance. my favorite was a 23 year old who pretty much and took the mick out of me all night. he kept brushing my hair off my forehead which means he wanted to kiss me because that's what guys do when they want to kiss you. or at least that's what they do when they're like 12 years old and want to kiss you. his name was kenneth (though he lied about his name all night, his friends played along, as he variously swore to me his name was also paul and john). kenneth is my brother's name, and also the name of my mother's high school boyfriend. it is unclear whether my father knew that my mother named their first son after her childhood sweetheart. and are we surprised their marriage was so short-lived? but i digress...

i never made it to the politico party but i not-so-subconsciously knew i didn't want to go because i didn't want to run into this guy. oh! and so because new york is so small and because everyone knows each other of course one of the girls who knew colleen also knew micah. was "very very good friends" with him, she said which was probably code for "i've slept with him." hey, sister, join the club. my dinner with the girls was canceled due to some pretty much ongoing health issues of my friend marianne's husband who has cancer and who i thought was in recovery but who was rushed to the ER after complications with a new medicine he was issued. all very serious and a total downer. every time she and i try to make plans something goes haywire and they end up in the hospital. i may be bad luck.

i got an e-mail from danny, a fireman i met last weekend. he had a girlfriend but when i mentioned how hot the firemen were at the station near my house he said, "yeah, that company is good looking, but the ones 10 blocks south...hottest firemen in the city." i remembered how my mother used to drag ken and i to the firehouse on christmas eve to bring them cookies. i remember also that she used to make us sing christmas songs to them. something i was perfectly happy and willing to do until i reached the age of 10 and was self-aware enough to be mortified about doing such a thing. and from then on out, we dropped the cookies and left. that's neither here nor there. "i think it would be genius of me to drop off a plate of cookies to the firemen" i told danny. "okay, i'll e-mail over the address. you should go around 5, because that's when they're changing shifts so you're more likely to have all of them there. and they'll likely ask you to stay for dinner." all of this sounded pretty magical to me so we'll see how this plays out but i have in my inbox, the addres and a re-confirmation of the time i should stop by if visiting on the weekend. danny is my new favorite wingman.

TGIF folks...