At least the nail didn't go through my foot...

If you don't like what I have to say....

2007-09-20T11:36:00.001-05:00

Feel free to stop reading.

Catch 22

2007-07-12T14:36:00.000-05:00

I have this tendency to always find amazing guys to date that don't live in my area. I've done it a few times and its never fun. Even if you try the long distance dating thing, what kind of relationship is that if you've never actually been able to spend any significant time together?

Anyway, this time I thought I would be smart and nip it in the bud before it began, but now I'm having second thoughts. I met this incredible guy at a wedding on Sunday, he live a few hundred miles away and I didn't bother to get a number or an email and kind of discouraged him from trying either, but now I can't stop thinking about him.

I can't seem to get this right just yet...

Open Letter

2007-07-04T08:20:00.001-05:00

I have long thought the world would be a better place if we instituted the practice of exit interviews in the the ritual of dating. I know that I have often left a relationship confused about what exactly happened and wished I had some neutral outlet in which to gain some insight and possibly dole out a little myself. We could get some unbiased HR type to sit down with both parties separately to examine the date/relationship/marriage and give the participants open and honest feedback as to their strengths and weaknesses. For me, I believe this would make me a much smarter dater or at the very least expose patterns of behavior that I might be able to avoid in the future. I think this could really catch on.

In the spirit of productive sharing, I present an open letter to my last date:

New Matt:

To understand what transpired in the course of the last week, I would appreciate some feedback on a few things. It seems we had two very different versions of events though as far as I can tell, we were actually in the same interactions. First and foremost, you should know that your approach was brilliant, you were nothing but endearing on our date, and you are an incredibly good kisser. You should definitely keep that up for future dates. The kissing still gives me butterflies.

On the down side (and these are things you might want to work on), your crippling self doubt blackens everything good about you. It seems to have led you to believe that because I didn't want to hang out immediately the day after our date and the fact that I was offended by being stood up by you for our second date, that somehow that makes me dramatic. I admit, I didn't get the hint. I guess that sitting alone on my couch on a Friday night should have spoken loud and clear as to the type of person you were, but in my naivete, I actually believed that something might have happened to you and therefore was honestly concerned about your well being. Silly me. (Though I should point out, in the spirit of being helpful as well as critical, this only lends more credence to my claim that you exude sincerity in ways uncommon to your gender. It makes you endearing to women, but you need to back it up with ACTUAL sincerity for this to work in relationships).

Secondly, and again, my fault for not recognizing this as the red flag it was, you seem to still have a lot of residual issues with your parents' divorce. Obviously, this is a painful event in your life, but your death grip on security as your only goal in life is a sad waste of whatever talents you may have (I apologize, but I never did get to know what those may be, with the exception of the kissing). You sit on the side lines and watch your sister and brother pursue their passion, though more importantly, they are passing you by. You are given passion in your life for a reason, follow it.

Lastly, you need to learn that you never know what is going on in someone else's life that your actions could affect. The last two weeks of my life have been a little on the strenuous side, what with thinking I have cancer and all, which you had no way of knowing nor should you have. But can you imagine how much more painful being stood up was when I had spent the day at the doctor's office being poked and prodded? Next time you are going to leave a girl sitting on her couch in her pretty dress to watch Law and Order all night, at least have the courtesy to tell her that. A little respect can go a long way.

Overall, you get points for persistence, but you fail miserably in the follow through. I'm saddened that I will never kiss you again, but recognize now that I'd rather know all of this in the beginning then have to endure it in the future.

Best of luck in future endeavours.
Me

Return of the Inevitable

2007-07-02T15:01:00.000-05:00

I had abandoned this blog for a long while, partially because I was in grad school and my life was more consumed with homework then dating, but mostly because the idea of chronicling my Sienfeld-esque romantic life was just a little bit depressing. I mean honestly, the amount of time I spent writing these blogs started to feel self-defeating, like putting it out there for the world to see made it all too real that this is how my love life worked. However, in the year and a half since we last spoke I have dated, much to the same outcomes as we had seen before. But it was lonelier, like now that all my friends are in relationships, my dating fiascoes were no longer funny, but pitiful (they always had a strong hint of the pitiful, but whatever). In the past, my friends were always laughing along with me because most of them could relate in some way, but now that they are all inching closer to marriage and I am still no closer then I was at birth, they use my unfortunate stories as reassurance that whatever may be wrong in their relationship, its better then being SINGLE. Which brings me back here. Whoever may actually stumble upon this accidentally can read it and judge me however they like, but at least I don't have to grin and bare it like I do with most of my friends.

To catch you up, I have since finished my graduate degree and moved to Chicago in hopes that being closer to my family would do me some good. The jury is still out on that. I adore being closer to my family and I love my job which is more then I could say in LA, though socially, Chicago is a very different monster. There is something about the Midwest that makes people want to be couples. Everywhere you turn, there are dysfunctional relationships holding on for dear life because the alternative seems too bleak and sad a state of affairs. I have never been wired like this. Even in the midst of all these horrendous dating adventures, I have never thought that something was better then nothing. To me, being alone and content with life was better then being in a relationship that made me want to pull my hair out. That has put me in a precarious position as one of the few single people I actually know in this city. To make matters more frustrating, even though my friends are all in relationships, even the most amazing boyfriends have no friends to speak of that are even half way interesting to me. Which means that to hang out with my friends I am always the odd wheel. That gets old pretty quickly.

Of my few single friends, I have some fantastic life support. Witty, fun, wonderful women that make me rethink heterosexuality on a regular basis because life would be so much easier if we could just have beautiful little commitment ceremonies and adopt Asian babies. But alas, I would miss penis and boy smell and all those other things that make me inexplicably attracted to men. Therefore I continue to date and fall on my face over and over again like those birds that continually fly into windows because they don't understand the concept of glass. Maybe some day I will knock myself unconscious and wake up a functional dater, but for now, I'll just continue to bless you with the shortcomings of my love life in what I hope is equal parts humorous and cathartic.

LOVE vs. LIKE

2005-12-11T19:26:00.000-06:00

Alright, so I disappeared again, forever. But whatever, I can't do this all the time, I am a god damned graduate student and if I had time for anything, that would be really nice. I'm a little bitter today. I've been in front of my computer for 4 and a half hours so far and have yet to complete this stupid project and I am getting a little antzy. Not to mention I have a weird addiction to Websudoku and I can't stop playing, which may have added to the fact that I am not done with my home work.

Then I checked myspace (again, can we say procrastination?) and there was a chain letter posted in the bullitens. This is what it said:

Don't EVER leave the one you love for the one you like because the one you like will leave you for the one they love...tonight your true love will realize how much they love you. tomorrow the shock of your life will occur. if you break the chain then you will have bad luck...:.:.:.If you REALLY LIKE (or LOVE) SOMEONE right now AND MISS THEM and can't get them out of your head then re-post this within 1 mintute with the title LOVE VS. LIKE and whoever you are missing will surprise you.

I started thinking about all the ridiculous chain emails I have gotten in the past. And my thought for today is this: Am I so ridiculously cursed in love because I ignored millions of chain emails and there may have been some truth to them? I mean maybe the fact that I am not superstitious doesn't matter, the curse has still gotten me. And because there were SO many of them, I am now doomed to a life of solitude, with the exception of possibly a few pets. Its possible, right? Even if just one of those chain letters that I ignored held even a smidgeon of voodoo power to effect my love life, I'm fucked.

Kryptonite?

2005-11-12T12:00:00.000-06:00

I wish my drunken blogs were at least funny, but lately they seem to be nothing more then nonsensical self pity. Kryptonite was probably the worst analogy to use for what I was describing there (but I have to give my drunk self credit for spelling it right at least).

Anyway, Strumming Neighbor showed up at my house at 1:30am, smoked pot on my porch and then fell asleep on the couch. Not exactly the dream boat I have been looking for. I mean, don't get me wrong, next time he plays for me, I am going to fall madly in love all over again. For now, however, I will try and remind myself on a consistent basis that chronic pot smoking stops being cute after a certain age and he's pretty much reached it. There are reasons I was never a fully committed Dead head. I loved the fashion and the decor. I'm even one of the very few people in the world that actually likes the smell of patchouli, but I was just never good with the drugs.

Kryptonite

2005-11-12T04:45:00.000-06:00

Strumming Neighbor just left. His roommate, of course, is still here "entertaining" my roommate, but he took this opportunity at 2:45am when I woke him up off my couch to leave. I don't understand boys. I will never understand boys. And the truth of the matter is, that I really wish I could be on a real bonafide hiatus so that I actually didn't care to understand boys.

I am kryptonite. Boys think I am interesting. I can lure them in once or twice, but after that, they realize something that makes them run to the edges of the world from me. Strumming Neighbor is just one in a long line that has made this realization. Can someone clue me in? What is it that makes it impossible for me to get past the first date, or semblance of date?

I also smoked more then one cigarette tonight, after having quit for almost 6 months. Ew to that, and ew to kryptonite.

Alright people, lets be honest with ourselves.

2005-11-11T00:33:00.000-06:00

While I am sure that you, my loyal readers, have realized that I have been lying to myself, I am still coming to terms with it. So in an effort to acknowledge what you all already know, I have a confession to make. The "hiatus" was a farce. I may have convinced myself that I wasn't dating, but really, I was just pretending not to date while I kissed (and in the case of the wedding, a little more) a couple of boys on the side. Besides Line of Suck and then the rebound Rock, there is now a new minor obsession, the Strumming Neighbor. All of this being said, its now time that I admit that I am in no way, nor was I ever, on a hiatus. There, I said it. Its out in the world.

But now I feel free to gush about the Strumming Neighbor a little. He's my norm. Tall, skinny, socially awkward. Beyond adorable. And he has the extra added bonus of being an unbelievable, David Gray meets G. Love, sexy musician. I've always had a weakness for the boys with guitars. We don't usually talk to our neighbors. Most of them are Hassidic Jews and they don't really feel the need to socialize with us. Then, to our surprise, two nice boys crashed our Halloween party and they live right across the street (they are not Hassidic Jews). Stacy and I have befriended them, so last Friday when we had some people over, they came to.

Strumming Neighbor brought his guitar and it was all I could do not to orgasm while sitting there listening to him. He's amazing. After everyone else left, he stayed until 5am talking to me. And I smooched him. Though I'm not sure that was the right move.

Before I had met him, I had seen him outside of his house a bunch of times. It turns out his cell phone doesn't work inside, so he has to make all his calls on his front porch. Well, since Friday, I have seen him out there multiple times but he's always on the phone. I just can't go over there and say hi if he's on the phone, can I? So we haven't talked since then.

Now, there are a couple of side notes. A) Even after 2 hours of sitting in my living room talking about nothing in particular, I had to make the first move. And while the kiss was fabulous, the whole thing was a little bit odd. He's a starer. And he makes me incredibly nervous (but kind of in a good way). B) He's in the middle of a divorce. Yes, a divorce. He's 26. I'm not as freaked out about this as I think I probably should be, but its notable.

Anyway, there will be updates to the neighbor situation. Stacy and I are plotting a sneak attack this weekend.

By George, I think I've got it!

2005-11-07T10:56:00.000-06:00

I have made a new and important discovery that will change the face of my dating life forever. It seems that the funny feeling I get in my stomach (otherwise known as butterflies) when I am with a boy I really like is not the hints of interest and passion that I have been confusing them with for so long. It is actually a sophisticated early-detection system that is indicating to me that this is a boy that will soon go running screaming into the night (sometimes literally, but that's a different post). Interestingly, the more intense the feeling, the quicker this fleeing will occur. And if there is actually physical contact, for example a kiss, that intensifies or prolongs said butterflies, the flight becomes even more inevitable, and possibly accelerated.

This is an amazing discovery. Looking at it now, with all of this scientific evidence piling up, it seems so obvious. How I have gone 26 years without noticing the correlation is unbelievable. I have done some intense study on this issue in the past few weeks and the evidence is conclusive. However, I may be the only model that has been implanted with this detection system. It seems in some people, butterflies actually do mean interest and passion. For me, on the other hand, it is a clear indication of imminent flight. Similarly, the lack of butterflies, indicates a boy that will continue to pursue long after I have tired of him.

On the surface, it seems that a discovery such as this should alter all future dating prospects. Knowing what I know now, logically I should modify every theory I currently employ while looking for my next perspective date. Realistically, however, I'm obviously not that bright. Instead, this discovery is going to go where many have gone in the past, filled away under the good ideas that no one paid attention to.

Memories to last a lifetime

2005-10-30T10:36:00.000-06:00

We have all done stupid things at other people's parties. Snooped through the medicine cabinet, fell in the pool, lampshades on the head, that kind of thing. However, I feel like there has to be a place where you draw the line. Never should you be so drunk that you can't distinguish when you are going too far. Apparently there are many that don't share that sentiment.

Take last night for example. The girls and I threw our annual Halloween bash with all the bells and whistles. There were two strobe lights, a smoke machine, a seven foot dancing pirate skeleton, it was really beautiful. Most everyone that showed up were our friends that we know and love and all was going smashingly well. Then Ray came, with some friends. Now, we love Ray too, but the boy has some questionable friends. This was a harem of scantily clad coke whores that showed up drunk and just continued to fall deeper into the abyss. Multiple times people stopped me to ask me who the crazy drunk girls were and without fail they were always talking about the slutty nurse and the hell's angel. The hell's angel, whose name I do not know, but who we shall call Cokie McGee, was absolutely the worst house guest in the history of house parties. Loud, creepy, and completely out of control.

Strike one for Cokie (which will sound tame compared to Strike two) was when Cokie was waiting for the bathroom. She quickly dismissed the line of others waiting as insignificant and cut everyone off to get in. After a good ten minutes in the bathroom, she opened the door, asked all standing there if they had any coke, and when the answer was no, she closed the door again and spent another 20 minutes in there. This wouldn't be so bad, we are in LA after all, if I hadn't been recounted this story by a friend of mine that had been in the line. This friend is a fellow mentor in a volunteer program I work with. Not someone who I would want to think I was condoning or encouraging the use of cocaine in my house.

Strike two will live on in infamy as the possible reason we will never have a party in this house again. It will strike fear into all those that dare to pass our doorstep. It has tainted this house for all that live here. The party was wearing on and the guests had become more random. There had been a little drama here and there, but mostly things were tame. Many guests had spilled out onto the the front porch and down the stairs to the lawn. Some of us were standing outside when we saw a cop car drive by and we decided we should turn the music down. Kim went up to Stacy's room to take care of that and will forever be scarred from the experience. Apparently Cokie had made some new friends and they were celebrating their friendship by having a threesome on Stacy's bed. I'll say it again for effect, they were having a threesome on Stacy's bed!

Stacy went understandably ballistic. There was beer thrown, Cokie was smashed against the wall, the entire party was kicked out, and we were left with a hollow place were the dignity of our house once was.

An Ode to Drunk Blogging

2005-10-17T02:21:00.000-05:00

I may need a chaperone for my internet access as well. I love the 2AM blog that makes very little sense to anyone but myself and those chosen few who have been bless with hearing the story.

First off, yes, I did fall off the wagon. I went on a date. My hiatus was officially interrupted (and I mean interrupted, because its on again in full force now). Last weekend I went on a date with a boy who I thought seemed dreamy, but in fact turned out to be just another run of the mill asshole who deserved neither my time nor attention. We went out, I thought we had a good time, and then he never called and didn't return the call I made to him. And beyond that, he had the audacity to show up at the bar I introduced him to on the night that we were celebrating my "Insubordinate My Ass" party to commemorate my last day at my very craptastic job. And then he was rude to me. Kim was there, she'll verify. He literally said hello to me and then had his friends close in ranks around him like I was some sort of threat to their existence. I'm not going to harp on this other then to say that this boy sucks and I am very disappointed by the situation. He was so not worth coming out of hiatus for (which also sucks because he was an un-fucking-believable kisser).

But back to the topic at hand, which was the drunk blogging and text messaging that occurred on said evening. I apparently should not be given any access to any type of technology when I have had a little too much to drink. Besides the whole not being witty thing, I am actually extremely dysfunctional at actually working the technology. Hence the Line of Suck text message. What actually happened there was that I was trying to say "You kind of suck. Why won't you talk to me?" But unfortunately, I haven't mastered the predictive text on my new cell phone yet and the text came out saying "You line of suck. Why won't you talk to of?" Which is actually pretty damn funny, but not exactly portraying the same message as the intended text. I have since heard from a mutual friend that asshole and his friend's have adopted "you line of suck" as their favorite new insult. That's okay, because so have my friends. I'm hoping it catches on and we see it on the OC or something in six months.

And as far as the drunk making out goes, I take the fifth. I have no idea what that was about. His name was Rock and he thought I was pretty, which apparently is all you need now a days to cop a feel with me.

You line of suck

2005-10-15T04:42:00.000-05:00

That was the text message I just sent to the guy I went on one date with last week who hasn't called. It should be a rule that as soon as I have had more than one beer, someone should take my phone away from me. I shouldn't be allowed the privilege of my phone when I am this drunk. Now I just look like a jackass and I made out with some random ass guy and I really think that I should have a chaperone at all times. Just a thought, but I may be a danger to myself.

El Coyote

2005-09-28T16:03:00.000-05:00

In what seems to be a definitive sign that my life has hit all new levels of the bizarre, I have a new problem: Coyotes. Literally. I'm not kidding.

In my quest to be the consummate professional, I agreed to stay on at this god-awful job for a few more weeks to help them transition (oddly enough, the transition period is longer then my actually employment, but I digress). The office is located at the base of Griffith Park, the largest urban park in the United States. Its a few thousand acres, so I'm not surprised that there is wildlife around. I am, however, surprised that said wildlife wants to be my new best friend.

Big Marv, the warehouse manager who also loves me a little more then I am comfortable with, called me outside this morning to show me a coyote that was standing on the hill above our office. A little while later, it was napping next to my car. Big Marv scared it away and then decided to go home and do his laundry (if he has nothing to do, he just leaves, which is interesting because if I did that, Crazy Boss man would track me down and kill me, but again, I digress).

At noon, I leave to take my normal lunch break and I am half way to my car when I see him (the coyote, not Big Marv) just staring me down. As I get closer to my car, it starts coming near me. I rushed into my car and drove away. Who are these assholes that say that coyotes are likely more scared of me then I am of them? That thing was salivating when it looked at me and something that is supposedly scared of me wouldn't be walking towards me licking its lips. When I got back from lunch an hour later, it was still there! It started walking toward my car again. I honked the horn and it ran away, but I stayed in my car for a few minutes on the phone with Caleb trying to figure out what exactly to do. All of Caleb's suggestions included reckless destruction of property and nonexistent weapons, leaving my only option to make a run for it, again.

So now I am here, in my office, but I really think its out there waiting for me. Plotting. Aren't those things supposed to be smart? And I made the mistake of looking up some facts; coyotes can run up to 40 mph. I sometimes don't think my car is going to make 40 mph anymore. My ulterior motive for posting this right now is so that if people stop hearing from me for a few days, call animal control or something because that means I am still in here and that smart little fucker found its way in and is holding me hostage or eating me or something.

Here I go again on my own...

2005-09-23T10:26:00.000-05:00

This may be a world record for me, but after just 12 days on my new job, I quit. I didn't have time to tell you all about my new job because...pooof!...Its gone. The professional jargon is that there were "fundamental differences between my work style and my new boss.'" In layman's terms, he's unstable and he made me cry and I don't like him. His words of wisdom to me when I told him that I was quitting were "In the adult world, you will need to learn to work with other people's working styles." Fuck you very much, you bipolar muppet, was my first reaction (in my head, of course, I didn't say that out loud), but it also made me think a little.

When I was in college, we would always joke about my horrible track record with roommates. In my four years of undergraduate, I had 20 roommates. Twenty, 2-0. Now, in my defense, some of these were in group houses and naturally finite situations like dorm rooms and study abroad, but 20 is really a staggering number. How does someone go through that many roommates? If I recounted some of the stories, you would get the picture that many of these people were also a little bit eccentric, let's say. And now, that I am faced with leaving a second job with in two months of losing my last job, I really have to question: Is everyone else eccentric, or is it me?

Maybe I am the nutty one. Maybe I am the one that is just a little bit to the left of center. I think its been well defined already that I am not the brightest color in the crayon box (midnight blue), but am I creating these situations or do I attract these people? Which ever the answer, I am consistently in situations where the odd and the unbalanced are drawn to me, be it in my dating life, professional life, school life, etc. This recent job experience is just another glaring example of this. How do I stop the madness, or in this case, the madmen?

Alright, enough personal psychoanalysis. The big question is, what the hell am I going to do now? I need to find a job that has minimal interaction with people (since that ceases to be my strong quality) and that doesn't require logic, since I think I shed mine somewhere along the way. I may need to go back to the library.

Am I just boy crazy?

2005-09-20T00:42:00.000-05:00

First, I must apologize for how long it has taken me to post anything. Between work and school I am beginning to think that free, flowing personal thought is a thing of the past. But here I am at 10:30pm at night trying desperately to post something of worth.

That is, of course, a futile endeavor. I think I am boy crazy. It amazes me that I haven't noticed it before, but I am a little on the nutty side. My friends would probably tell you that I have always been a few crayons short of a full box, but I honestly think that this is a new development. Since around July, after the whole ridiculous chain of bad dates, I've pretty much been on a dating hiatus. With the exception of a few random hook-ups, I have just taken a break from the opposite sex. I've actually really enjoyed it. I've stopped all experimentation with Internet dating. I haven't given out my number at any bars and I have politely refused more then one advance. And I have given a resounding "no" to anyone suggesting they may want to set me up.

I have, of course, been entertaining the idea of hiring a cabana boy. All I really want is a man to show up at my house on Sunday morning with coffee, bring in my morning paper, and then cuddle with me while we do the crossword. And that's it. He should just leave when we have finished the paper and there would be absolutely no need for contact at any other times. Is that too much to ask? Is that something that a guy would be interested in? I mean it really is the definition of No Strings Attached, right? Without the sex, of course.

I am too emotionally drained to pretend that I have any mental capacity to carry on anything but the most superficial of relationships right now. That hasn't stopped me from developing a completely inappropriate crush on a boy at school. I want to pass him notes and ask him to meet me on the playground at recess. Do you think he'd want to be my cabana boy? How do you ask someone a question like that with out sounding like you are looking for a hustler in Vegas? Maybe I should come up with a better position title then cabana boy, something more professional. My brain is too tired to think of anything now. I'll work on it.

Tonik my ass!

2005-09-01T13:25:00.000-05:00

For anyone who has read this blog with any frequency, you may remember a post a while back in which I talked about what a horrible nightmare I can be to customer service people. I'm either your best friend or your worst enemy. Well, today is an example of the later and Tonik Healthcare is now going to know what it is when I decide to become an unholy terror and rain down upon them my vengeance.

Blue Cross, which I normally think to be a very reputable and easy-to-work with company, in their great wisdom has decided to try to appeal to the hip twenty-something generation (namely: us) by creating Tonik Healthcare. Their website is bright and shiny with pictures of snowboarders and bungee jumpers and the insurance plans have names like Thrill Seeker and Part-Time Daredevil. The plans themselves sound pretty good, they include dental and are pretty affordable. When I got laid off, I looked into the plans because they seemed like they would be less then COBRA. The salesman I talked to assured me that plans can go into effect the next day, or if they need to look into something, they'll let you know within a few days whether or not they will cover you.

Well, that is certainly not what happened for me and this is a copy of the letter I just emailed them:

To Whom it may Concern:

As a corporation that is desperately trying to attract the twenty-something set, I was sorely disappointed at your customer service to someone who is smack dab in the middle of the demographic you are trying to attain. I applied for your health insurance after being assured that I would have an answer quickly. I had recently been laid-off and wanted to avoid expensive COBRA costs and just get individual health insurance until I found a new position. I applied on August 29th, my current health insurance expiring on August 31st.

I was denied coverage, which I'm not debating. Those facts are completely separate. The issues that upset me so much are twofold. One, instead of contacting me through the email address I provided for you to let me know that I was not going to be covered, you sent out a letter, that was obviously not going to reach me until after the intended start date of September 1st. How is that playing to this demographic? Most twenty-something I know check their email a dozen times a day and open their mail maybe twice a week. I provided you an email address for a reason, I wanted a quick response and was assured I would get one by your sales representatives.

Secondly, the woman who answered the phone actually mocked me when I was obviously upset about having to call and find out this information instead of having been contacted by you. She told me that you have millions of customers and that you couldn't contact everyone. Well, I'm sorry to hear that my concerns and obviously my insignificant premiums are not enough to make me an important customer worthy of any type of practical communication. I will be very happy to post on every website that I know of, including my frequented blog, that this is how you will be treated if you are denied Tonik Healthcare. If you are so overwhelmed by your millions of customers, I can only imagine that had I received coverage from you, the customer service would have been more of the same.

I was impressed by your website and the services you were offering, but I am horribly disappointed by how I was treated and what's more, by how obvious it is that you don't actually know what it is that this demographic wants.

Sincerely,

Natalie

Just for the record, nobody mocks me without retribution. And when I called the salesman I had been dealing with and told him of this horrendous treatment, he actually said "I'm sorry to hear that, those people hate their lives." What? Is that an excuse for poor customer service? I seriously think that had this been a face to face encounter she would have stuck out her tongue and sang "na na na boo boo" with her thumbs in her ears. This woman was completely inappropriate. And you know what, if you hate your life darling, do the rest of us a favor and find yourself a whole and crawl in. Don't go answering phones for Tonik.

So here starts my campaign against Tonik Healthcare. If they are really so overwhelmed with their millions of customers, maybe I can do them a favor and help them lose a few.

(by the way, I completely lied about how "frequented" my blog is, but I'm okay with that.)

Spam

2005-08-25T19:52:00.000-05:00

Is anyone else's blog being spammed? I keep getting all these comments on my posts from people selling things and most of the time it makes very little sense. I'm totally fine with people posting their own sites or whatever when they relate to my blog, but don't try and sell crap on here.

I switched it so that only registered users can post comments, but let me know if there is anything else I should be doing.

Thanks!

Queen Bee Sting

2005-08-25T12:10:00.000-05:00

I've been neglecting my blog. You would think that since I am unemployed and all, I would be posting all the time, but there are a few factors that keep me from doing that. One, I feel ridiculous writing every day, like are there really people reading this on a daily basis that care what I have to say? And two, I am actually a lot busier then I had expected. Its rare that I have a block of time to sit down and write (just ask my unwritten thesis that I was supposed to be working on all summer). I'm thinking about getting a keyboard for my Palm so that I can type up random stuff when I'm out, but then I think that is pretentious. Oh well, I'll try to get better. Maybe when I start school again next week, I can put myself on some kind of schedule.

If you couldn't assume from the title of this blog, I got stung by a bee this week. I was at Santa Monica Beach with some friends from out of town and their parents (I would never go to the beach of my own volition). An old friend from Chicago and her sister were in town with their family for a family vacation and they called me up to hang out. I had originally envisioned this as a one or two night thing, but it turned into a three day, four night extravaganza of mostly drinking from which I am still recovering.

Back to the bee sting. Monday was the calmest of our outings, I took my friends and their parents to Santa Monica to got to the promenade, the pier, and to just lounge on the beach. I had just gotten on the phone with my mother about something that at the time seemed imperative to talk about, when I noticed a stinging pain.

Me: "Mom, I got to go"
Mom: "Every thing okay?"
Me: "No Mom, I think I just got stung by a bee on my ass."

My friends then proceeded to examine my ass for me to determine that yes, that is in fact a bee sting. We walked over to the lifeguard to see if he could help.

My friend: "My friend got stung by a bee, do you have anything for that?"
Lifeguard: "Sure, let me take a look at the sting."
Me: "Its on my ass."
Lifeguard: "Alrighty then, no need to see it, take this topical cream. And make sure there is no stinger left in there."

We go back to the towel and my friends once again have to examine my ass. As they are doing that, two things happen. First, they bang heads as each tries to get a closer look. It was seriously turning into a Three Stooges bit. Then, their parents come back from their walk on the beach to find their daughters examining my ass. It was really an interesting position to be in. Their mom joins in the fun as we tried to figure out how to open this topical stuff the lifeguard had given us. You'd think five grown people wouldn't have that much trouble, but we did. My friend's mom finally had to go back to the lifeguard to ask him how to do it.

The whole thing was a complete debacle. Meanwhile, I was wearing a black floral bathing suit, a yellow tank top, and black pants. Could there be any truth to the theory that bees like yellow and black? I always thought that was bull, but it does seem pretty suspicious. I was Queen Bee for the rest of the day.

2005-08-15T13:51:00.000-05:00

As promised, here are some fabulous pictures of the Santorini courtesy of Paul. You really can't understand her in her full majesty unless you are there, but she certainly was a sight to see. I'm just sorry that I don't have pictures of the infamous swimming pool to finish the virtual tour of this lovely establishment.

As you can see, its seriously the Kellerman Resort, though there was no dancing instructor as far as I could tell.

Harry Potter and the Skinny Dipping Muggles

2005-08-08T15:15:00.000-05:00

Jumping back onto the Harry Potter band wagon this summer, I am trying to catch up with the books I haven't yet read. Being so dedicated to that pursuit, I lugged the 800+ page "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" with me to a wedding in New York. I finished the book, which was much more depressing then I had expected, and have returned from this wedding a little worse for the wear. My roommate took one look at me when I got home last night and made me recount the entire event, despite the fact that it was 2am and she had work today.

I knew this was going to be a whirlwind weekend. I had no delusions that this was going to be relaxing in the least, but I was absolutely unprepared for the unbelievable world of hurt I am in today. My arms ache, my legs look like I narrowly escaped the jaws of some mythical beast, and my head is floating approximately three feet about my body. How I ended up this way is a blur to even me, but I will try and recount as much of this as possible before my floating head makes a mad dash for it.

This was the wedding of my nearest and dearest college friend and her college sweetheart. I have known both of them since the first week of freshman year. Despite not having spent much time with them since graduation in 2001, I still consider them some of my closest friends and therefore was not going to miss this important day. This proved to be a trek of epic proportions however. When I originally made these plans, I was still employed and thought that I only had a limited amount of vacation time. So even though this was a long way to go, I only planned the trip for three days and could not change the arrangements after my untimely sacking. The wedding was way out at the north eastern most point of Long Island making it neither easy nor convenient to get to. I took a five and a half hour red eye to New York on Thursday night, landing at JFK at 7:30am having slept about 2 hours. Then I took an hour long cab ride from hell with the absolute dumbest cab driver to her parents’ house, where I then got into a car with the bride's brother for the 2 hour drive out to the wedding location. All told, this was an 11 hour trip from door to door.

Once in Southold, I spent sometime with the bride at her grandparents' house, had lunch with the family, before checking into my hotel (there will be pictures of that grandiose establishment very shortly, no amount of descriptive prose could capture the majesty that is the Santorini). My roommate, Paul, had been arranged by the bride, another friend of hers that was coming solo. We had never met, but we were instant best friends. I think it was a combination of sleep deprivation and bordering insanity that we shared. We had about an hour to shower up and change for the rehearsal dinner. I was working on about two hours of sleep but was trying my best to be alert and awake for the forthcoming festivities.

The blur begins at the rehearsal dinner. I drank entirely too much, ate way too little (the lobster looked offended that I was going to eat it, so I gave up that endeavor rather quickly) and scraped my knee on the merry-go-round that I had foolishly decided to jump on while it was moving. I have vague memories of ill-advisedly flirting with the videographer before waking up at 11am the next morning safely tucked away in the Santorini.

The ceremony, which we were late too, was beautiful, and we had just enough time to head back to the hotel, change shoes and jump on the shuttle bus to the reception that was being held at her grandparents’ home. It was picturesque. They had set up an enormous tent in the back yard that over looked the bay. The day was perfect and there was more alcohol then I ever thought could be consumed by one party. Here are the details which I hazily remember. Again I was entirely too inebriated to be accountable for any of my actions. There was a frenzied amount of dancing, which I believe has added to my soreness. Then there was more flirting with the videographer. A rousing chorus of “Build me up Buttercup” which has been immortalized on the wedding video, was followed by a walk on the beach with a fellow wedding guest that I don’t particularly remember meeting. A high-school make-out session with him on the dock (which I later learned was supposedly off limits because it’s so unstable) ended with him ripping my adorable new dress almost completely off. My new superhero, Heather, one of the bridesmaids, whipped out her emergency kit and had to SEW ME INTO THE DRESS! It was so beyond repair that that was the only way I could respectably rejoin the wedding reception.

I don’t particularly remember the shuttle ride back to the hotel, but I was with my hotel roommates, Paul and now Rachel, a college friend who had joined up Saturday (I do know however, that there were at least two drunk dials to friends in LA, but those conversations may be forever lost to me). Once back at our hotel, I ripped myself out of my dress and more debauchery ensued. There was ocean skinny dipping with some other Santorini guests, during which I somehow bruised the top of my foot to a lovely shade of dingy. This was followed by pool skinny dipping that included scaling a fence while almost complete nude. Happily, I escaped any harm in this horribly hazardous endeavor. I can not say the same for some of my fellow dippers.

Sunday is a smudge in my mind that included brunch, the beach and a harrowing 13 hour odyssey back to Los Angeles. All told, I look like I have been beaten, and thrown down about 100 flights of stairs, but this has to be the best wedding I’ve ever been too. Excuse me while I go die now.

Odds and Ends

2005-08-03T17:54:00.000-05:00

I went on the interview. I didn't see her. I have absolutely no idea what it was I expected to happen if I did, in fact, see her, but I didn't so its a moot point. Don't really think I want the job either, but whatever. That really wasn't the point of the interview now was it?

In just-as-boring news, I am actually accomplishing some of the things on my list. I have sent out 8 resumes (with only the one I didn't care about responding, but its better then nothing). I have almost completely cleaned out the boxes of crap in my room. I keep having those moments when I am looking through my shit thinking, who saves this stuff? I had a flight itinerary in there from 2003. Like that's useful? And I have cooked for myself twice so far this week, unless you count heating up frozen dinners, which would make it four times.

I want to start smoking again. I think it would help pass the time much quicker. But I won't.

A little ex-boyfriend stalking...

2005-08-01T16:09:00.000-05:00

I just did something so beyond ridiculous that I don't even know how to justify it to myself or anyone else. Sometimes, my own dysfunction is even beyond my comprehension.

I have known since I moved to LA that my ex-boyfriend from college lives out here with his girlfriend. I have had no desire to see him whatsoever; especially since the girlfriend was never my biggest fan (she went to college with us too). It was sort of an abrupt relationship. Hot and heavy for two months, then a really odd sexual encounter, ending with me moving to Ireland for 6 months and us breaking up. When I got back from Ireland, he was dating her, she automatically despised me, and we really never talked much after that. He decided to move out here when he graduated (he's one of those film guys) so she transferred to Loyola to be with him. Other then seeing them at the Grove once, where I successfully hid behind my champagne glass and they never saw me, I have heard little of either of them since.

Then something came over me about a month ago. On a lark, I googled his name, just to see what would come up. And something came up. His engagement announcement. To her. It was bound to happen. I'm just not really sure why I needed to know about. I then noticed in the announcement that it said she worked in nonprofit in LA. It’s not that vast of an industry out here, so it took me 2.2 to find out where. It’s some organization up in the valley that works on civic engagement programming. Which all sounds vaguely familiar since I work(ed) for a nonprofit organization that did civic engagement programming. It seemed odd that my life had inadvertently taken such a similar path to this woman.

And today, I started the insanity. I was being very good today, sending out resumes and cooking my lunch, as I had promised in my previous post. And I came across a job posting that I had absolutely no interest in, until I looked at the organization. It was the very same organization that said woman works at. So, I sent in a resume, and they wrote me back. I think I'm just curious. To go in, have an interview, and "accidentally" bump into her. Is she the same as she was in college? Would she remember me? Does she still hate me? I absolutely recognize the stalkerish qualities of all of this, I just couldn't help myself.

The organization is interested and reviewing my resume. Hopefully, they won't ask me in for an interview. I just don't think I could quell my curiosity enough to say no.

To code or not to code?

2005-07-29T18:13:00.000-05:00

Alright, I was trying to be all stealth with my blog and use code names etc., so that when I talk about these ridiculous things that happened to me, anyone else involved would not be embarrassed. However, now that all of my friends have started blogs and are reading mine, they already know who all these people are. It just seems to be complicating things to use stupid names. Right?

By the way, I think its extremely funny that the Blogger spell check does not recognize the word "blog."

The art of creating your very own drama

2005-07-28T17:30:00.000-05:00

So Philly Boy has emailed me, twice, for the first time since December. And tomorrow I am seeing my therapist for the first time since the incident. Meanwhile I am still ridiculously bored and unemployed, even though in my head there is all of this drama. And I should be working on my thesis or sending out resumes, though all I seem to have been able to muster up the energy to do this week is clean out my closet and take the rejects to Goodwill. All of this being said, I am starting to feel like a ridiculous, narcissistic, drama queen that is as useless to others as she is to herself.

In response to my own ineffectiveness, I am writing myself a To-Do list, that I am posting on here, for which I want anyone reading this to hold me responsible. If I do not accomplish at least two of these tasks per week, for the next few weeks, I give you all free reign to berate me to the best of your abilities. I don’t know what that will do for either of us, but, hey, I’m trying….

Here we go:

Send out 5 resumes (can be done multiple times in one week, i.e. if I send out ten resumes, that counts as doing this task twice)
Organize file folders in boxes and closet. I still haven’t organized the folders I took from my last job 3 years ago and now I have more boxes from cleaning out this office. I doubt I need any of it, but I will never know if I don’t go through it.
Research and READ 5 pieces of source material for my thesis (again, can be done multiple times in one week. I have a bunch of things researched already, but they do me very little good if I don’t actually read them).
Figure out health insurance situation.
Cook myself a meal at least three times in one week. This is not as easy as it sounds, my cooking repertoire only goes about as far as the George Foreman will take me, so this also involves some ingenuity in the culinary department.
Research and apply for 3 scholarships. It would probably be good if I at least attempted to fund my education through something other then loans, especially considering my aforementioned hatred for Sallie Mae.
Go on at least one networking lunch for job or thesis purposes. I know too many people in the nonprofit world to not at least make some good use of my time.
VOLUNTEER! It’d be swell if I actually practiced what I preached with all my fabulous free time.

All right, let the madness begin. Classes start in 5 weeks and I should be able to accomplish something before my life becomes consumed with school again. I’ll update about my progress on these tasks, and if I forget to, remind me. Its 3:30pm now and I have to be able to accomplish at least one of these before Dr. No takes me out for a drink.

Back in the Saddle Again

2005-07-25T18:23:00.000-05:00

Here I am, back in balmy Los Angeles. Not 10 hours off the plane and I went to my first job interview. I think it went fairly well and would be a departure from what I've been doing most recently. It would be a great transition into the new and different for me. Keep your fingers crossed.

Having spent the last two weeks literally just drinking, eating, and shopping, I'm having a little trouble readjusting to real life again. Especially since my flight was delayed 2 hours and I didn't even crawl into bed last night until 2am. Interesting flight though. I might have mentioned before that people I don't know have a tendency to tell me their life stories. It’s especially prevalent on long plane trips. It’s actually pretty cool. Complete strangers feel so comfortable with me that they pour their hearts out about anything and everything. Six months ago I sat on a plane from LAX to Chicago next to the West coast editor for US Weekly and he told me about his experiences with a brain tumor that changed his life. I've since read one of his books, They Don't Play Hockey in Heaven, which is extremely interesting and well written. I bought it, so if I ever get it back from Steven, anyone can borrow it. I absolutely recommend it if you like books a little off the beaten path. Check him out here: Ken Baker.

Last night was no exception to my “meeting strangers” pattern. I met a guy in the terminal that was having a horrible traveling experience. I let him borrow my cell phone and we became instant BFF. The flight was delayed, so we hung out at the gate and talked. He told me about his parents who are world renowned therapists and how he is following in their foot steps by practicing a type of therapy that sounds like a combination of physical therapy and psychology. He helps children with developmental disabilities or who have suffered severe trauma to regain the use of their senses. Some of it sounded like it bordered on quackery, but he was so damn charismatic that I truly believe he is doing some amazing work. He travels the world working with children with all types of ailments and he says he's seen extraordinarily positive results. (he has a website, but my google stalking tricks can’t seem to uncover it, so I’ll put the link up when I find it.)

When we finally boarded the plane, he told the guy with the seat next to me that he was my boyfriend and the man switched seats with him. We had a great flight. We drank and made fun of Ms. Congeniality 2, which we watched without sound because we didn't really want to watch the movie. And he told me more about his life. He's a day older then me. He was a happy accident (he's the youngest of three, his closest sibling being 12 years older then him). He's still working towards his doctorate and he's extremely well versed on international politics. Overall, a fabulous flight.

I was so downtrodden about coming back to Los Angeles after a nice two week break from reality, you know, being unemployed and all. But sitting next to this random guy that disclosed his life story to me just reminded me that job or no job, I'm still me. With all the quirkiness and craziness and randomness of it all. So that was good, I'm feeling quite refreshed about the whole situation.

And now it’s back in the saddle again, looking for a job and regaining my social life, albeit in a much less spendthrift way.

P.S. I have a few new links on the side bar. Funny blogs from fabulous friends.

Adding Insult to Injury

2005-07-18T13:09:00.000-05:00

My life is beginning to resemble a really bad romantic comedy. Something that would star Ashley Judd or Kate Hudson or one of those cookie cutter cupie doll types. A 26-year-old woman loses her job (yeah, I got laid off) and heads home to the small suburbs of Chicago to refresh and renew. There's the hometown bar scenes, the heart to heart with parents, the brother with his quirky family, all rolled into some fabulous fun for an hour and a half. I mean really the only thing missing is the high school sweetheart that still can't get over our heroine. Since I didn't really have a high school sweetheart and was an even bigger fag hag in high school then I am now, I think I am shit out of luck in that regard. Basically that means that there will be copious amounts of drinking and shopping before I head back to LA on Sunday.

That being said, this has just not been my month. First the pre-break up, which on its own, is little more then an amusing story. Then there was the therapist debacle, which stung, but also can be written off as a forgettable offense. But now, I was laid off. Laid Off! By an organization that I was planning to leave anyway, but that has no business assuming they could do anything without me. I don't think I realized how ludicrously pathetic my life was getting until I started this blog. I am so not feeling sorry for myself. There is no doubt in my mind that things could be much much worse, but sometimes I really have to ask myself "What the fuck is going on?" Is there anything more pitiful then an overweight, unemployed nonprofit worker? And when you add in my lack of sex life, I'm really headed in the 400-lbs, cat-owning, librarian direction. No one wants that. I would be much happier with the martini-drinking metropolitan diva (a la Sex and the City type) that has a fabulous job and sleeps with twenty year olds. The only problem is that I didn't sleep with twenty year olds when I was twenty and I'm unemployed. That prospect doesn't look too promising.

So its back to the drawing board. Somewhere between the librarian and the diva, there has to be a happy medium. I'll let you know when I find it. But for now, more shopping (on my parents' dime, of course) and much more drinking...

Worst Customer Ever

2005-07-07T17:19:00.000-05:00

I am THAT customer. The one that all customer service people hate. I will ask you tons of asinine questions which you will then have to repeat multiple times because, honestly, I'm not very bright sometimes. I will ask for your opinion on things, even if I have never met you before, simply because I assume if you work somewhere, you should be an expert. I will take hours to make a decision, even if I have come into your store knowing exactly what I want and then will probably still not buy anything. And if I don't get the service I expect, I will complain. I complain a lot.

I'll complain on the spot, like if the food I ordered isn't exactly what I want or if someone was mean to me, but mostly, I am a fan of the strongly worded letter. Its amazing to me what you can get if you take the time to sit down and compose a note. (You have to read Consumer Joe, it made me laugh until I hurt). I write letters for good things as well, like when the goddess at Progressive took care of me so well after my car got broken into, but in general, most of my letters tend to be critical, if not down right nasty.

Since the invention of the online customer service page, where all you have to do is send an email, I send emails probably once every two weeks or so. Most recently it was a rant about the empty Washington Mutual ATMs (which was accompanied by at least three phone calls, one of which ended with the flustered customer service attendant saying "Ma'am I would love to help you, but I can't remove the charges until you have actually finished the transaction." I called him from the Bank of America ATM machines).

But today, I have run into to something that I just don't know what to do about. After a less then satisfying trip to Burger King, I find myself with no where to send my strongly worded letter. They don't have an address on the website, nor can you send an email. I can't even find an 800 number if I wanted to read my letter to someone over the phone. It seems my only option would be to actually go into the restaurant again. And I just don't know if I care that much. I think I've gone to Burger King a total of three times in the past year, so it's not like I am a valued customer or anything. Honestly, I'm not naive enough to think they care about my letter. But most companies at least humor me. Even if they have trained monkeys responding in a back room somewhere, they give me an outlet to voice my frustrations. I'm just flabbergasted that Burger King isn't even putting on the facade of consideration for their customers' complaints. So now I am at an impasse. Do I get off my ass and go to the offending Burger King to complain, or do I just let it go and move on? Sadly enough, I really do have to think about this one.

And man, I really wish I hadn't started playing with their online interactive nutritional value chart. Damn that zesty dipping sauce!

Oh, and just because I know there are those that hate the likes of me, here are some seriously funny customer service blogs...
Worst Call
Call Center Purgatory
The Supervisor of Customer Service Hell

No Mas Tequila

2005-07-05T13:16:00.000-05:00

In the spirit of the 4th of July, as our founding fathers envisioned it, I got smashed on tequila yesterday! Poor Dr. No passed out on the neighbor's lawn. Some dead alien thing was pulled out of the pool. And a 50-something friend's father tried to tongue me. I'm sure George Washington would have been proud.

Our story starts a long, long time ago (otherwise known as last summer) when I met a boy (who will from this point forth be referred to as Philly) that I really really liked. He was visiting his brother, PB, from Philidelphia and was in for the weekend. We hit it off automatically. One of those spark moments that you read about but rarely feel. We spent most of his trip together and when he came back a few months later, we did the same. And then it fizzled. I'd get an email here and there. He sent me a picture of himself at my favorite bar in Dublin (I used to live there and gave him a list of spots to hit when he was taking a trip out). But overall it was just a little fling that was never actually going to lead anywhere. Now, I don't usually consider myself an obsessive person. I have some tendencies, but normally, I'm fairly down to earth. But with this particular situation, I think I had it in my head that it was going to be so much more then it ever could have been. So I was a little bit devastated when the whole thing fell apart.

Flash forward to this past weekend. Lucky Bear and PB are planning a bbq at PB's uncle's house because PB's parents are in town. I adore PB but I felt weird about meeting his parents. It just felt odd to ingratiate myself with these people when it took me so long to get over my little infatuation with Philly. But everyone, including my mother, insisted there was no reason to feel like that. So I went, begrudgingly, with Dr. No in tow. When we got there, I immediately felt like I had been over reacting. Everyone was so nice. It was mostly Lucky Bear's co-workers, who I know and love. We swam, did a bunch of tequila shots, barbequed. All was moving along smashingly. Then the tequila started to kick in (and for everyone else, the pot they were smoking). Philly's Dad, Dr. No, and I were sitting at the bar. Dad starts asking all types of questions about my friendship with Dr. No. Then he starts insinuating that the only reason that I am best friends with a gay man is to mask my own homosexuality. He fully admits that he is bisexual therefore he thinks he has some expertise. He will not stop insisting that I am obviously a lesbian. Now I could have pulled out the "I slept with your son" card, but I really didn't want to get into it. Fortunately, Lucky Bear and PB had no problem pulling it out for me.

But he persisted. Especially once Dr. No became very intoxicated and I was taking care of him. Obviously my attention to the gay man was all about my own confused sexuality. I got so frustrated that I left the party at one point and called my mother, who gave me permission to politely tell him to fuck off. And then things got extremely uncomfortable. He would stare at me until I noticed and then lean over to who ever was next to him and say something sleazy about how gorgeous I am. Then came the touching. I couldn't turn around without him hugging me, or rubbing my back. It was like a bad TV movie (and I should know. I watch a lot of Lifetime). And then, more then once, he tried to kiss me. Now I was smashed, but these were no "aren't you sweet? you're my son's friend" kind of kisses. These were "if you weren't pushing me away, I'd tongue you right now" kind of kisses. It was at that point that I told Lucky Bear we needed to leave. Dr. No was still ridiculously drunk, but he had driven separately, so PB promised to take care of him. Lucky Bear and I walked to the car, Dad followed me and kissed my neck as he hugged me good bye. If I didn't adore PB so much, this was the point that I would have kneed Dad in the nuts.

I almost had a hissy fit in the car when we finally got out of there. Who does that? He's supposed to be a parental figure and he's hitting on a woman who he knows has slept with one of his sons, while his wife is passed out in the bedroom. Ew. That's all I can say. Ew! EW! EWWWWWW!!!!

Next time, I'm going with my first instinct. Stay home and watch Lifetime.

How do you break up with your therapist?

2005-07-01T21:01:00.000-05:00

Yes, it’s true, I am another Los Angeles cliché. I go to therapy. Basically, I think its about the fact that I'm a yenta. I like to talk, I talk a lot, and sometimes its nice to have an unbiased opinion about whatever it is I feel like talking about.

But it might be time to cut my losses. I've been going to my therapist for over a year now. She's on odd one. Late 50s, wacky Jewish mother type, Berkeley lovechild. I've always known she was a little bit off, but mostly I've liked her. There have been moments when I've felt like she wasn't getting me. She also has a tendency to talk a little bit too much about her. I know more about her drug addicted 17-year-old then I really need to. Then today, there was an incident.

I see her every two weeks, so she had heard about PDG, but hadn't heard of the pre-break up phone call. I started to talk about the situation and how it upset me was because I felt like he was rejecting me based on my personality (which, as I have said, seems highly unlikely). She interrupts and starts asking me questions, the normal therapy banter. And then she says something that for the life of me I can not find any therapeutic value in. She asks me if I think PDG might have broken up with me because I am a "larger woman," her exact words. I'm not a skinny girl, but I ain't no Mama Cass either. I've always labored under the pretense that any guy who approaches me and dates me is attracted to me, at least in part, because of the way I look. Why exactly is my therapist trying to give me a complex? I know what I look like. I see what size my clothes are. And you know what? PDG knows what I look like. He knew when he met me at the party. He knew when we went out for drinks. He even knew when he called me for the second date. Where is the logic in suggesting that he then decided I was too fat?

More importantly, where is the logic in bringing that up to a patient who obviously already has some self confidence issues, but has worked through the weight thing enough to be okay with herself? I'm at a loss as to why this conversation even happened. What was I supposed to do with that? Even if that is why he stopped seeing me, what exactly can I do about that? I'm never going to know why exactly he broke it off. Unless I start instituting exit interviews for all my boyfriends, there are some things I'll never have definite answers for. Somehow, though, encouraging me to psychoanalyze a guy I barely know to find out if he's been socialized into thinking I am unattractive seems a little counter productive to the concept of therapy.

But how do you break up with your therapist? And is this one horrible session really reason enough to end a year long relationship that overall I have felt pretty good about? I'm not sure I can feel comfortable talking to her about relationships anymore because now I feel like she is assuming my weight is the reason for all my failures in dating. And then there is the horrendous task of finding a new therapist, or just giving up all together.

This is so frustrating. If I wanted to feel fat, I would have just called my grandmother. It would have been a lot cheaper.

The Licker

2005-06-28T18:41:00.000-05:00

It’s pretty much been a week of work work work. Very exciting, I know. It’s at times like these that I'm going to break out an oldie but a goodie from the never ending bag of my dating embarrassments.

Like many urban, working women, I have taken the foray into internet dating once or twice. Somehow I got it into my head that reading some over-blown self description with grainy photographs was better then chance drunken meetings in bars. I had tried two different sites with varying degrees of failure and had all but given up with the online dating idea when I had dinner with a group of successful, older women who were raving about the successes of The Onion Personals. Apparently witty, intelligent, attractive men were just pouring off this site and all a woman had to do was put up a profile to find interesting dates. How bad could that be?

I put up a profile. I tried to be witty and was fairly proud of the end result. Within a day or two I had a couple of interesting hits (and a few not so interesting ones that led to yet more stories, but that is for another post). After consultation with Lucky Bear, we picked one out that looked promising. His email was adorable, his pictures looked good, and his profile was intriguing. We emailed back and forth, IMed for a few days, and then decided to meet for coffee. I was really excited when he picked out one of my favorite neighborhood coffee spots, points for knowing good places.

The evening comes and I'm pleasantly surprised at how attractive he is when he walks up. Nicely dressed, cute, polite. When he suggests that we get food instead of just coffee, I'm totally up for that. We happen to be right next door to one of my favorite places. But he doesn't want to eat there. Though we are on a block with at least 6 restaurants, he wants to go down to Sunset to get Thai food. Whatever, I'm flexible. I ask if he wants to drive or if I should. Since he had walked there (about a mile and a half from his house), that left me to drive. I was a little put off, but no big deal.

We have dinner, everything is fine. He's laying it on a little thick, but not too horrible. He pays, even after I insist. Overall, at this point, I'm thinking second date, and maybe even a little action this evening. As we walk out, he asks if we can run across the street for a minute. I have no idea what's across the street, but hey, I'm going with the flow. This is where I went wrong. Across the street was a comic book store, where his favorite comic book writer was speaking. So now I'm geeking out with the kid and all the other creepies at the comic book store drooling over some guy I had never heard of. Not only that though, the guy pulls out a note book with questions he had written to ask the writer. The most exciting part for me was that Robbie Williams showed up. Oddly enough though, that may have been the most exciting part for my date too. When I pointed Robbie out to him, he squealed like a little girl and told me he had seen him in concert, twice.

We leave the comic book store after about an hour, but not before Geek boy gets a picture and an autograph. When he suggests a drink, I hesitate, which he takes as a yes. Once I realized that I was going to have to drive the carless-wonder home anyway, a drink seemed in good order. We go to a bar, he gets us drinks and we sit down to talk. It was loud and crowded, so he keeps moving in closer and making up reasons to touch me. I knew the date had to end when at one point he leans in to say something in my ear and then uses that as an excuse to start kissing my ear. That's when I conveniently became tired and remembered I had to work in the morning.

I drive him home, pull the car over, and hit my hazards. It’s a tiny street and cars have to go around me because there was no place to pull up to the curb. Now I'm not really sure what signals I was giving off, but apparently he was reading them as if I wanted to rip off my clothing right there in my car. Nevermind that I hadn't pulled off the street, ignore the fact that my car wasn't even in park, and particularly forget that I HADN'T EVEN TAKEN OFF MY SEAT BELT! He was going for it and really didn't seem to mind that I was not participating at all. I pretty much was just focused on my rearview mirror, hoping no one would hit me. Then out of no where, as if this was expectable by any stretch of the imagination, he leaned down and licked the length of my neck from my shoulder to my ear. He must have felt the uncontrollable cringe that came over me, I literally shuttered, but yet that did not deter him. Finally I just pushed him out of my car, said good night, and drove away. I went home and showered. Strange men do not usually lick my neck without some sort of prompting. And I absolutely was not prompting!

He called and emailed for a few days, but since I couldn't even see his number on my cell phone without shuttering and reliving that disastrous licking, I never returned his call. I'm still at a loss as to what part of my non-interest encouraged that type of behavior. Needless to say, my Onion profile has now gone dormant.

Kindred Spirit

2005-06-23T18:24:00.000-05:00

Date Dork

Death to Sallie Mae and all her god damned sisters....

2005-06-22T17:50:00.000-05:00

What the hell is with the Mae Dynasty? Sallie, Nellie, Fannie, Ginnie, their black sheep cousin Noel Levitz (obviously a Jew. Levitz, hello. But what kind of Jew is named Noel?), and then there is the Mac side of the family, Farmer Mac and Freddie Mac, probably the ones in charge of the annual family hootenanny. Plus a whole bunch of other subsidiaries. They all have these benign, Mayberry names to hide the fact that they are infiltrating the government and taking over the country, starting with my damn Federal Stafford Loans.

Being a poor nonprofit worker and a struggling graduate student, at the present time my student loans equal approximately 1.5 times the amount of money I am going to make this year, before takes. After taxes, plus the interest adding up on these loans, don't think about. It’s painful. And not to get off the original topic, which is my hatred of Sallie Mae, but fuck the older generations who say we are so bad with our money. What do they expect from us when the only way to get a decent education is to sell your soul and your first born? Then when we get out of college, we get crappy paying jobs and can only afford to live in the cities with the good jobs by racking up insane amounts of credit card debt. It’s the damn system of "Keeping up with the Jones'" that our parents and their generation created that is putting us in the financial shit box right now.

But I digress, back to the creepy Mae family tree. In my quest to be financially responsible, I decided to consolidate my graduate school loans with undergraduate loans. I did not realize the paper storm this would be or how many times I was going to have to call the Sallie Mae call center (otherwise known as Purgatory), located somewhere in India, where they just wake people up as the phones start ringing.

If you ever have to consolidate loans, call the Great Lakes Educational Loan Services (they consolidated my undergrad loans). I want to send these people cookies or something, they are fabulous. No matter how many times I call, I never wait on hold for very long, everyone who answers the phone is extremely knowledgeable, and they are always so nice! They're Midwesterners, enough said. When Sallie Mae started sending me notices that I should consolidate the loans that I have with her sister Nellie, I called the number she gave me. After a few horrendously nonsensical calls to her, I knew I needed to get my loans away from the evil Mae sisters. Their customer service people were useless. I am not one of those people who is morally against international call centers. If a corporation is treating their employees well, I don't care if my call is routed through the North Pole. The reason this bothered me so much is because the customer service people had no idea what I was talking about, worse yet, they had no idea what they were talking about, and the connection was so horrible every time it sounded like someone was speaking Chinese through a fan.

Then I decided to switch these loans over to Great Lakes. I made one very informative call to them and had all the forms I needed to make this happen. The only problem was that I needed to inform Wicked Witch Sallie and her evil minions. This process was literally a two hour endeavor of phone calls, holding, transfers, and translation that left me wanting to obliterate all Mae family members from the face of the Earth. And the best part about it, is that once someone finally understood what I needed, all it took was one lousy three sentence fax and it was done (hopefully, I mean, they have the fax, but that doesn't mean that the trained monkeys they have manning the fax machine can decipher the message).

The evil empire that is the Mae family may have trumped me. It’s too soon to tell. I do, however, get this creepy Scientology feeling from them. If I go missing, they'd be the first place to look.

Retail Therapy

2005-06-20T17:50:00.000-05:00

Alright, so the weekend started off a little rough. Why PDG decided that 10:30am was the best time for the pre-break up phone call is beyond me. I'm actually fairly confused about why he felt the call was a necessity at all. Let's review.

Met at a party (where I believe I took the initiative to introduce myself to him)
He called me a few days later, talked for over an hour (mostly about him, since he never actually gets around to asking about me)
Met for an awkward drink (see below)
Invited me out with his friends (see below)
Called me with the pre-break up phone call, a.k.a. "Can we just be friends?" speech

Basically, what is throwing me off is that at this fetal stage of a relationship, most guys would simply stop calling. As a twenty-something woman, who has done a fair amount of dating, I'm just more prepared for that scenario. Maybe it's a sad state of affairs that I am so taken aback by this phone call. I have to respect that he wanted to have the conversation and I can't imagine it was an easy phone call to make. And he probably just wanted to get it over with, hence the 10:30am call.

To really be honest, what stings the most is that this pre-break up is based on one of two things from my point of view. A) he's not attracted to me, or B) he realized he doesn't like my personality. Or worse yet, both. He has no other basis for the pre-emptive strike (unless you count Lucky Bear and Dr. No's theory that he's a closet homosexual, which again, with my dating record, is not completely out of the question). For a woman who considers herself equal parts adorable and witty, that just hurts.

So there was some retail therapy involved in the weekend. Drinking and shopping are the cures for pretty much anything these days. I know there are some who would say that that is unhealthy, but to them I say, if my therapist is okay with it, then shut the fuck up.

And anyway, PDG's friends are still calling Lucky Bear to hang out with us, so obviously someone thinks I'm adorable and witty. (And don't tell me that's faulty logic, logic plays little part in my life sometimes)

PDG's To Do List for 6/18/05

2005-06-18T13:06:00.000-05:00

Laundry
Floss teeth
Grocery shopping
~~"Just Friends" phone call to Rusty Blue before 11am~~
Badminton game at 2pm
Butcher a small animal
Watch Moulin Rouge

I'm sure he must be so relieved to have that off his list of things to do today, with such a busy schedule.

Olympic Champion of Social Ineptitude

2005-06-17T18:30:00.000-05:00

No stupid mistakes on Saturday, but definitely a realization that I need to be more on the ball.

Pizza Delivery Guy (I actually just wrote that as Pizza Delivery Goy, which is kind of funny, because he is in fact a goy and does not actually deliver pizza) is still in the picture. Normally the dates are so horrendous I am left wondering if I need to change my cell phone number or move to a small island in the Philippines. After our awkward, but overall enjoyable date, I was actually looking forward to hearing from PDG again. When I hadn't heard from him by Tuesday (our date having been Friday) I called him Wednesday night when I was out with friends and asked if he wanted to join us for a drink. He said he was busy (with a pretty lame excuse) and I figured I was being blown off. To my surprise, however, he called the next Monday. He had an event he was going to and he invited me along.

I was thrown off when he said "Bring Friends." Alright, so it’s a group thing. I enlisted my roommate Lucky Bear to come with me. He sent me an email the next day with the details. Now the thing that through me off the most about this email, is the part that I can't really share, as actually putting up his name seems a little rude. But he signed his name like a frat boy nickname. Like if his name was Dan, it would have been signed D-Dog, or if his last name was Gilmore, it would have said Happy Gilmore. Do you see where I am going with this? Is that how you sign something to a girl you've gone out with once and have any interest in? When I called my best friend Dr. No, he dubbed PDG the Olympic Champion of Social Ineptitude. I've fully admitted my tendency toward dating the socially awkward, but I think Dr. No may be right. Its one thing to be completely obvious in your awkwardness, like close talking, or inappropriate touching, but this guy is stealth. He's completely normal in social settings, he just seems to have no concept of how to act around girls, or more specifically, me.

Lucky Bear and I decide to go to the event anyway, we're on a new kick of introducing ourselves to strangers, so this seemed like as good a time as any. And as Dr. No and I decided, it might be a good story to add to my collection. The event was fun, he seemed genuinely happy to see me. There were only two issues. One, this was a "meet the friends" event. Which I didn't know and was unprepared for. Apparently this was a work thing. That's fine, my social ineptitude is not so severe that I can't deal with that. Other then the fact that one of his girlfriends has an obvious thing for him and the daggers shooting from her eyes at me all night made me severely uncomfortable. Second, one of his friends, Jam, who was absolutely a sweetheart, was obviously the town gossip as well. Jam and I were the only two in this multitude of people who don't smoke (I quit a month ago, so I'm trying my best). Whenever everyone else went to smoke, he and I were left inside watching drinks. First conversation was normal, and then he went in the wrong direction.

Jam: What do you think of my boy?
Me: He's cool, this is only the second time we've hung out
Jam: You two look good together, I'm feeling it
Me: Yeah, I think we're both having a good time
Jam: Good, because that boy needs to get laid.

Let that sink in for a minute. Seriously. Just think about it.

WHAT THE FUCK WAS I SUPPOSED TO SAY TO THAT? The kid hasn't even kissed me good night. Needless to say, this put me a little bit on edge.

PDG comes back, we talk, its fine. He never actually asks me about myself, which is a little off-putting (ex: I ask him what music he likes, he gives me a laundry list, and then just looks at me, when really, at that moment, it would be perfect to ask me what I like). It’s getting late, it’s a Wednesday night and I get the feeling PDG doesn't stay out partying too often. At midnight, he decides to go home. Lucky Bear is having a fabulous time (I think she gave out her number twice that night) so we aren't leaving. I walk him out and it’s the same as last time. Hugs me good bye, says we'll talk soon. I mention a friend who's a musician that's playing tonight. I tell him I'll email him the details, which I do. He wrote me back last night and said he couldn't make it because someone in his office was leaving and they were having a going away party. Side note on that - Jam has already called Lucky Bear and invited her to the same going away party; my invitation must be lost in the mail.

I'm completely at a loss on this one. Will he call? Is he interested? Are we buddies? Have these been dates? All of these are questions floating around in space with no discernable answers as of yet.

Possibilities

2005-06-11T23:42:00.000-05:00

It seems the only thing between me and making a huge mistake is the fact that I have been up since 4:30am. That could help or hinder, I have no idea. I guess we'll see what happens.

From the beginning (sort of)...

2005-06-09T17:01:00.000-05:00

The name of this blog comes from a notoriously bad date I had that happened around ten months ago. As recently as two nights ago, I had people asking me to repeat the story so that they could bask in my embarrassment for just a little longer.

I should preface this by saying that I have very odd taste in men that has often been ridiculed. My roommates and I always say that one of the reasons that our friendships last is because we never go for the same guys. Part of that is also the fact that I only date men that are so socially awkward that no other self respecting woman would be caught dead with them. Its not that I search them out. I think its something in my pheromones that attracts them. Whatever it is, they always find me, and I always take the bait.

This particular date is completely my fault. There was actually a moment the night that I met Creepy that I leaned over to my best friend and asked him if he thought this guy was semi-retarded. Why I would then go out with this guy is beyond all understanding. I take complete responsibility for how bad this date was. I went in, eyes wide open, to a situation that couldn't have turned out as anything other then a ridiculously bad date. What I did not know until after the fact was that this guy had already been nicknamed Creepy by a group of my friends who didn't seem to think this information was relevant prior to my going out with him.

Creepy and I met at a party. We talked a lot that night, both of us completely inebriated. That is possibly why I ignored the obvious signs that this guy was a little off. I wrote off the close-talking and over-eagerness to alcohol. Mistake number one. When he asked for my number, I gave him my home number, not the cell. The cell is reserved for people whom I actually want to talk to. In an odd turn of events, however, despite the fact that we rarely answer the home phone, I answered the night he called and agreed to go out with him that Sunday. No time was set, but as it was a date, I assumed it was dinner or drinks, some sort of evening activity. You can imagine my surprise when he called at noon and said he was coming to pick me up in an hour. There was no way that was going to happen, so we compromised and settled on 3pm.

He had made this big deal about how he had the whole date planned out. When he showed up at my house, his big plan consisted of a choice between bowling and pool. Neither sounded appealing, so I chose the lesser of two evils and went with pool. I live just south of Hollywood and there is a great pool hall right on Hollywood Blvd. Creepy had other plans and instead took me 10 miles out of the way up to Glendale to a pool hall he had heard was fantastic. It was closed. So back down to my Hollywood pool hall we went, and didn't even end up playing pool. We just got some food and watched football. He was nice, very attentive (a little too much for a first date) and we didn't lack for conversation. He was definitely a close talker and felt the need to be touching me at all times, which should have been a huge red flag.

After we ate, he suggested a movie. Sounded good to me because it required very little brain power, specifically the movie we chose. Now picture Hollywood, where we were at this point. There is the Arclight and the Manns Theaters to the West, a couple of theaters in Los Feliz to the East. And most importantly, the Grove and the Beverly Center, both within blocks of my house, where he would eventually need to drop me off, just southwest of us. But no, those are not good enough theaters for Creepy. He insists we go all the way to Culver City, again, a good 10 miles from where we were. We see one of the worst movies in the history of man, The Forgotten, and at this point I am ready to go home. Its like 7:30pm, we've been hanging out for 4 hours and I knew 3 hours ago I wasn't interested.

However, my naiveté is raring its ugly head and when he insists on having a drink, I agree. Little did I know that the drink was at his house, which is next door to the theater, which obviously he planned all along. Creepy was a sneaky little bugger. We get up to his place, where he proceeds to give me the grand tour of his one bedroom apartment. I noticed right away that while he has a roommate, who is home, there is only one bed in the bedroom. I'm not sure what to make of that situation and since I pretty much lost all tact much earlier in the night, I ask him. Turns out, Creepy sleeps on the couch in the living room. What kind of guy insists on bringing a girl back to his place when he doesn't even have a bedroom? Answer: Creepy McCreeperson.

Now this is where it gets really special. He relegated his roommate to his bedroom and takes me to the kitchen to get a beer. I shit you not; the beer was barely open and in my hand before the boy mounted me in the kitchen like a schnauzer in heat. As I grappled with the current situation, which was this man humping my leg, I think I went into a state of unparallel shock. I didn't move, I didn't respond, and yet here this guy was dry humping me in his kitchen with his roommate not twenty feet away in the bedroom. I can't even tell you how long this went on, because I think its been buried somewhere in the recesses of my mind. Eventually he finished, I guess, and asked me if I wanted to see one of his films. He had earlier told me about his days at L.A. Film School and was apparently eager to show me one of his masterpieces, which is, I can only imagine, the logical next step in his bizarre mating ritual. We go and sit on the couch, his bed, and he puts the movie in. He wrote, directed, and starred in this picture, which was twenty minutes long and for the life of me I can not remember at all what it was about. It was okay. It was a student film. Not sure what else to say about it.

Obviously, my response was no where near the raves he was expecting. The movie ended, he leapt off the couch, turned off the VCR, turned on the light, stared me straight in the face and said, "You hated it, didn't you?" The disdain in his voice freaked me out. "No," I replied, terrified that this was the part in the scenario where they found my body in the trunk of his car, "I thought it was funny."

"You didn't laugh" he sneered
"Oh, you can't use me as a litmus test. I laugh at awkward moments." Trying anything to appease him.
"Well this was hysterical" he yells.

Now I am grasping for straws. I have no idea what to say, so I pick out a character in the movie, the sidekick Dave, and say "Dave's character was really funny."

"I know, I'm a horrible actor!" He seems genuinely hurt, well as hurt as an insane person can be.

He picks up my purse and tells me he is taking me home. I put on my shoes and we walk down to the car. Somewhere between the apartment and the car, something starts pricking my toe in my shoe. As to not upset him anymore, I don't mention anything and slip off my shoes quietly in the car. He doesn't say a word to me the entire drive. I don't even know if he is breathing at this point because I am afraid to look at him. We get to my house, and while he has been a gentleman (with the exception of the dry humping) the whole date, he barely even looks my way when I exit the car. I don't even think I was all the way out when he started driving away.
So here I was, standing at the bottom of my stairs, shoes in hand because there was still something poking me, after a 7 hour marathon date from hell. I get up to my porch and look at my shoe. There, having made its way all the way through the sole, is a 1-inch rusty nail sticking up right where my big toe should be. I walk into the apartment, where my roommates are all sitting on the couch. "How was it?" was the big question.

"At least the nail didn't go through my foot..."

The case of the Pizza Delivery Guy

2005-06-07T23:12:00.001-05:00

Sometimes I feel like my life is some sort of slow, boring Truman Show with really bad story editors. 75% of the time its totally uninteresting to the outside eye. Actually, maybe more like 95%. And then these random, ridiculous, completely out of nowhere things happen and I feel like I am in a fucked up (but usually fairly funny) nightmare that some reality show producer dreamt up.

Right now I am on my couch, all of my roommates are out with significant others, and I am in the worst mood. I feel emotionally unstable. The most recent date, which was Friday, hasn't called again, and its Tuesday. And since I am completely socially inept, I have no idea if that is normal or if I'm being blown off. Which is completely possible because I think he was pretty socially inept as well. I couldn't read what happened there at all. I just keep thinking of the Sex and the City episode where Berger tells Miranda "He's just not that into you." Why has that phrase become the mantra of the single woman? My friend in Phoenix says it all the time, like it makes things better. It doesn't make anything better. I mean who wants to think that? I would much rather think there was a death in the family and he moved back to New York suddenly to take care of his grieving relatives, all the while pining away for the relationship with me that was thwarted by timing and distance. None of that is true, of course, but its better then thinking he didn't like me.

He called at around 6:45pm on Friday night. We had spoken earlier in the week and I had told him my schedule was flexible. Since he wasn't sure what his work week looked like, I told him just to call when he had some time to get a quick drink. The call came as I was waking up from a much needed nap from a horrendously long day at work. I had been up since 4am, on my feet since 6:45am, working until 5pm. Maybe I was too eager. Being up that early is definitely a valid excuse to postpone drinks, but I liked him, and thought I was awake so I went. First mistake (well actually second if you count my horrible sunburn that should have prevented me from leaving the house for many days) was agreeing to the bar he suggested. This bar had previously been the scene of two horrifically bad dates, possible subjects for future entries. Bad karma.

I was relieved that he was as cute as I remembered him being through my jello-shot enduced haze of when we met. **Side note - I picked him up at a party a few weeks earlier by telling him he looked like my pizza delivery guy, which he did, but again, jello-shot haze.** We talked, no lull in conversation, things seemed to go well. Early on we had both decided that if we had more then 2 drinks we would be too drunk to drive home. I'm always a light weight drinker, not sure what his excuse is. After two drinks, we'd been there maybe an hour, I asked what the plan was. We had talked about maybe getting food and seeing as I was starving, it sounded like a fabulous idea to me. He went inside to close out his tap. We walked out of the bar, he asked where my car was, we walked to my car, he hugged me good bye, and that was it. I got in my car completely confused. I'm still completely confused. Where exactly did I go wrong? Was he blinded by my shiny red sunburn? Was he really insulted when I said I hated the Valley (but who really considers Glendale the Valley?). I'm pretty much resigned to the idea that he isn't calling at this point, but I honestly have no idea where I went wrong. Any insight would be fantastic.

So here we are, back on my couch, but now, two of the couples have returned and so instead of feeling like a loser by myself, I get to feel like a loser surrounded by couples. How fabulous for me. Its these moments that my decision to not have a television in my bedroom seems very mislead. But tis the life I lead, and now back to the 95% of my life that no one in their right mind would give a crap about...

Hello!

2005-05-31T18:56:00.000-05:00

I realize that many people believe they have funny stories and that their stories are worth telling, which is possibly one of the multitudes of reasons there are so many blogs on the internet now. I, too, believe I have funny stories to tell and after many requests to retell the same stories over and over, I've decided that a blog might be the right place to post these amusing anecdotes. Since most have to do with my ridiculously failing dating life, I will try to keep an air of anonymity, but, really, I make no promises. Some of the guys I have dated deserve to be outed as the ridiculous creeps that they are in the most public of ways. But I will try to keep this friendly (maybe). And we'll see what happens. And no, I don't plan to write everything about my bad dates, though they could keep us all busy for weeks. I do embarrass myself in massive amounts in all aspects of my life.