I had dinner with Brian tonight. He’s very cute, funny, talkative … so why am I not thrilled? Hmmm. Not sure. Well, it could be the fact that we had to talk on the phone like FIVE TIMES today to finalize the plans for tonight. I returned his call from last night; he called me back a little later; he called me again at 6; I called him at 6:30 to tell him I couldn’t get reservations at PF Changs; he called me at 7:20 to ask when we were meeting AFTER we discussed this during the earlier call …

He talked A LOT, about a lot of different things. He just signed a lease today on a new apartment and he was telling me that his friends aren’t thrilled that he’s moving from the west side of the city to the north. He said he’s tired of the drama … and he actually used the phrase “baby mama drama” to describe his relationship with his son’s mother. He gave up drinking with his friends around the first of the year, because he was drinking way too much. Oh and his first serious gf was when he was 15 and he pretty much lived with her and her family after they started dating. “This will show you how much my parents cared about me.” (I was like, dude, my parents wouldn’t even let me go on a DATE until I was 16, let alone have a boyfriend!) Ding, ding, ding … I guess flags don’t ding, but you know what I mean …

I didn’t heed the red flags with Mark and look where it got me. Brian and I already have plans for Monday night, as he asked me out again before I started to process all of this. He wanted to make out in the parking lot, wink wink. Y’all know I was all for that with Mark, but now it just seemed cheap and sad. So we’ll have dinner Monday, I’ll ask him more about the “drama” and we’ll go from there. On the bright side, we saw “Syriana,” which was really good. Plus I got to watch my pretend boyfriend of 20+ years, George Clooney, who looked good despite the extra weight, gnarly hair and icky beard.

A guy who is originally from Brooklyn responded to my e-mail today, and he’d like to meet for a cup of coffee. I liked his profile, he seemed to have a worldview lacking around here. I’ll keep plugging along until Mark — who is showing up as “online now” on match.com at 1 a.m. (and yes I know I need to stop checking!) — is but a distant memory …