No lie. I just had a normal conversation with Collin. I believe this was our second. Yesterday, he walked by and I actually didn't notice him until he was 10 feet away, whiich is practically unheard of, mostly because I am always in the process of waiting for him to walk by. Alas, he had to go to a meeting and couldn't stay and talk. But I considered even this admission a good sign because really, when does he ever stay and talk? Never when I am sitting here alone; he just says hi. So today, I saw him walk all over the place and had given up that he was going to head over my way, when suddenly he was next to me wanting to stop and chat. Clearly he is an optimist because we have never been any good at making normal conversation. My heart lept. So cute. And then we did it. We had a normal conversation where we talked about our friend Jose, who we are mutually concerned about (long story), and this led us to talk of social work and working with kids, and we even had a "Yah, me too!" moment about work. Quite frankly, I am amazed. I realized yesterday that while I hadn't completely given up on him, I was pretty confident that he and I weren't really meant to be more than acquaintances. After all, how many awkward moments can two people have before they just give up? Maybe what we have in common is persistence. Hurray for persistence!