So, I'm back already. Went well enough I suppose, but doubt it'll repeat. Topics of discussion which I brought up during our meal included "women who have sex with animals" and "the strange habits of star trek people" and "why I am a geek." I did have the sense not to bring the new Joyce Carol Oates novel, "Rape", which I picked up today, but otherwise sense was generally lacking in this outing.

So as part of the date, and afterwards, I wandered around in book stores trying to find that poem from this morning. After trying three small downtown stores, I went to the Borders Bookstore in the mall, and I found it there in the fourth and final poetry book by Stephen Dunn they had. The collection "Between Angels", copyright 1989 has it. The poem is called "On the Way to Work". Under U.S. copyright law, I can only excerpt it as part of a review. So here is a good part. The review is in the previous entry

I rode parallel to her,
glancing over, as one does
on an airplane at someone's book
Short, straight hair. No make-up
A face that had been a few places
and only come back from some.
At the stop light I smiled
at her, then made my turn
toward the half-life of work
past the placebo shops
and the beautiful park, white
like a smokescreen with snow.
She didn't follow, not in this
bitch of a life.
And I had so much to tell her
before we die
about what I'd done all these years
in between, under, and around
truths like hers. Who knows
where we would have stopped?

I am taking tomorrow off. I get twenty days of vacation this year that I must use or I lose. The work is so stress filled that management feels it is important for our mental health to use all of it. I have only used one day so far. What does an asocial middle-aged bachelor do with twenty days of vacation? I would love to take my daughter on a trip someplace, but alas she is too busy sitting around her house playing Diablo. I guess I will snag a week in August and then work out a plan.