We last saw Lady In Red when she was struggling with her love or lust for a lying and cheating fool, in Lady in Red, Part Deux. Now she's moving on. Here we pick up with her in: Lady in Red, the Sequel.

Dear Theo,

I am moved to tell you I am meeting someone new next weekend.  He is someone that I have known for a while, but not someone I have met in person. His long-time girlfriend moved to the East Coast last summer, and I have just kind of kept in touch with him. It was a long breakup for them.

So, for the last nine to 10 months, I have just gone on with my life and, as you know, gotten involved with someone that wasn't good for me. I feel like this is going to be a fresh start. And I'm certain this guy isn't a cheater.  He lives in the Southwest and is an artist. He's also a member of an art collective, and travels quite a bit.  He's 28.  These young guys just keep popping up.   

I'm excited and nervous all at the same time. Any advice, of course, would be appreciated.
 
Hope you are doing wonderful as ever!

-Lady in Red

Dear Lady in Red,

I am so happy to hear you have moved on and it is great that you're so excited to meet this guy. The best advice I can give you right now is a classic; don't count your chickens before they hatch. And what I mean by this is, wait till you have met him and see if the two of you jive well. I am glad you are certain he's not a cheater, but a traveling young artist is somewhat of a nouveau rock star (like chefs), and I would most definitely be careful. Piece of advice #2: Don't put all the eggs that haven't hatched in one basket yet either.

I am not telling you not to trust him. I am just suggesting that you watch out for yourself and be discerning. Sometimes when we are attracted to the same types of people (for you, young and living in other cities), we are living a lesson over and over until we really learn it. I am not trying to stomp on your bed of roses, just reminding you that when you collapse into that bed, you most likely will find a thorn or two.

Have fun and keep your eyes and ears open for clues. 'Till next time…

Theo Kogan is the MOLI View's contributing editor for Fashion & Design. Her THEOlogy column appears Tuesdays and Thursdays. Every other Tuesday, she answers your questions with her tough-love advice. Send your questions via e-mail or here on MOLI.

Among the novel distractions last week were the goings-on in the Water Cube, another great building put up for the Olympics in Beiing. Its most appealing feature (to me) is that its walls are designed to not just resemble but mimic the properties of bubbles -- soap bubbles, it seems, and the way they fill space entirely. The cube is not really a cube: it's a rectangle, and it may look light, but it cost $200 million to build (by PTW Architects, Arup, and the Chinese construction team).

Given what I said last column about architecture having meaning, about its being intentional in ways most of us wouldn't consider, somehow the idea of a tight enclosure of bubbles containing all that watery athleticism (and the politics thereof) is delicious. The metaphors can't stop: Building as grand laundromat - put in all that terrible human rights stuff, set on double-wash, and out they come, clean as a swimmer's thigh. Building as seemingly transparent (after all, the light moves through those walls, doesn't it) but actually not transparent at all.  Building as made of elements more akin to the brain of a super-swimmer: bubbles, blue and green light, undulations, waves. Building as giant nest made of bubble wrap, protecting the fragile peace, or momentary willingness to suspend awareness, of the international sporting event known as the Olympics. I'll stop before I start saying something like, "China, after all, is as fragile as it is powerful: as if made of china...." Forgive me, for I know not how little I sleep.

My favorite inhabitant of the magic bubble box were the Olympic synchronized swimmers, women with Amazon-hot bods in high-hipped swimsuits, their nightmare-beautiful faces adorned with identical warpaint make-up, their noses turned into cartoon beaks by nose clips. The most extreme case of synchro intensity was the Russian team made of the two Anatasias, with their exaggerated poses and mermaid contortions. They dove and stayed upside-down underwater for long minutes while they kewpie-kicked the air, all to the beat of the music - hey, that was magic. And even when the absurdity reached a zenith -- those fierce girls from Spain wanted to wear lights on their suits and nearly did (take two on "Girl from Ipanema"!) -- the sober genius of the building that enclosed all this dramatic aquaticism was a giant reminder that this is all about science and technique. So the synchro thing seems like a joke, but good luck to the rest of us non-Olympic plebes on ever being skilled or fit enough to look that ridiculous. In other words, it may look transparent, but it's not.

Another aspect of the building that made me smile was the fact that it's a great idea about sustainability, given wings, you might say, by the need for a great building to match a giant occasion. So the building is covered in a plastic called EFTE (100,000 square meters of it). ETFE is a plastic so strong that it won't tear, and yet allows more solar heat into the building than glass.  Might be a great material to make a development out of, someday.

Jana Martin's blog, Making Room, runs every week in the MOLI View's Fashion & Design section.