adventures in online dating part 5: Sweet Eli

I went on an amazing date today with a boy from the interwebs named Eli. Eli and I have been exchanging messages for the past 3 weeks or so, and by Monday I thought that it was time we met up. I messaged him to ask him out for coffee, he accepted, and we met at one of my favorite places at 3 pm. I beat him there, ordered an iced chai latte, and he called a couple of times to (1) tell me he was running about 5 minutes late, and then (2) tell me that he was having a difficult time finding parking.

I settled at a table, and looked up from the Tetris game on my phone, just as he was walking in. We shook hands and talked as he was standing in line for hot chocolate. The first thing I noticed is that he has these amazing medium-brown eyes that I had to keep looking away from, because they were making me nervous (in a girlie-giddy kinda way). We settled in at a new table, started asking and answering those usual first-date kinda questions. Everything felt really comfortable. Eli is from Cameroon and has a deliberate, gentle way of speaking that kinda makes you hang onto his words. Our conversation had a few natural long pauses but, overall, flowed pretty easily.

After our first round of drinks, we decided to walk a couple of blocks to a frozen yogurt place that we'd just discussed liking, and sat and ate yogurt and talked about our families and our future babies (well, not "our" future babies, per say..but how many kids we wanted, where we wanted to live, etc, etc). Then, when the yogurt was consumed, we strolled around for another hour and a half popping in and out of shops and talking, and talking, and talking. Eli and I seem to have similar personalities: we're both relatively reserved, but really great at one-on-one conversations. We quickly developed a rapport with one another which made it easy to joke around throughout the date.

Eventually we made our way back to my car that was parked in front of the coffee shop and he told me that he'd like to ask me for dinner, but that he'd already made plans to meet up with a friend. He, instead, asked me out for dinner on Tuesday night. I told him that I'd be busy on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, so we settled for a tennis match and dinner after work on Thursday (if the weather is nice), or just dinner if it is not. And then we shook hands again, because it seemed like the most appropriate gesture and he watched me get into my car before walking back to his.

He called me about 10 minutes after I got home to make sure that I made it safely and to tell me that he enjoyed our date! And now, Thursday seems so far away...

Please excuse me while I melt!

-L

adventures in online dating part 2: Jamaican Tim

I met Jamaican Tim on August 15th after nearly two months of online communication. I think after the crazy date with Jimmy, I was ready to meet someone older, and hopefully much more mature. I'm calling this one Jamaican Tim because he reminded me almost exactly of my best college guy-friend, Tim, except he was this adorable African-Chinese Jamaican guy who, unfortunately, didn't have an accent.

We met at my favorite coffee shop/wine bar so I sipped a glass of sangria while JT settled on black coffee. We had a great time with the classic getting-to-know you first date questions and I was amused by his little Tim-mannerisms...which included long thoughtful pauses in the conversations, and him verbally running through his entire thought process before responding to certain questions. It was charming. After the first date, JT invited me to his work Christmas party (a little premature?) and we made tentative plans for dinner the following weekend.

We talked once during the week--I was greeting card shopping, and the conversation went well until he strangely got weirded out to find out that I was at the grocery store. (Sir, its a little something called multi-tasking.) He rushed me off of the phone, and I declined to ask him out again until I had an art event to attend that I thought he would appreciate.

Date number two started out rocky--he hated said art event, and was super-anxious for a while. Literally pacing the floor at one point. Then, we went out for coffee and had another amazing night of conversation. Since the second date was five nights before my summer trip to England for the wedding, we left off with plans to reconnect when I got back to town in mid-Sept.

We talked a couple of times in late September, and then I just realized that he wasn't going to be the one for me and I let the whole thing fizzle. Lets face the brutal fact: I can't date someone who doesn't take initiative to ask me out...ever. Bye-bye Jamaican Timothy.

-L

7 first dates

I went on seven dates tonight. Well, seven dates, that lasted approximately 8 minutes each. Yes friends, I went speed-dating. On Friday night, after I'd finished putting the final touches on a sewing project, I saw an ad on dear old Facebook for a speed-dating event hosted by this company called DateandDash.com. I emailed 3 close girl friends that I thought would be interested and after transactions were made, and we were all signed up, I couldn't help but to have a minor panic attack thinking, "What have we gotten ourselves into?" or better yet, "What did I get us all into!" I mean, you know me...or maybe you don't know me. But I don't normally DO stuff like this.

But, after shelling out 35 bucks...and remembering my new-found mission, I decided to try to have fun with it.

We all met at a very empty bar where we got our dating numbers, got our rating cards, and made small talk to avoid looking at all of the guys in the room. Literally, it felt like a middle school dance...well, minus the alcohol and minus the sketchy mirrored walls. Picture this: bad music, the girls huddled together talking to one another, the boys huddled together making jokes. Everyone avoiding eye-contact.

One of the guys started flirting with the organizer (I think someone forgot to tell him that she wasn't playing the game.)

8:30 arrived, it was time to begin.. The girls sat down at their respective numbers, the guys joined them, and small talk commenced. The first guy I talked to was the great opener. He was genuine and around the minute 6 mark we discovered that he had come with 3 of his guy friends. (Umm, 4 girl friends, 4 guy friends....can someone cue the camera crew for the cheesy chick-flick plot?) We laughed a little, just started opening up...and *ding!*...Time to switch partners.

Next guy was first the first guy's friend. He acted a bit weird when I asked him what he did for a living, but he explained that he was trying to make his bank job sound more interesting. We covered the basics: job, education, family, etc. I got annoyed when he'd ask a question, and then as soon as I answered, ask the same question again. But, I forgave him. It was a little intimidating knowing that you only had 8 minutes to talk and perhaps a little confusing trying to keep the dates straight.

So, I won't bore you with all the details, but all-in-all it was very fun. Really.

There were a couple of duds like the guy that I had nothing to talk about with, and the overly-religious guy who wouldn't step down from his soap box. And then a couple of gems: the cute guy who confessed to me that he doesn't like scary movies, and the guy from CO who has a close connection with his family.

After date number 7, we turned in half of our date cards (the other half was kept so that we could enter our matches online) we stood around talking to the guy-group and later comparing notes after they left. From the sounds of it, we all fell for one of the guys who wasn't part of the group, so it will be interesting to see if he matches with any of us. The 4/7 probability its looking good in our favor. And it will be interesting to see who, if anyone, matches me at all. I was pretty generous with my selections, choosing 5 of the 7 guys, so I guess, in 72 hours we'll see if anything was meant to be.

secretly waiting,
-L