a morning of conversation

Hello everyone. Acording to the weather people, it's supposed to be a nice day again. I'll find that out first hand as for the first time, I'm heading out to Symposium to meet up with someone. Minnie is the only person who's kept in touch with me from the years I've spent at the Clearview CRC church. She's about as unlikely a platonic friend as you could dream up for me. She's from Trinidad originally. Her voice doesn't carry in crowds all that well and it can be a little tricky to understand her at times. She does a lot of work taking care of children, cleaning houses, and the like. Around ten years older than I am, she's just now starting to get into computers. While she doesn't think of herself as all that educated in the formal sense, she's living proof of how life is the ultimate classroom. This will be the first time we've gotten together in something like three or four years outside of those brief encounters after church services. She seems to value my opinions and thinking on various topics. In a very real sense, she's like a penpall who you keep in touch with occasionally. Strange to think that she's all who remains from a seven-year ongoing relationship with a church. Here's hoping I find a way to do better this time around.

At long last, now that my time on EHarmoney is nearly expired, it has coughed up two women who found me interesting enough to at least start communicating with. I believe that both of them are too far away to get together with but I might be wrong about that with one of them. I certainly hope so. A hundred bucks is a lot to throw down for a couple more people to exchange emails with. It turns out that while I can at least choose my answers to multiple guess questions effectively, I couldn't tell which answers I was given to the questions I sent. Thank goodness things got to the point where you could write out answers to each other. I can now say that I've completed their "guided" communication process. My ultimate conclusion is that it absolutely sucks. Turning the search for love into so mechanistic a venture as EHarmoney does is just not where it's at for me. I'm thankful I haven't walked away completely empty-handed. Who knows? Perhaps, something will develop eventually. This seems to be the summer of finding women who'll make very interesting email friends but are too far away for me to hope anything more comes of it. "Water water everywhere and not a drop to drink." Still, things are at last feeling better for me. I can enjoy my time again even when it's spent alone. My work on Enchantment's Twilight is still somewhat prone to stalls but I'll take that over a complete stop any day.

Last Sunday was a terrific day worthy of note here. I joined Joseph for his birthday lunch at Tucker's Marketplace. Two other friends plus a guest of their's joined us as well. A very good group to get to know better and splendid food to boot. It doesn't get much better than that. After lunch, Joseph and I went to the "games night" which absurdly takes place over a period from mid-afternoon to early evening. I didn't meet any new people but Joseph and I had quite the game of Monopoly on my netbook. He also tried Jim Kitchen's audio version of Pong. It took him a while to get the hang of that but he did it eventually. It certainly drew the attention of a few people who came over to ask the odd question. I hope to eventually snag more of a group of people to have a go at Monopoly, Talisman, or perhaps Tenpin Alley from PCS and Draconis Entertainment. That would be fun despite my being utterly out of practice with it. I hope that as more people see me join in things like that, they won't be quite so hesitant to get to know me.