It has been a good weekend so far.  Last night I went out with a gentleman caller (the young one) to Otto's, which is where you go in New York to pretend you are on a tropical island instead of a temperate one.  Today after my almost-becoming-routine Saturday trip to the dentist (I am having what is apparently massive many-appointments-requiring work done to a single tooth.  this tooth never made me particularly happy or unhappy before, but suddenly three professionals at  time are entranced by it.) I met up with some girls from my meetup group to see an exhibit of costume jewelry and have a coffee.  I knew (and liked) some of the people there and enjoyed meeting some of the others; the challenge, should I choose to accept it, is to transition some of these people from meetup-buddies to friends.  This broke up around one, and I spent some time in the Union Square Christmas Market and surrounding shops, where I did a lot of semi-productive looking and purchased a Hanukkah present for my mother... so that's one down and about ten zillion (actually, about ten, plus cards) to go.  Then I met up with a former gentleman caller for a very late brunch (perhaps more appropriately termed an early dinner).  He brought his girlfriend, whom I did not know existed, and I'm glad he did - I like her quite a lot and she seemed to take to me, so possibly I will see more of them.  It is always a shame, I think, when people who might otherwise want to be friends are unable to because they once dated; it's understandable when something really unforgivable happened during the relationship or the parties disagreed dramatically about its endpoint, but sometimes the problem is just awkwardness and confusion over the tenor and expectations of the friendship going forward.  A third party can resolve this issue nicely.

I'm not sure what exactly I've been doing this evening - mostly a lot of catching up on mail and email and a bit of catching up on television.  I'll go to bed soon, and tomorrow I will do some yet-to-be-determined combination of errands, holiday shopping, friend-seeing, and lying semi-comatose on my couch.  Then it will be the start of what is reputed to be the hardest, most sleep-bereft three days of my training program (a stiff competition), so I should sleep in tomorrow if I can.