This is where you decide...

Spending time with TEA* is often challenging for me. When we hang out, it is one on one and for more than a couple of hours, now...I am not great at spending more than a couple of hours one on one with anyone, as anyone I dated can attest to. However, as he gets older, the dynamic is changing and while I loved spending time with him before, I am finding it more satisfying. Today, we had conversations that were awesome and it makes me happy that he is such a great young man.

Anyway, we had a great day. An especially great day seeing that I was down and out on Friday evening and Saturday. (Don't ask.) There was food. There was ice cream. There was a movie. There was coffee. There were comic books.

On the way to see him, I saw this on State Street in Albany.

How random?

How did it get there and what does it mean?

What is worse is that I went to get a bottle of water and when I came back less than five minutes later, it was gone. Who would take this piece of surrealist art?

Albany, we just can't have nice things.

While I was making the trek to Albany to see Troy, I was listening to Holy Roman Empire. I really like them. Or really liked them, as they broke up in 2009 and they neglected to inform me. I suppose I was not looking in the right spot.



Anyway, they have broken up, and I will still keep listening to the EP and LP that I have of theirs, but my hope is that I will find the various members in their new projects.

Speaking of media, TEA and I saw Zookeeper. (Which the LA Times said was not the worst option for desperate parents. High praise, no?) I am not going to speak to the quality of the film but...Rosario Dawson's smile is enough to allow me to think that the world is a good place. I realized that my thing is smiles and the way someone's eyes look when they are smiling. That is my weak spot. Oh, that and women who are too busy living life to worry about how their end of days are going to be lived, but you knew about that one.


*TEA has a given name, which I am not going to put out there, but I call him TEA. His mother calls him by his given name. Today, I called him TEA and I realized that he is old enough to know what he wants to be called. He said that he likes me calling him TEA. It was a good moment in a good conversation about fathers and sons. Actually, I do not normally call him TEA. I call him "buddy" which my father called me, or "Big Guy" which I call all the men in my life who I love. It is an oddness. I grok.