Hi Friends

I have a confession: if I didn't have a blog I probably wouldn't have gone on the date I went on last night.

I winked at him on Match because he looked interesting. He emailed me back and said that he would like to meet me, but he absolutely refused to e-mail without a plan to meet.

It struck me as odd; why did he go out of his way to make certain I knew he would not email? He could have said, "thanks for the wink, want to meet up sometime?" But he not only said let's meet, but also was really negative about emailing.

After this interaction, I pondered just letting it go, but I thought it might be worth meeting.

We finally fixed a time and date to meet up, at which point I received another strange email. It said that it is his policy to go dutch on the first date. He wanted to let me know that he isn't cheep, that's just the way he rolls.

I once again pondered not going on this date. There are plenty of ways to go dutch on the first date without sending that intention via email. It struck me as very odd and indicative of an extremely analytical nature or bitterness. It was like he had a dating policy manual that he followed to the letter.

As I said earlier if it weren't for the blog, I probably would have passed this one by.

But I went and it was actually OK. He was the overly analytical type. For much of the date he peppered me with questions about my job, which was good that he kept the conversation moving, but made me feel somewhat like I was being interviewed.

At the end of the date, he said, "this was fun, if you ever want to go out again shoot me an email." He needs to put the dating manual for nerds away and as my patient told me yesterday, nut up or shut up.

Still, all in all, not a disaster.

In other blog news, I am going to see Mr. try-it-again Saturday and the ijl guy on Sunday.

Good night.

mars and venus

Hi Friends

This is a treatise on the definition of "soon."

As in, "I'll call you soon."

As in, it is now Tuesday night and I was promised a call "soon" on Saturday.

I think "soon" has passed.

However, I am a female.

Apparently, to males, "soon" doesn't necessarily mean "soon."

It means, "I'll call you at some point before the seasons change."

My brother seems to think that this is normal male behaviour.

Consider this a PSA: Don't say you will call soon if you are not planning to call within 24-72 hours.

I don't understand. One doesn't even have to dial anymore. One pulls up my name on the screen of one's cell phone and applies light pressure. It's pretty simple.

In other blog news, I am going out with the IJL guy from Sunday again. He actually called and asked me out again. What a concept. I am looking forward to seeing him again.

Also, I am meeting a new Match guy on Thursday.

Good night

the good stuff

Hi friends

It has been quite a weekend.

First of all, my date with Mr. Try-it-again was great. We went to some gardens (not the cheesecake factory ;-)) and it was lovely. The gardens were amazing, the day was beautiful, we walked all around. He is a great guy; I know that he is on the same page as me in all the essentials, he is tall, good looking, funny, easy-going, conversational, polite, friendly, deep etc... There has been post-date texting and I am fairly certain that there will be another date. The challenge right now is to go with the flow and not put all my eggs in one basket. It is important to keep other irons in the fire and let things unfold as they will.

Speaking of other irons, I went on an IJL date tonight. On my drive down, I was in a really bad mood. They sent me to Ellicott City and I was not happy that I had to drive forty minutes to meet someone who would most likely be bad. A new person set this date up, which also annoyed me because I am now on my fifth dating director. How are they supposed to get to know me if they change people every two minutes? So I grumpily headed out to meet what I assumed would be my next disaster date. Seriously, I should get paid for some of the dates I've been on; they are so much worse than the TV show.

However, I was surprised. He was nice, fun to talk to, and we hit it off. Chemistry is a funny thing; we really got along. We talked about everything from the generational gap in the workplace to child discipline. I think I will see him again. Who would have ever guessed?

No word from Mr. Coffee since Thursday-seems like that may be a done deal.

Before I log off for the night, I have one objection to file: PDA in Church. This morning, there was a cute little young couple in front of me who couldn't keep their hands off each other. She was wearing a sparkly diamond ring on her left ring finger so I am assuming that they are newly engaged. Before I sound like a cynical, heartless, single person, let me say that I am not against 1) showing affection, 2) showing affection on Church premises or 3) young silly love.

I am, however, against distracting, ridiculous displays of affection during the sermon. There is a season, turn, turn. A time to give back massages, a time to merely hold hands and listen to the sermon, a time to kiss, a time to face forward, a time to stop the hungry eyes. They should put up a sign: PDA with caution.

The heart of the matter is that I want Church to be my safe place. A place where I can leave all the crap of my daily life at the door and interact with the Divine. A place where I feel at peace.

And when little billy-bob and suzy are all up in each other's business right in front of me it brings it all back down to earth.

They are twenty and they found love. Boom.

I don't know if I'll ever find love. Boom.

I really wish I had someone to go to Church with. Boom.

Don't you think they could suspend their dewy-eyed lovefest for one hour?

But then it makes me think-are there things that I do in Church that are insensitive to others and I don't know it? What can I do to be more sensitive and supportive of others?

I want to remember this feeling. I want to help not hurt others. And I never want to be that girl.

Good night

The battle for everything

Hello friends

I am finally feeling a little better; at least well enough to rejoin society. It's really nice to have my voice back.

This week has been somewhat productive on the dating front.

I had a second date with Mr. Coffee. We spent 4+ hours together and it went well. We had good conversation (he now writes about gold and oil), we talked about religion a little, we laughed about various absurdities. Overall a fun time and I would like to see him again. I think he'll call me...we will see.

The chronic e-mailer I posted about last time sent me yet another generic e-mail so I finally bit the bullet and asked him out for drinks. He sent me a very confusing reply. Something about how he joined match prematurely and he wanted to take it easy before jumping back into things and he wanted to continue e-mailing me. I don't get it-why join match if you don't want to meet people? I thought that was the whole point. It makes me think he is already in a relationship and wants to keep me in his back pocket for a rainy day. No thanks Mr. e-mail. I wrote him back and told him if he ever wants to meet, contact me, but I am not interested in being the random girl he e-mails when he is bored.

I am meeting up with Mr. Give-it-another-try tomorrow. I am looking forward to it and will report back with details.

Here is something that I am pondering tonight: how do you balance letting a man take the lead vs. getting to do things that you actually want to do?

I want a man who wants to take care of me. I don't want to wear the pants in future relationships. However, this becomes difficult when people suggest going places/doing things that do not interest me. What do you say when someone wants to meet up at The Cheesecake Factory? It's tough because I don't want to derail his plan, but I don't want to eat at The Cheesecake Factory either. My natural instinct is to take over and manhandle the situation so that I don't have to suffer in a chain restaurant, but then another part of me thinks that I should go with the flow and as he gets to know me, he will realise that I don't want to eat certain places/do certain things. The other option is to shoot it down all together. But then if he doesn't have a back up plan it could get awkward.

It is difficult. Relationships are so tenuous in the beginning. I don't want to pass a great person up because he couldn't come up with the perfect date on the first try. And I don't want to manhandle all my dates. And I don't want to go on bad dates. It's a quandary.

Good night

repeats

Well friends

I am sick again. I can't believe it, I was just sick...I'm planning to add some sort of vitamin C/zinc regimen to my diet. I don't have time to be sick this often. The worse part is I straightened my hair the day I got sick so for the last couple days I've been stuck in bed with my lovely straight hair.

Anyway, I'd like to discuss for a moment one of my online dating pet peeves: the endless e-mail chain. There is a guy on Match that seems like someone I would be interested in meeting ergo I sent him an e-mail. He wrote me back and I thought, "sweet I'll get to meet him." We have now written back and forth a few times and there is still no discussion of meeting. In the online dating world, it's all about getting to know people over e-mail just to the point that I don't think they are a criminal, and then meeting as soon as possible. It is a terrible waste of time to e-mail for weeks on end only to meet and discover I'm just not that into him. Since I was the one who sent the first e-mail in this scenario, I was trying to give him a chance to suggest meeting, but it looks like I'm going to have to make this happen.

If I get an e-mail from a guy and he looks remotely interesting I suggest meeting immediately. One bad date is better than one bad date and a month's worth of e-mailing.

Ok I feel better now. Thank you.

Before I go, I have one interesting piece of news.

A guy that I went out with a few times last year, and then fell off the face of the planet e-mailed me yesterday. He apologised for acting like a jerk and asked if we could start over.

I'll let you know what happens.

sigh

Well friends

It was nice while it lasted. I e-mailed bachelor number two to break our second date. Our religious beliefs were too different. I knew that to be the case, but I was trying to talk myself into thinking that either a) I could have a little fun and no one would get hurt, or b) I could make it work. Of course neither of these are true and after a little tough love from my friends I cancelled the date.

Just so the night wouldn't be a total loss, I agreed to meet a new guy that I have been emailing for the last week. It was so bad. He was so boring. We were in armchairs at The Brewers Art. Armchairs-comfy, relaxing, kick-back armchairs. I was relaxed...he was straight as a pin and bobbed his head in a very weird way to everything I said. He must have been nervous because his pattern of speech was not congruent with what is generally agreed upon as normal.

Good bye Mr. Bobble-head.

And the worst part is that I know if I had gone out with bachelor number two, I would have enjoyed myself.

Nobody said it was easy/no one ever said it would be so hard/I'm going back to the start.

Good night

A whirlwind of Gaiety

Hi Friends

The dating extravaganza is over and it went as well as one would expect.

Before I get to the gritty details, I have a couple of news item to report.

First: I have adopted two cats. Many people see this as a bad thing from the single girl perspective. I am now just one cat away from being "the cat lady," relegated to the single life for the rest of my days surrounded only by furry friends.

I, however, have a different view. My friend that I adopted them from had to give them up because her very serious boyfriend/soon-to-be fiancee is very allergic to cats and they had to go. She met this man very soon after she got the cats. Ergo they are lucky cats and will help not hurt me. Plus it's nice to have some furry companions; chore time was so much more fun today than usual because of the cat's antics. Even now, one of them is curled up next to me as I write.

Second: I spoke with the IJL dating director and told him how displeased I am. I compared his lack of communication after I was stood up to the sentinel event of the dating service. I told him how disappointed I have been in the dates. It felt good to be honest and he assured me that it will get better....we'll see about that. Being back on Match has confirmed to me that I pick much better dates for myself than they do.

Anyways, back to Saturday.

My three dates were coffee, lunch, and dinner. My good friend and fashionista prescribed the outfit for the day: skinny jeans, tank top, boyfriend cardigan, and gladiator sandals. Then, she reasoned, after the first two dates I could throw on a nice shirt over the tank top and swap out gladiator sandals for cage heels and I'd be good to go for the evening. I was also instructed to straighten my hair for the day.

So I got up, took a shower, straightened my hair, put on make-up, and ran to the mall to get said skinny jeans. Unfortunately, the traffic was very bad, and I was late to coffee. Really late. Like 25 minutes late. I felt bad because I am not the kind of person to show up late like that on the first meeting. However, on the flip side, I decided it is a good test to see how someone reacts-make them mad from the beginning and see if a temper rears its ugly head.

Fortunately, Mr. Coffee passed the test and was very gracious. We had a good coffee. He was cute, easy to talk to, and we have some common interests. It came up in our discussion that he is divorced. I have never given much thought to whether or not I would date a divorced person; on one hand it seems that there would be a lot of baggage, but on the other hand, if someone has been married before and it didn't work out then I would hope that he would have good perspective on what he is looking for and what is really important to make a relationship work. He said that he wants to see me again so we will see if there is a date #2 and what it will bring. Religion didn't come up at all so that is something I need to figure out.

Directly after that date, I drove to meet Mr. Lunch. I was excited to meet Mr. Lunch because he has a very interesting profile. I knew going in that we have similar tastes, he is well-traveled, and he is funny. That being said, I think that going into the first meeting with expectations is dangerous. So I was trying to be excited to meet him without having expectations about how we would get along.

We had a really good lunch. One of the first things I noticed about him is that he is very serious person. Of course he is an engineer so he is a precise individual and definitely a planner. I value these characteristics because I am neither precise nor a planner, and I feel that my ideal partner would have these qualities. Someone has to make sure that the bills are paid, the retirement plan is on track, and the house isn't falling down, and I'd rather not be that person. We have similar tastes and our conversation was easy. He has already texted me for a second date and I am looking forward to seeing him again.

He is also very intriguing. He told me that he is going to Germany next month to pick up his BMW. Apparently, there is a deal that the German board of tourism gives to anyone who will pick up their BMW in Germany; you get discounted air fare, discounted accommodations while in Germany, you get to drive your car in Germany for 2 weeks, and you get to keep the temporary German license plate once your car is shipped back to the US. While this is cool and interesting, he is not snobby-he asked BMW if they could take their insignia off the car because he doesn't want people to know that his car is a BMW. He just may turn out to be a Square John. Time will tell.

After Mr. Lunch, I had a little bit of down time to prepare for Mr. Dinner. I decided to watch the Netflix DVD that came this week for a minute while I was home, and it is a good thing I did because it was the first disk of the first season of "The Big Bang Theory," and Mr. Dinner asked me if I had ever seen the show. Talk about good timing.

It's hard to describe the setting of this date. IJL picks the restaurant so I would like to take this moment to make it quite clear that I had nothing to do with the picking of this location. It was a hotel restaurant. Not all hotel restaurants are bad, but this one was horrible. Bad carpet with weird designs, bad lighting, bad menu, bad food-everything about the restaurant was bad.

When I first saw Mr. Dinner, he was wearing a Huxtable-esque sweater. That's right-Saturday night and he is wearing a sweater that his grandmother could have given him for his 15th birthday. I was wearing the afore mentioned skinny jeans, nice shirt and cage heels. The whole thing was awkward.

If there is one thing that I think I am pretty good at, it is being able to converse fairly easily with almost anyone. Not so with this guy-he is incredibly intelligent, but a really bad conversationalist. At first, conversation was a bit like pulling teeth. By the end of the night, through hard work and patience, I discovered that he is taking helicopter flying lessons, has a maid who comes twice weekly, volunteers at a horse shelter, and is in possession of a Darth Vader plush toy. He asked me if I have any nerdish tendencies-I think he was hoping that I am a closet chemist or Trekkie or Halo 3 world champion. He didn't seem thrilled with my answer that I like crossword puzzles. Even though it was fairly awkward, I may go out with him again. He seemed like a nice person and his personality struck me as the kind that takes more than one date to get to know/figure out.

To end out the evening, I met some friends at a bar where our mutual friend was playing in the jazz band. It was a great way to decompress and laugh about the day. I am so grateful for friends, and the support that they give me. I am grateful that I had the opportunity to meet three people in one day. I am grateful that I actually stepped out of my comfort zone and did it. And I am grateful that it went pretty well.

All of this dating is teaching me lessons. When I dated in the past, I never would have dreamed of asking a guy out. But now, if I see someone that I am interested in getting to know on Match, I don't hesitate to send an e-mail. I am learning what I am looking for, and I am learning to go get it when I see it. When I meet Mr. Right, I will not let him pass me by.