Long time, no blog.

I have returned from lands uncharted, both literally and figuratively. Not really literally but there is a lot of new development in Southwest Austin. Although I've been back from the land of cheap and delicious food, drink and band boys for over a week, I didn't even take my suitcase upstairs when I returned, but instead packed up 40% of the contents of my apartment to dogsit for a week. In addition to devouring obscene quantities of queso and doing my laundry for free, I read Merrill Markoe essays while juggling both the procrastination on and the execution of writing a take home exam and a final paper. It was out of control. Also out of control was what happened when I moved back into my apartment Monday to find myself buried under mounds of articles and clean clothes while I polished off the last set of revisions on a paper my advisor and I are trying to get published. The first two days of my official Spring Break were spent running errands and locating my bedroom floor. It went well and I'm feeling good. I still don't have food to eat (aside from the 3 lbs of chocolate I purchased this afternoon), but buttons have been resewn onto various apparel, shoes have been delivered to the shoe hospital, my car is sporting brand spanking new floor mats, people with birthdays will be receiving packages, electricity and gas will continue to reach my apartment for the next month, my left knee has been X-rayed and has a date with an MRI technician, and this time tomorrow, my teeth will be freshly cleaned.

Whew. No wonder I put this stuff off.

In other news, letting Honorable Mention go was definitely the way to go. Frontrunner has proven himself to be like, I don't know, pretty fucking great. I have to type and post this quickly, before my own nausea overtakes me, but here goes:

I return from SXSW and give him a call that afternoon, feeling out whether he remembers our having made plans for that evening. He does. He's made reservations for 8:30. He also gave me a rose when I got there and didn't understand my reference to the Bachelor upon receiving it.

Wednesday night we see a show and get dinner. I fall asleep at his place and end up leaving later than I had anticipated. My phone is missing. He walks me to my car - which, because it's so late/early, has garnered itself a parking ticket. He takes care of the ticket and gives me the main number for the cab company we used to get to and from the show. Waking up at 10:30 the next morning to find my phone, I have an email from him indicating that not only has he tracked down our cab driver, but has located my phone and is having it delivered back to him. "Okay, that's pretty impressive," you might say, "but no need to get carried away here." Well, you might say that until I told you that what happened next was that he had my phone delivered, by courrier service, to where I was dogsitting. My phone and lunch that is. Insane! Easily the nicest thing in recent memory anyone has done for me.

Later I tell my dad about this exchange and he's duly impressed. When we get off the phone he says he's happy for me. It was unexpectedly weird. My grandmother has a different reaction, "Well, Kelly - usually you tell me what's going on with guys and I always think they aren't doing the right thing , but this guy is doing ALL the right things. . . And so I'm confused."

So anyway, it's cool. I think. I must say I thought I was really into having a boyfriend, but I didn't quite realize how much I liked being decidedly single either. I also find myself doing puzzling things. Six weeks ago I didn't know how to use text messaging. Now, if were reading a book or watching a movie about my behavior, the cheesy things I type into my phone would cause me to groan audibly. Maybe even throw the book across the room.