Monday, August 31, 2009

First Date

So, I officially have a first date in Round Two of my dating exploits. A1 called me yesterday afternoon and we talked for over an hour. We're meeting for dinner tomorrow night in our neighbourhood.

We hit it off quite well on the phone. We never ran out of things to talk about and we probably could have talked for another hour if I hadn't ended it by saying that I had to go make dinner (which I didn't - I really wanted to get back to following the IMC racers on-line). Besides, I didn't want to waste all our conversation and have nothing left to talk about on Tuesday.

On paper, things look good: he's my age (6 months older), lives in my neighbourhood, likes to cook, is a good conversationalist, etc. I guess the only thing up in the air is whether we have any physical chemistry. From his photo he seems to be my type (bald, taller than me, not skinny), though he does have a goatee and I'm really not big on facial hair.

We are meeting at the restaurant tomorrow. I hope I remember what he looks like! Though I'm pretty easy tp pick out of a crowd, so he'll likely spot me before I spot him.

Sunday, August 30, 2009

Numbers Game

You'd think the odds would be in our favour: a quick search on PoF shows 393 women in the Toronto area between 36 and 46. When doing a search for men in that same age group, there are over 600!! 40 pages of profiles to scroll through!

In the age range I am searching for (42-48) there are 585 men and 177 women. Those are pretty good odds!

What does that say? That men are more likely to do on-line dating than women? That men are more likely to sign up for free sites such as PoF?

Interesting.

Saturday, August 29, 2009

More on Profiles

OK, I know I'm a bit of a spelling/grammar N@zi, but sometimes a person's bad spelling makes for an unintentionally funny headline. How about this:

"Do you have the lips of an angle? I am looking for a woman how has the kiss of an Angle."

Um, what kind of angle? Right angle? Acute angle? More like obtuse angle. LOL

"love's music playing guitar like's going too movie's specialy drive in at port hope (love it!)enjoy's soccer, the beach, and nice drive's in the country."

"Nobody reads this stuff anyway's. Ask me and I'll tell you. Picture's on request."


Enough with the apostrophes!!! Argh!

"i can give you a diatribe of who i am but that might be mundane. however it's probably better to get to the cruz of who i am and what makes me tick.

Diatribe? Are you really that self-critical and bitter? Cruz? That just sounds gross! At least he used "mundane" correctly.

Then of course there's ALL CAPS GUY, or cAP lOCKS iMPAIRED gUY. Or _./'\._ .•¤**¤•.•¤**¤•.•¤**¤•._./'\._*•. .•* •. .•*/.•*•.\ •¤**¤•.•¤**¤•.•¤**¤•. /.•*•.\ whatever the heck THAT means! And even Emoticon Guy (dancing bananas, rock hands, dancing smiley, etc.).

Other words/phrases that turn me off:

Class/classy (shudder)
Lady/Ladies (honestly, I'd prefer Gal/Girl to Lady!)
Someone to complete me (gag)

The list is long... I guess that's why I haven't found anyone yet. LOL

Profiles

I'm always interested in reading other people's profiles. Especially women, because I like to see how they present themselves. I wonder what types of profiles get more hits than others. I'm sure that the photo has a LOT to do with it. But what kids of user names and headlines (that show up ahead of the profiles) attract guys the most?

This is what people will see when I show up on a search on PoF (the photo at the left here on my blog is the photo I use). Comments are welcome (I can take it - I think):

Kitchen goddess!
"Totally normal and cool; not a whack-job." - that's what my best friend Leo says about me. I'm young looking (35, not 45), young-at-heart (25, not 45), great smile, awesome cook, fit, great friend, Toronto Ontario

To see the rest of my profile they have to click on my username or photo. PoF only shows the first X number of characters in your profile, without line breaks, so how much shows is up to them, not you.

Is this sending a compelling intro? Would a guy want to click on that link?

Update: So, the two guys I am communicating with right now both have names starting with A, so I will name them A1 and A2.

A1: 46, Gemini, lives near me. We have plans to get together on Tuesday. We chatted quite a bit on-line yesterday afternoon. He sounds nice, has a good sense of humour, and I think we'll get along. He works in the telecom industry and made a comment about having "computer geekery" skills (he's helping a friend buy and set up a computer today), but I don't really know what he does.

A2: 47, (profile says 44, but he fessed up to this in our first e-mail), Cancer. This is the one I spoke about in my last post. We had connected many months ago, but then lost touch, then I started seeing R, then he contacted me again. He replied to my message yesterday and said he's be open to talking and getting together. He's a cop. I think he's in Vice because he made a comment about how he only meets prostitutes and lawyers in his line of work. He plays the guitar. He's working nights this week and then has the week off starting Monday, so he has my number and will call when he can.

Friday, August 28, 2009

Bad form?

Back in the spring I was chatting with a few guys on line, setting up dates, etc. I met this guy (rockstar) and we seemed to hit it off on-line, but never met in person (he dropped off for a bit). Then I met R and we started dating. I got an e-mail from rockstar (while R and I were still together) trying to re-connect. I replied saying that I was seeing someone.

So, I am now back on the market. I didn't go looking for rockstar deliberately, but when I was on-line today he came up in my search (as did a few others guys I'd corresponded with) and was active as recently as today. I thought, what the heck - drop him a line to let him know that you're interested in meeting him. So I did.

Is that bad form (or just weird)?

BTW, I haven't heard from A yet (the one who suggested we get together on Tuesday) even though I can see that he's been on-line recently and has read my message.

Thursday, August 27, 2009

All the cool kids are doing it...

So, I haven't posted here in a while. I have another private/personal journal I write in, as well as a great on-line running forum that I post on that meets most of the needs that writing a public blog fulfilled.

But I thought I'd start things up again since a few of my friends have started blogs recently. The common theme among them is a sort of "Adventures in Internet-Datingland" approach. So here goes my contribution to that...

I guess the first important piece of information is that I recently broke up with someone that I'd been seeing for a few months. We met on-line. I had been "dating" lots of guys at that point, but when I met R I knew that there was something different about him. He was the 9th of 10 guys I went out with in a 12-month period - hardly a prolific dating life, but it had gotten more active in the first few months of 2009.

I'm not sure really what happened to cause the breakup. Even though our relationship was short-lived, it was pretty intense and we'd started to make plans for our future together. We just seemed to fit really well. But then I started to feel him drifting away from me toward the beginning of July. Part of that was due to his work/travel schedule, as well as some traveling on my part. All of these were things that had been planned long before we met, so we knew that we just had to make it to mid-August before all our previously-scheduled commitments were over and we could spend more time together. But as I said, once July approached, he started to become distant and the time we spent apart was difficult to bridge. Finally, the week after I got back from Lake Placid (and many attempts to talk and resolve things), things became unbearable for me and I decided to end it. Other than a very heartfelt e-mail I sent him a few days later (and a very brief reply on his part) we have not spoken or seen each other since the first Monday in August. I don't plan on contacting him, and knowing him, he is unlikely to contact me (stubborn Scot that he is).

It doesn't seem like a lot of time has passed, but I really feel like I need to get back "out there" and resume dating. I still have a bit of bitterness over how things ended with R, but I believe that I can put that aside and give my full attention/effort (and eventually my heart) to someone new.

So here goes...

I'm back on PoF (free site), re-posted my profile on F-S (but haven't paid yet), and am also thinking of joining another site that matches based on chemistry (but it's expensive and I don't really want to pay for that right now).

Anyway, I've met one guy: A. He lives in my neighbourhood and he asked if I'd like to get together on Tuesday. I replied "yes" (this morning), but I haven't heard back from him yet. Details to follow...