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"  Marie Claire on Facebook  Lovelies: Mr. Barnaby Jepperboom, lamb, mensch, sweetheart that he is DID call last night, in fact, and DID ask me if I&amp;#039;d like to hang out soon. (He&amp;#039;s been having a crappy week himself, and is feeling a bit saturnine.) It&amp;#039;s probably about time for me to tell you guys more about him, isn&amp;#039;t it? We met after a mutual friend, who&amp;#039;d been reading my blog, suggested that I hang out with him. (&amp;quot;Maybe he&amp;#039;s blog-worthy!&amp;quot; she said.) My friend is brilliant and sweet, and recommended Barnaby using similar terms, so my curiosity was piqued enough that I checked his Facebook page. And--oh, joy!--a total hottie beamed out at me: enormous brown eyes, big boyish grin, short dirty-blonde hair. There was even one of him lying down on his towel at the beach, and as far as I could tell, the temperature was hot, hot, hot.  But ...  After the first twenty photos or so, as I kept clicking, he kept getting ... bigger ... and bigger ... and bigger. In a preponderance of pictures, he appeared to be quite large. Was he a &amp;quot;secret internet fattie&amp;quot;? Hmm. I revisited that pic of him on the beach and confirmed that it was no camera trick, no question of the perfect angle: He was downright svelte--in some of the shots, anyway. I wrote back to my friend, saying: &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;d like to meet him, but let&amp;#039;s just keep it as a friendly thing. I see that his weight seems to fluctuate--and I find that when people are carrying extra weight, they snore! And snoring is a deal-breaker for me.&amp;quot; (Which is true. But it&amp;#039;s also true that corpulence per se is also a deal breaker. I just didn&amp;#039;t want to come off like a complete prig by saying that.) My friend wrote back and said, &amp;quot;Fair enough. Although I should tell you: Barnaby used to be overweight, it&amp;#039;s true. A couple years back, however, with some help from a nutritionist, he lost a ton of weight. Which means now he&amp;#039;s an excessively handsome dude, without the huge ego to go along with his looks!&amp;quot; Interesting.  Anyway, I wrote Barnaby saying we should become buddies--I think the casual approach is best when it comes to a friend of friend, even if he IS single and hot--and also mentioned that if he was interested in coming along, I&amp;#039;d planned a little outing for that weekend to the Karaoke Night at Hope+Anchor Diner.  After Barnaby agreed to come, he and I decided to met up beforehand, just the two of us, at Sonny&amp;#039;s, so we could get to know each other a little first. About five minutes in to our first conversation, we got to the point where he was like, &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t know why I&amp;#039;m telling you all this stuff,&amp;quot; and I was like, &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t mind if you don&amp;#039;t.&amp;quot; One of the things that came up was his weight loss, and I was impressed both by his candor and his ability to change habits that had been with him a lifetime. He&amp;#039;d always thought it was simply his genetic destiny to be fat--but after his physician suggested he see a nutritionist, Barnaby changed the way he was eating, began working out ... and eventually he transformed himself. ...  A few hours later, we were doing the karaoke thing with my friends, and Barnaby was sitting next to me on the banquette when he said, &amp;quot;Wow. Fishnets. You&amp;#039;re wearing fishnets. I didn&amp;#039;t see them till now. It&amp;#039;s just hitting me how hot you are.&amp;quot; I turned to him. &amp;quot;Well, considering you&amp;#039;ve had about 6 Bud Lights by this point, that is not a compliment, pal.&amp;quot; He sunk his face into his hands ... and then peeked out to say, &amp;quot;Can I touch them? Please?&amp;quot; I laughed. Very gently, he put his hand on my knee and squeezed. Then he pulled me up to sing a duet with him--Dylan&amp;#039;s Positively Fourth Street. Later, I drove him home, and he invited me up--was his suggestion that I use his computer to determine the best route home just a pretext?--but I declined. (It was late, I was tired, I liked him A LOT--but maybe I didn&amp;#039;t like-him-like-him.) Yet, on the ride back to Maura Kelly Headquarters, it occurred to me that I&amp;#039;d had one of the best New York nights I&amp;#039;d had in a long time ... and it seemed Barnaby was a big part of the reason why. Hmm ...  But, folks, I&amp;#039;ve gone on long enough about this now. More tomorrow! xxx * * *  Also, here&amp;#039;s a poem by the illustrious Deb Garrison about the appeal of firemen. Thank you, Daniel, for sending this in! * * *  PS: Commenters, my dears: I ALWAYS read what you have to say (in fact, I frequently check OBSESSIVELY to see if you&amp;#039;ve written) and your notes ALWAYS cheer me up ... so thank you. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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