magicbeans. nothing if not awkward.

You know how a number of my drinks after work stories have started with 'you remember that girl Ellen who I've told you about?' Sometime this morning an exchange of emails was initiated by some of the Red Sox fans in the office, proposing a few rounds of drinks to toast the World Series outcome. Said Red Sox fans and a half dozen or so of the rest of us, simply interested in a drink, met at the sort of cheesy Irish pub/sports bar that was the site of the continued drinking after the Olympics party. And which, aside from one brief encounter on the stair at work, was the last time I saw Ellen, when I almost got on a train to Boston with her at 3.30 in the morning.

And, true to form, by the time Ellen arrived, I had consumed a few drinks, and she had had a few somewhere else, and we sat at opposite ends of a long table while we had a few more, before everyone headed out to another bar around the corner. Which, suitably on our way to drunk, is where we started talking. And among other things, we talked about making plans to do something sober sometime. 'Do you like the Met?' she asked, 'The museum, not the opera.'

'Actually I like the opera too. Although I've never been to see one at the Met.'

'We should go to an opera then. I've never been. I'm curious, but it's something that's hard to find people to go to.'

We talked again about dating outside of a certain age range. When I had told her after World Day that I had a rule of thumb not to date anyone more than five years in either direction I realized as I was saying it that she is just outside of that. She reiterated that she seems to keep dating 25 year olds, and has decided that from now on it's no one under 30. 'So you're writing me off just like that?' I asked.

'Okay. No one under 29.' Just drunken flirting, but I started wondering how our opera plans might be affected if we were to go home together tonight.

And a few hours later, after food at the late night place we had gone to on the night we met, 'Do you want the couch, or half of my bed?'

'Well, I have slept in your bed before.'

'And it is more comfortable.'