Gay pride came and went here in Manhattan, and I missed almost the whole thing because I had a friend, R, visiting from Philadelphia. So don't look here for photos of the whole thing. The only part of the weekend we experienced was Saturday night, when we went down to Chelsea to go dancing at Splash. We enjoyed it initially, but the music was just dreadful, and we lost interest after less than an hour. I don't understand club music at all. It's hard for me to get how people can actually enjoy dancing to stuff that is all one unvarying rythym with no tunes or vocals.

Afterwards, we walked down to the Village, just to experience the atmosphere; and it was electric and celebratory, especially given the recent Supreme Court decision.

I met R on my recent trip to Philadelphia, but this was the first time we'd even spent the night together. He's a tremendously goodlooking, sexy, Asian-American twenty-three-year-old, with many great qualities - extremely bright, affectionate, playful, good-natured. There is no doubt that if we lived in the same city as each other, we'd be dating right now. Although he's so goodlooking, he has many insecurities, particularly about his appearance. And, in fact, we spent a large part of Saturday evening, as the sun sank behind the buildings visible from my living room, lying on my couch in each others' arms, swapping stories about our various neuroses. It felt very intimate - the kind of conversation you have that advances your friendship.

So when he left, rather abruptly, on Sunday morning, I felt a little dissappointed. I'm too hard on myself, I think. I allowed myself to get into a bit of a funk about it on Sunday, and started to think about how hard I find it to establish relationships - whether platonic or otherwise. By Monday morning, though, I'd come to my senses with the reflection that relationships always take work, and perhaps I just need to learn more patience.

So far, this week has been a good one. Really, everything is going pretty well. I'm still enjoying New York very much, work is busy and interesting, and there's even the annual thrill of watching Britain's Tim Henman dissappoint all his countrymen at Wimbledon. Monday evening, I had a second date with J, another gorgeous young man. We'd planned on going out for a drink, but it was a beautiful evening so we sauntered through Central Park until the mosquitoes chased us into a Starbucks. Then we went back to his place and did a little bit kissing. Those early dates where you know you like each other, but don't consummate the whole thing by rushing into bed, are sweet - even at my age. As Carrie said on a recent "Sex in the City", I feel like a girl of thirty-five again.

And I'm actually looking forward, these days, to getting into the office, since I'm doing something I love to do - complex programming to solve a difficult problem. However, I remain very worried about the project. In fact, today I came to the conclusion that the project is heading for disaster. The basic problem is that we're coding before the design is finished. You can get away with this on a small project, but not one the size and complexity of this one. I'm planning on talking to the project manager about my opinions tomorrow. I'm shooting for promotion this year and, selfishly, I don't want to be associated with a losing project, even though I'm just one developer amongst many on this one.

Tomorrow, I'm flying home to San Francisco for the weekend. What an odd thing to be doing - taking a business trip to my home town.