Beth to the rescue.

How bad would it be to arrange a coffee gathering with closeted friend, and friend you want to connect him with? And then, if chemistry seems to be happening, take an emergency "call" that you have to leave them alone.

I just saw .

I'm hanging out at the local cafe for a bit. Matt has a 4 hour gig at the local art gallery. Laptop, soup, and coffee. I have had at least three conversations about facebook, including one woman who understood why her friend played farmville ( even though the woman was speaking with didn't play) .

Mmm, soup.

I've got bread rising, and I'm making spaghetti now. Not sure where this cooking mood came from, but I figure I'll use it and make a bunch of stuff I can eat for a while.

Mmm, soup, indeed. I have chili simmering on the stove. My entire apartment smells like yum.

I have discovered that I cannot microwave homemade beanballs in the tomato sauce the way I can with the frozen ones -- they turn to mush. Tasty mush, but mush.

I had Indian buffet for lunch with a bunch of other Indians from Meetup.com. (There was also one white girl who had dated an Indian guy and had Indian friends and liked Indian food and Indian culture.)

Two people of interest in particular:

One girl asked where I was from in Texas, and I said Arlington, and she actually knew where that was, to my surprise. She asked, for kicks, if I knew So-and-So and So-and-So.

Did I know So-and-So and So-and-So? We were in the same Indian dance group throughout junior high and high school! She was their cousin. I love small-world moments.

And there was one guy...named Sunil. He works at Dreamworks, and he invited us to a free screening of Fantastic Mr. Fox next week. He said we should exchange numbers, and as I was leaving, I called to him, "Sunil..." And holy shit, that was so weird to say. I imagine you Davids and Toms and Amys and such call people your names all the time, but this was such a foreign experience for me. I've only ever met a couple other Sunils, and one is older than me so I address him as "Sunil Uncle," which is less cognitively dissonant.

when I came out to my dear friend John, some years after I'd realised I was gay, he went home and said to his g/f that he was sad I'd not trusted him with this before. (He told me this much later.) Apparently, her response was that he shouldn't be so silly, because he had no idea what circumstances were making it difficult for me to come out to my friends. She is a wise lady.

I've been hoping for an opportunity to ask this in the right conversation/company - but is there a comfortable fall-back phrase to respond with, when either someone comes out, or perhaps is introduced to one as gay, that essentially means "I don't care, but it's a friendly, unconditional positive regard kind of not caring"? I know how to talk to people I am already close to about tough subjects. In such a case I would say something like, "I'm so glad you felt comfortable telling me," or maybe I would ask if it had been hard to tell me. But I'm looking for something more intelligent to say than "Oh, cool" or "okay".

Sounds like a good lunch, P-C.

I'm reading a blog of recipes for traditional British food, and I'm getting cravings for all sorts of stuff I've never even tried, like jam roly-poly and bread and butter pudding. (Well, jam roly-poly sorta looks like what we'd call a jelly roll. Same shape, different texture.)

::poking head in, waves weakly::

Hey lovelies, have I missed you guys but it's been crazybusy 'round these parts. We close on our new house at the end of this week and right now, it looks like we're going to be packing up and heading out the first full week of January, with an ETA of January 8th in Seattle. In the meantime, we're doing all those little things like getting moving company estimates and figuring out how we're going to get across the country, but OMG, we're going to be in SEATTLE!

Our house is a disaster as we pack up all the books and sort through stuff and make trips to Goodwill and the library. We joke that our Christmas tree is going to be a pyramid-shaped stack of boxes that we let Abby decorate. It's still a possibility.

So I'm probably going to be very scarce around here until after the move is completed but I miss you guys horribly.