An Afternoon with Greg

The date, all things considered, went well. We had a good time at the surprisingly empty museum. The new exhibit is fascinating and we were able to keep up a good conversation both about the art and ourselves. (I learned that he was a little misleading on his profile when he listed English as his primary language and Russian and Polish as ones that he only speaks "okay" because he IS Russian, not Russian-American, but straight-up Russian. That's fine and all, I was just a little surprised. He grew up there, went to school there, and only came to the US for grad school. I think he's been in the US for about ten years.) He'd never been to the museum before, so it was fun seeing what he was drawn to and viewing the museum with fresh eyes.

After the first museum, we ended up going into another. Though they were both modern art museums, the second was very modern, in that the exhibit is being assembled by a collective as well as the visitors. It was really cool, but it took a little getting used to. I, for once, found myself being the extrovert as I tried to get him to interact with the exhibit, but in the end, we both contributed something.

Though we could have gone into a third and yet still different museum after that, we decided to spend some time walking around the area, as it was such a lovely day. We wound up down by the water, buying some fish and chips to eat on the pier. We went our separate ways shortly thereafter, but I had a good feeling upon leaving.

I don't know if I'll see Greg again, but it was a good date. After my previous bad dates, I was beginning to wonder if I'd ever have a good one; this was a welcome change. There are a few more guys who've just joined the dating site recently that seem interesting, so I'm going to do as the site is encouraging me to do, and initiate conversation with the guys rather than the other way around (not that I've not done that before, but I don't do it as often as I should).

I've got a date tomorrow!

It's with a really cool sounding guy I'm going to call Greg and I'm pretty excited. Here's why:

1. He just moved to this city and is from the opposite coast. He's curious to learn about the city from a native like me.
   
2. He's told me twice that he's excited.
3. We're not going to walk for miles—we're going to a museum to see a cool-sounding exhibit that opens tomorrow.
4. We haven't exhausted every possible conversation topic before the date (like I have with the last couple guys)

In other news, sfgiantnut21 just looked at my profile.

Bad Usernames: Part 3

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you know that I have a penchant for collecting usernames that I think are terrible and then writing snarky comments about them. If you don't like the snark, skip this post. If you like my commentary or are curious to know what some of today's males think make good usernames, read on.

• Bigmonolith (Some get bonus points for using an SAT word, but not you for using this crude euphemism)
•DarkHeartXIII (Oooh, you sound so dark and scary…)
• Expertgumchewer (and that's something that should make me want to date you?)
• Halfgoat (So you're a satyr? That's so not my type.)
• Hugefuckingdork (This is just wrong… especially if you know anything about whale anatomy)
• Iamkoolaid (Are you punchy?)
• Iatemykitty (a. I'm a cat person, b. I'm basically a vegetarian, and c. WHAT?)
• Jizzblaster (Attention whore)
• Mrubermensch (Regardless of how you choose to define übermensch, this guy's ego seems to be a bit inflated)
• Nofishtoday1 (Are you eating fish? selling? catching? I'm confused.)
• Paprikanator (The Terminator of Spice World. Ooh, maybe Sporty Spice could have a death match with Paprikanator… who would win?)
• Plaidfluff (How can fluff be plaid?)
• Rockthemullet (Mullets are gross—the hairstyle and the fish)
• Sfgiantnut21 (This guy just needs one more letter to make this into a great username. As it is, the name makes me wonder if he's only got one…)
• Sockgremlin (If I'm not mistaken, this is a character from a bad '80s kids' book)
• Superkittykill (I sure hope this guy and Iatemycat never get together… cat lovers beware!)
• Urnotcompatible (Well then, why should I bother?)

And thus concludes another round of "What were they thinking?"

Tonight's rejects

Well they're not really rejects as they didn't contact me, but I've rejected them based on the first few lines of their profiles (and one for his horrid username).

Reject #1:
- Username: opolis
- Profile opening: "I came to [this place I live] to reinvent myself as a more interesting person. I may have gone too far. Do you ever feel like you are the last sane person on earth? Is that statistically possible? You'll notice I'm very dynamic. I'm more deviant than I look, and I like it that way. I can have a good conversation with anyone. I'm always working on a stupid art idea or helping a friend with one of their's. I like to ride things with two wheels…"
- Picture: Definitely not very deviant-looking.
- Conclusion: Ugh.

Reject #2:
- Username: smallweiner4u
- Profile opening: "My name is smallweiner4u, if you want to know why, you'll have to ask! Isn't that a clever way to catch your interest?"
- Photo: Not bad, but not attractive to me either, no matter what the username.
- Conclusion: There are much better ways to get my attention and "capture my interest" than this. At the very least, he could have made it smallweinerforyou. There's nothing I hate more than text/IM abbreviations.

The Date

Alright, you guys, here it is. I would have posted sooner, but I went back to work this week and then spent the last four days in bed with a bad cold.

The date was really great. I took the bus down to his hometown and we hung out for the whole day. I hadn't been to the town for years, so it was fun to be shown around by a local. We toured the main street and made a mental list of places to visit later, walked on the pier and at the beach, ate a delicious Thai lunch (he's been to Thailand and he says that restaurant has the best Thai food he's had outside of Thailand), listened to music at his house, spent some time at the local amusement park (where he got me to ride a roller coaster, something that no one's been able to do for the last dozen years), and then went back to the main street to check out all the places we'd spotted earlier.

Had things not gone as well, I easily could have left many hours earlier; however, we got along so well that I ended up taking the last bus out of town. That all said, I didn't get the feeling that either of us was attracted to the other; rather, I think we'll be good friends. We've e-mailed back and forth in the last week and, at some point, he'll probably make his way up the coast so I can give him a tour of my hometown, but for now I don't think anything more will come of it.

I feel good about this and I'm really happy to have a new friend.

You've got to be kidding me

I just got this message on the dating site: "hey...you seem cute and sexy...lets make some plan to hangout some day n get to know each other better...reply me back if interested...till then take care..."

Uh-huh, sure. Of course I'll go out with you…

Dan

As I mentioned, Dan's back. For those of you who don't remember, he's the one I was e-mailing with back in March and April but who lives about 60 miles south of me. Shortly after we started chatting, he told me that he'd just started dating a girl (as in that weekend), but hoped we could still be friends. We'd been having good conversations and he lived so far away that I figured the most we'd ever be is friends and didn't see any reason to stop talking to him. What I never wrote here is that he and the girl broke up after about a month. About a week after he told me this, I stopped hearing from him. It was weird, but I was so busy with work and everything else in my life, that I didn't worry about it.

Then, last week he messaged me to apologize for being out of touch and we've been messaging a ton ever since (though not with the extreme frequency with which I was messaging and IM-ing Ian back in February). We finally talked last night—for an hour—and I'm going to meet him this weekend. I'm excited about this.

Coming soon: another bad username post. I've accumulated a number of good ones, including 'halfgoat,' 'MrMooEar,' and 'iamkoolaid.'

Dating non-natives to the area

So Superquail asked me why, "you only want to date people from the area, but you don't want to date people who grew up in the area," in response to my posts about Carl. The answer is fairly simple, really. I live in a big city but I have dozens of "It's a Small World" moments every year, times when I meet someone who knows my best friend from high school or lived down the street from me growing up. It's not that I'm afraid or ashamed of my past, I just find that it's nice to meet people with whom I have absolutely no connections. The chances of that happening with a local are slim, so I like to date people who aren't from the area. I guess I also like playing tour guide—being a proud native, and all—but that's a much smaller reason.

In other news, Dan's back. He sent me an e-mail the other day, after being out of communication since April. He wrote a very sincere apology for not writing and after a few e-mails we're talking about trying to meet up sometime soon. I assume it would just be as friends, but that's totally fine with me (I think).

I did something totally out of character

It is a well-established fact that when it comes to meeting and interacting with new guys, I'm pretty hopeless (hence joining the dating site). I have never slipped my number to a guy before and it's not something I ever plan on doing.

Except that I did. On Friday I was eating dinner by myself at this tasty fish restaurant and I was reading an old issue of National Geographic. The waiter happened to comment on this, asking if it was a good issue because he just got a subscription to it and hadn't read the current issue yet. I told him it was an old one, but he still seemed interested. Now, he was probably just interested in the magazine and making small talk, but something made me decide to leave it behind, for him, with a note written on the cover indicating a good article and, should he want any more back issues, my phone number.

I haven't heard from him—he's too cute to be single, anyway—but it would have been kind of cool if I had.

What is it with guys who like rodents?

First there was Groundhog Guy. Now there's Squirrel Boy. As you may have guessed, given my lack of posts since last weekend, the date was, well, fine. There was nothing really wrong with Carl except for the complete lack of chemistry between us. Had there been chemistry I could have overlooked the fact that we spent most of the five hours together engaged in sarcastic banter. Or that we spent over an hour in the botanical garden (it's big, but not that big). Or that every time he saw a squirrel he had to stop and take a picture of it with his cell phone camera. Or the fact that though we are the same age, I felt like I was about five years older than him.

Needless to say, we won't be going out again. Oh well. I tried.