So I met up with the guy to take photos, but the sky was cloudy, and he for obvious reasons wants pictures of sun and blue skies. The weather has been, is, and will be for several days, gloomy. In fact, today I was watching the weather radar channel, and because these are Ernesto's outer bands radiating from the east coast, the weather is moving backwards, from east to west. But I'm digging the cool temps and overcast skies. Very autumn-like, and fall is my favorite season. Makes me wanna put on a sweatshirt and drink hot cider. I woke up shivering last night and bundled up snugly in my blanket. It was nice.

I just realized... here we are at the tail end of the dog days of summer where it should still be swelteringly hot, and it takes a tropical storm to bring unseasonably cool weather. Go figure.

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Anyway, I promised earlier to write about the lessons learned from Sophie, but frankly, I've been thinking so long and hard that I've absorbed them into a more intangible sense of experience rather than a list of thoughts. So here's the final epitaph: I am so much better a person emerging from this than I was when I first met her, and I have her to thank.

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I've been talking to Dark Haired Girl lately. We've always kept up regular email contact, I just stopped talking about her on here. Anyway, hung out with her a couple of times in the last week, and contrary to my impression that any physical contact between us had ended last spring, we did fool around. It felt weird, though. Good, very good, but weird. I think it's because I tied emotions to the fling we had this last spring, and this time I didn't at all. It felt wrong yet good, and yet still I felt almost guilty. I mean, I'm single now. I can do what I want, right? I'm the proverbial "tomcat on the prowl". I dunno. Just felt weird because of the lack of feeling.

Am I becoming jaded? Maybe this is growing up. Before it felt innocent, and now it doesn't. This is confusing.