Someone is definitely interested in me, and....

Today, I took off from work to spend the day with FH.  Although I like her as a person, she would rub me the wrong way if she were anything more than a friend.  But first....

As usual, I didn't get much sleep the night before, and didn't become fully conscious until 10 am.  At that point, I knew that I would have to get ready to pick up FH in Yonkers, and then take a drive to see the changing leaves in the Hudson Valley.  I knew I was going to be a few minutes late, and texted FH.  However, she was much more delayed than I was, as she was 45 minutes late.  AARGH!  Luckily, we were able to start out on our day by 1:30 pm.

According to the New York State Fall Foliage guide, the Hudson Valley should not be at peak color, nor should most of the leaves have fallen.  The only place that FH noticed good color was along the Taconic Parkway going towards Red Hook.  From there, we doubled back to Rhinebeck, passing by the site of the Dutchess County Fairgrounds - where she was disappointed that the fair was over.  And then, it was over to Saugerties and Woodstock.  On this drive, the leaves had already fallen off most of the trees in the towns we passed through, when we expected them to be before their peak.

When we finally reached Woodstock, FH wanted to get pictures of herself.  Of course, I obliged her - we were in a scenic area, and she always tries to get her picture taken with pretty scenery as her background.   Once the obligatory pictures were taken, it was back to Woodstock where we spend 90 minutes walking around the town.

Once it started getting dark, we headed to New Paltz for dinner.  Along the way, she asked me about my dating life and why I'm seeing MWL.  How are the conversations on a par with what we have?  I had to finesse the question. She then asked about whether MWL knows about Marian.  I told her so, and mentioned that MWL has already met me in female mode.  In reality, FH was wondering why she wasn't my girlfriend and was fishing for a way to make that happen.  There was no way I was going to tell her about CWS at this point - CWS, so far, is on the same wavelength as I am in many ways.  After dinner, FH said that she'd take care of dinner as a way of thanking me for driving her home.

Dinner at Pho Tibet was uneventful. The food was tasty, the Pho was good, but I was unimpressed with their Momo Dumplings.  I'll be sure NOT to order them again.  Next time, I'll look for a better Vietnamese restaurant to go to.  (Too bad that I'm no longer in contact with one person - she'd know a good place to go to.)

 

PS: CWS was away this weekend.  Hopefully, our schedules will work out for us to get together again next weekend....

PPS: I spoke with Vicki about FH, and she felt that FH was merely looking for a "friend" who'd drive her places.  For the most part, I agree with her.  Yet, if I have nothing to do, it's nice to hang out with someone - even someone who is a user.

 

 

Would you have bought your meat from a vending machine?

 

Assuming you were a carnivore like me, would you eat meat that looks and tastes this good?  In my case, I did, and miss the option to buy it direct from the butcher.  Unfortunately, the Applestone meat company recently closed down all of its outlets - shortly after they opened their first Westchester county outlet in Eastchester, NY.

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When I was dating XGFJ, one of the places we'd pass in her neighborhood was the Applestone Meat Company outlet.  There were times that she wanted to buy a good steak (or roast), and didn't want to go to the local supermarket or drive into Kingston or to New Paltz.  I've eaten Applestone's meat, and was willing to drive to either of their first two storefronts during the early days of the pandemic.  (In those early days, no one knew how to be safe. So any place one could shop for food with minimal human contact was a blessing - especially when the meat was this good.)  Later on, I found out that they were opening an Eastchester store, but didn't have the chance to get there before this place closed down.

Years ago, many supermarkets butchered their meats on site.  In the past few years, it became cheaper to butcher meats elsewhere and deliver butchered, wrapped meat directly to stores.  (Some stores kept butchering tools in the stores, so that larger cuts of meat could be sliced down into manageable units for consumer use.)  If you were to go to a Walmart, Aldi or Trader Joe's, all you'd find are prepackaged meats - it's much cheaper and more hygienic to butcher the meats in a central location and deliver them to stores. 

In Japan, they sell almost everything in vending machines, including clothing.  In Germany, they have sausage vending machines (shown above).  So why shouldn't Americans take the next step and sell freshly butchered meat out of vending machines?

Applestone did so.  Sadly, it didn't work out for them.  Knowing what I know about their former product, the meat was expensive - but very good.  If I wanted to cook a true gourmet meal, and wasn't satisfied with the quality of meat from my local supermarket, I'd have gone to Applestone.  This is one shopping option that I'll miss, even though I hardly had the chance to use it.

 

PS: Would you have patronized the BAMN! Automat?.  What about the Brooklyn Dumpling Shop?

Some dates and no prunes

 

No, this is not the Maitre D' at either of the places I ate this weekend.  However, by the time the weekend ended, my wallet was almost as empty as the place the "fellow" is holding.

FH has a job where she works a Sunday through Thursday schedule.  This means that we have both Friday and Saturday in which to get together.  However, she is too drained from her job to meet on Fridays, so Saturday become our regularly scheduled date night.  This left me free to do things on Sundays.  This weekend, I met with JM and had a second nice date with her.

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The weekend opened up on Friday night, with the tire pressure idiot light coming on after dark.  Unfortunately, I was not going to take care of this issue in the dark while dressed in a LBD for dinner with Vicki. So I drove to Milton, NY for dinner with Vicki, and figured that I'd take care of the problem in the morning.

Saturday came, and I had to find the tire pressure gauge before driving to meet FH. After inflating the tire properly, I drove to Yonkers to pick her up, and then to Rhinebeck for a nice day in the country.  From there, we crossed the Hudson to drive through Kingston and then through New Paltz.  (I wasn't going to say how well I know the area because of the ex-girlfriend, so I talked in generalities.)  I figure that one day soon, she'll likely want to stay over my place, and that we can go to Woodstock for another trip to the Little Bear.  But I digress.  By the time we made it back to Forest Hills, about 8 hours had passed and I was very tired. So I made it back to Croton, and then to bed.

The next day, I wasn't much in the mood to go out of the apartment.  However, JM and I had a late lunch date in Pelham, and I wasn't in the mood to cancel it.  When we got there, there was no way we were going to eat outdoors due to the approach of inclement weather.  It was already too windy to enjoy dining outdoors.  So we ended up eating inside, about 25+ feet away from the only other customers in the place. Again, we ate and chatted for 3 hours, and decided to meet again.  I wish I had met her before I met other ladies, as this woman is a great catch.  Yes, she's out of my league for reasons I won't discuss here.  But if she were to like me enough to have a relationship, I'd feel very lucky to have a woman I could talk with for hours at a time.  However, given my transgender nature, I always have to hedge all of my bets.

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It looks like FH and I will be spending Thanksgiving together.  Hopefully, it will be a very pleasant day.  I'll make sure that my phone is set to "do not disturb" whenever I'm with any of the ladies in my life.

 

An interesting end to a week....

This past week, I had the pleasure of being able to get up late from Monday to Thursday, having been scheduled to work evening shift these days. Yes, I was able to watch my Perry Mason reruns, as well as a little bit of Morning Joe when I was awake by 8 am. But this is an aside to what my week was like.

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The week opened up with me having a discussion to the woman in Queens that I've had several dates with. We cleared up some things, and agreed to get together over the weekend for a sort of field trip to Eastern Long Island for the day. Next, I found out that the woman I dated from the Hudson Valley in Marian Mode wasn't available to lunch during the week, so we agreed to get together next week to do something. However, I found that she took her profile down from OK Cupid. Did she find someone special yet? (After two dates, I can't say it was me.) So we'll see when I am contact with her next. And then there is the woman from New Jersey that I dated for the first time last week. We have been chatting online on and off, and we scheduled a date for Saturday evening. This will give me just enough time to change into Mario Mode and relax a little before driving to the restaurant to meet her.

There was a diminished amount of work for me to do at the office. Will I be renewed for another 8 weeks? I'll let you know when I find out next week. Since I'm on the schedule for the whole week, I'm assuming this is the case. However, working in the evening has interfered with my ability to be on zoom meetups with my friends from Texas. Luckily, I am able to do this for a half hour on Tuesdays and Thursdays when things are slow at the office - I go out for my "lunch" and get on to the zoom meetup using my cell phone.

My original work schedule request for the week had me working evenings, so that I could take TCL to the clinic for an outpatient procedure. Unfortunately, this procedure couldn't be done at the clinic (I won't do into any details here - TCL deserves her privacy). So, I'll be taking her to the hospital for a different procedure to accomplish the same goals in September. Hopefully, this time, the doctors will be more successful than in the past.

After a quick lunch with TCL at the local Panera Bread, it was off to New Paltz for a meetup with the Live Music group. Traffic was much worse than usual (even for a Friday), and taking side roads didn't help much. In fact, my car started to overheat because of the hard driving I was doing, so I stopped off along the way to give the car a chance to cool down. (It's time that I consider buying a new car.) Eventually, I made it to the meetup, and I was 90% of the way to my ex-girlfriend's house. If I had known the place was this far out of New Paltz, I'd have skipped the meetup, as it was in the woods. And even with bug spray, I was getting eaten by the bugs - something I've always hated when hiking or spending time in the woods

While chatting with the gals in the meetup, I started to sign up for other meetups being held by this group. Although there was no conflict, I noticed that my ex signed up for events after I did. I won't say anything to her. But if she comes when I'm there, I'll note that she has her dinner group, and I now have this group. If she wants to attend while I'm there, she'll have to accept me in Marian mode. Otherwise, she can stay in her group and leave me alone. (Now, to figure out what to say if we're in the same place at the same time.) I only wonder what things will be like when the weather gets cooler. Her group will likely have zoom meetups, and this one won't. At least, I now have some ways of being in contact with people during a lock down.

It's easy to see that I haven't taken the time to straighten up my apartment. Not being able to lead a full social life has caused me to be a little depressed. And the state of my apartment reflects this. Sooner or later, I'll finally get around to cleaning up the apartment. Then, and only then, can I start things up with my cleaning lady again. I look forward to that....

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PS: I told the woman from New Jersey about my bi-gendered life, and she didn't run away. Instead, she did her research, and still wants to see me. There is hope yet.


PPS: The woman from the Mid Hudson region is still interested, but she is awaiting the results of a COVID test.