I'm Back! (and) Am I a Jealous Lover? Discuss!

O! Hai thar!

I bet you thought I had left this blog to rot in its... not... being... uhm... posted in...ness.

Ahem.

BUT ALAS! You were fooled by my mere busy-ness with other aspects of life and blogging! To begin with, I've finally gotten Fun and FlirTea off the ground and begun posting there. This is where much of my writing time has disappeared to, so my personal blog has indeed fallen by the wayside for a brief time. Never fear, kind friends and readers! I am back and do intend to post with at least semi-regularity once more.

Other than the release of my tea blog, I have been quite busy in life and work as well! I've been spending more time with friends, going out dancing, attending an occasional concert, doing yoga more regularly, and... oh yeah. GETTING PROMOTED AT WORK! Success indeed!

I'm not sure if I've mentioned it here before or not, but I've been trying to get back into copywriting for quite a while and, after years of hard work and doing what I can in my company to get there... and suddenly I am! It took plenty of time and work, but I am the newest Copywriter (and Social Media Clerk) at Build.com. Yay!

Naturally, to celebrate my new position, my body chose my first full week in the job to get stupidly sick with a gnarly cold! Fortunately, I am getting over it now, but I still have a dry throat and slight cough.

But enough of the updates! Part of what brought me back to this blog at this time is something I've been thinking about lately. Not long ago, I finally was able to establish a friendship with an old ex-boyfriend I had very little contact with over the past 3 years since our relationship ended. And this friendship is a real one, where we are comfortable around each other and can even make jokes about the years we were dating.

Finding Mr. Darcy Didn't Work Out As Anticipated

I know I said my next post would be about my plans while I'm in the UK, but that will have to wait until next time. Right now I have something even more important to talk about - Mr. Darcy.

Oh yes! I'm referring to the glorious fictional hot piece of ass that is Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy of Pemberley. Before I get further into this, allow me to display a few samples of the modern actors who have portrayed Darcy and stolen so many modern hearts.

Colin Firth - See how nicely he glows here?

Eliot Cowan - Mmm...

Matthew Macfadyn doing Darcy justice!

Okay, I have a thing for Colin Firth and Eliot Cowan in wet shirts. The best part is that when Eliot Cowan's Darcy gets wet, it was 100% a reference to Colin Firth's wet shirt moments in the A&E mini-series that is one of the most watched versions of the Pride and Prejudice story. Mmm....

Ha! Sorry. Was drooling a little bit there.

Love (?) in the Life of Dinah

I alluded to my recent break up in my last blog post, and I think it will be cathartic for me to write a little more on the subject now. Feel free to pass on this post if you just aren't interested (understandable!), but this is my personal blog, so.... there.... Ha.

In any case, I had been dating Paul for just over a year when I ended things and, to be frank, things had started getting bad after just 3 months. Whenever things got particularly bad, we'd talk and things would be better for about a week, then revert back to what it was before. I had spent my year or so of being single prior to dating Paul to build my personal confidence levels. Unfortunately, a lot of my time with him undid most of the work I had done on myself. It was through no active efforts on his part, but just the general way the relationship went, our closeness, etc. I can't really get more specific here, but suffice it to say that my ego took more than a few hits in the time we were together, and most of them were directly related to my relationship with him. The worst part about it is that I didn't even realize how low my own self-worth had gotten until a few days ago. But I'll get to that in a moment.

Chapter 4: Discovering Felicity, the Fierce Amazon Nook Within ("Amazon" in the Xena: Warrior Princess sort of way, not the company)

Introduction and Prologue
Chapter 1: The Rise of the eReader
Chapter 2: In Which Dinah Veritably Salivates Over the Nook
Chapter 3: How Magic and (Dare I Say) Karma Resulted in a Spur-of-the-Moment Indulgence (Or How I Learned to Stop Caring and Love Purchasing My Nook)

I don't know about you, but when I get a new gadget I always feel like I'm learning everything about it from scratch. It doesn't matter if the new item is a replacement, if I had played with other ones before, or if I had never touched one a day in my life. All I can say is that a new gadget is a new experience every time. For me, at least.

Despite the number of times I had handled the display Nooks, there was something different about beginning to use the one that was to be my boon companion. Once I set it to charging, I naturally began to register my Nook by connecting it to my BN.com account. When I started this process, it prompted me for the name of my Nook.

Thought of the Day

In the words of Andy Scott and Trevor Griffin, "Love is like oxygen."

Shit. It's true. "You get too much, you get too high. Not enough and you're gonna die." Currently searching for that middle ground. Good luck to me!

And yes... I am quoting cheesy glam rock from the '70s. Get over it. :D

(That's the band off to the right, by the way... The Sweet. How can you not love them when they used to wear outfits like that?? I mean, for reals! )

Thanks to Wikipedia for the picture.

What I'm Looking For

I'll be honest. I don't know what I'm looking for. Right now, I just want to have a fun time. I am so unbelievably happy to not be in my last relationship that it shocks me every time I realize it. At the same time, while I miss the comfort of having someone I could (sometimes) rely on when I needed human contact, I definitely don't want to be in a relationship now. Not if I have to fight through the beginning stages that always seem so nice at the time. I guess I just don't want to deal with that right now. I want the happy ending. I want the first letter in "Slay the Critics" at the end of Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8, Issue 22. I know what the ending is, but I don't know how I'm going to get there or who it's going to be with.

For those who don't have access to this issue of Buffy, allow me to enlighten you. The very first letter was led into with these simple words from Scott Allie (the man who answers the letters sent in), "And now...a very special Slay the Critics. Please read the following letter, everyone." To say the least, he has never instructed the readers to make certain to read a specific letter. In fact, he has commented on getting flack from fans for not printing the entirety of every letter in the past. Yet this one was somehow special. I read on to learn the story of a guy who is not only new to Buffy, but to Joss Whedon in general. He told the story of meeting a girl. A girl who tried to get him to watch Firefly to no avail. A girl who he compromised with (without telling her) by watching Buffy, without realizing that she didn't even like the show at the time. When he shared his news, they agreed that if he watched Firefly that she would watch Buffy. They both loved all of it in the end. And now they are eagerly reading Season 8 in comic book form. Now for the important part, as this letter-writer put it. He ended his letter with a proposal to his girlfriend.

My initial thought? "Where can I find one?" But what about this story makes me wish it was mine so much? I think what I desire most about this isn't the nerdy boyfriend/fiance. It isn't the amazing and perfect proposal in a comic book/Joss creation. Sure, these things are both great and amazing, but what I really want is the relationship where happy compromises are made, where interests are shared and valued, and where life improves. Ha! You thought I was going to say I wanted the happy ending, didn't you? Well, I do. But it's not what makes this story or this relationship particularly poignant.

Yes, I know relationships require work. Yes, I know they're hard. But this is what I long for: the simplicity of just loving someone for all they are.

I'm jealous.


Buffy art from: http://www.whedon.info/