Another what not to do

So we went out, we had fun, we kissed for awhile in the parking lot and you went on vacation. I had another date with someone else the next night. I didn't hear from you for a few days but spent most of them with my new "friend" so a week and a half later when I hear from you, you are old news. I tell you I'm going out of town (I really did) here are a few things not to follow that statement with:

1- That is too bad, I was hoping to meet and make out tonight and go on a date.

(follow up text) Not that I only want to make out with you, we can go on a date too

2- Text me when you get back

3- (a few days later) Hope you are having fun, text me when you get back

4- (the day I told you I'd be back, 9 AM) how was your trip? was I supposed to text you today or are you texting me?

5- (few hours later) I still haven't heard from you, home yet?

6- (few hours later) Just checking in

I would like to point out that I replied after text #1 and didn't say anything else.

I don't recommend this approach.

First dates 101- what not to do

As was suggested Ryan from the what not to say blog is so smooth he should teach classes. I think I met one of his students (or mentor possibly) and actually went out on the shortest, worst date of my life.

Here are a few things NOT to do on a first date. And yes, he managed to do ALL of them

1- do not be late.

2- when you are late do not expect me to have put us on the waiting list. They have call ahead seating, you picked one of the most popular restaurants on a Friday night because it's your favorite. Plan ahead!

3- Do not tell me I don't know how to do my job.

4- Do not tell me that the economic downturn is all my fault

5- I don't care that you make a six figure income, yes I caught all your references to it.

6- If you want to tell me how much you don't need your job because you make six-figures on your side job. Quit you job that is only wasting your time.

Now most people would have left at this point. Believe me it crossed my mind but I decided he owed me dinner at this point so I stayed and it only went down hill from here.

7- That is nice ALL of your family has a 6 or 7 (or more) figure income. I really don't care to know about them

8- That you think your cousin was lucky to aspire to become a trophy wife, you should keep that to yourself

9- Don't assume no one else can make a six figure income. Don't tell me I never had that so I don't understand what it's like to live in a home with a six figure income. My dad makes "six figures" if we really want to be technical.

10- Just because I quit a previous job does as an office manager does not make me a quitter.

11- Next time you want to rate how you feel about every nationality, don't. Especially when you go through the Polynesians, Asians, Middle Easterners, Europeans, Mexicans and Blacks and I was the minority in my school with exactly those groups and think quite highly of them.

12- You are not so cool that other races belong doing whatever you say because you are "the superior race"

13- you are 31 and in real estate. The military isn't begging you to join. Neither is the FBI. I am a military kid, I know a thing or two about it.

14- When you date tells the waiter you are leaving soon that is not a good sign. specially since you just got seated.

15- Do not tell me how dumb your previous girl friends were for not understanding their role was to allow you to make a six figure income. Its a first date, not the time to mention them anyway.

16- Don't tell me I'm an idiot and then try to touch me. Yes I glared at you and your hand for a reason.

17- When walking back to my car and I keep stepping away from you and end up walking us in a giant half circle, that does not mean I want you to stand closer to me.

18- When I tell you bye after only and hour and a half and then continue to walk another half way across the parking lot just a couple of rows over, that is not a good sign that you should contact me.

19- When you do contact me after, don't accuse me of anything.

20- For that matter, I still don't know why contacted me at all anyway after that.

I highly recommend no one else try doing all of these things on a first date or any other date. EVER!!

Officially My WORST. DATE. EVER.

What not to say, the long version...

Here is one of the emails I got.  We put the short version of on here already but the full length version was too good to ignore:

The only thing your eyes haven't told me is your name. Mine is Ryan. We seem so much alike. Kind of scary… Are you stalking me? You are aren't you? That’s not very nice… doesn’t make a very good first impression being a stalker. lol

Do you really exist? Sorry to be so cynical but shouldn't you be married to some trust fund quarterback? I guess I'm just hoping that just maybe you are different from your type and realized along time ago that there is so much more to life and you are praying not to do it wrong. Well here's to hoping?

I like to exercise. I go quite a bit. I love to run and run a lot. I use to be a big guy. I think that's how I dealt with a bad marriage. I have lost 73 lbs and still going. I would like to lose maybe another 30 or so lbs. I like being active; it is such the secret to success in life.

So tell me about you…

Ryan

What not to say to impress a girl

I've recently been talked into trying online dating.  True to form, there have ben plenty of "normal" guys and then the crazies who have not been disappointing!  Here are a few things I've been told that I recommend not saying to girls.  All of these were their opening lines to me also which just makes them even worse!

Example 1- The Skeptic

Boy:  Are you stalking me? Does a girl like you actually exist? Shouldn't you be married to some trust fund quarterback? Maybe there is hope for girls like you to realize there really is more to life then!

Example 2- Why date, let's just get married

Boy:Hi I'm Jared, I can't help but wondering, Why don't you have kids?

Me:  Cause being a single mom never seemed like a good idea.

Boy: How many kids to you want?

Me: I don't know, we'll see

Boy: What traits does your husband need to have?

Me:  Just to be my best friend

Boy:  Can I be your friend? I have 2 kids and you'd be great with them.

Example 3- The One-hit Wonder

Boy:  How about you come over, we can hook up and we never have to talk again if you don't want to

Me:  I don't think so

Boy:  You are a jerk, what a piece of work!

Example 4- The Expert

a few minutes into our conversation: 

Me:  So what do you do for fun?

Boy:  Mini-golf, bowling, doing puzzle together, running my hand through girls hair...

Me:  Yeah but when you are by yourself, what do you do? What are your hobbies?

Boy:  I used to collect baseball cards as a kid...

Me:  Ok... So what kind of music do you like?

Boy:  80's and Christian rock

Me:  I don't think we will have anything in common. I like country and top 40

Boy:  I can tolerate a little of that

Me:  Yeah but I also like sporting events, being outside, movies and hanging out with friends and family

Boy:  Well having been married I can tell you that actually having things in common doesn't matter, it how you feel about God that only really matters

Me:  Yes but I also want to be friends with the guy I marry

Boy:  Well having been married before I can tell you that you are being shallow and good luck finding that

Example 5- Right to the point

Boy:  You are the girl I've been looking for to marry, who are you?

The "Creative Ask Out"

Recently at work my boss was telling me about how his son has just started dating and how the "big thing" right now is to come up with creative ways to ask someone out. Anything from the entire football team lining up shirtless with a letter on their stomach spelling "Will you go to homecoming with me" to breaking into their room to decorate was mentioned. As you can imagine, this brought back so many memories for me. I decided to blog today about one of my experiences back in college......
As a sophomore in college I had decided that I was older and more mature than I was as a stupid freshman and had moved off campus to make a statement. Now, instead of going for a large apartment complex to live in, I decided that I wanted to be in a small complex in a quieter area where hopefully more people were normal. I had heard quite a lot of negative things about the large apartment complexes so I was hoping I had made a smart choice.
As it turns out, this was a HUGE mistake! The people around me were not normal! The guys were all almost 30 (to a 19 year-old sophomore 30 seems insanely old) and the girls were so rude. I decided that I could deal with older guys because I didn't want to date them because I already had someone that I liked and even though we weren't in the same state we were still close. The girls I just couldn't deal with, they were awful. So in an effort to avoid the rude girls I didn't talk to any boy that I knew the girls liked, I didn't want them mad at me for "trying to steal" their man! I only talked to the nerdy guys the girls ignored.

This of course came back to bite me because as you know, nerdy guys have a different perspective on the female species. Since girls rarely talk to them, the second one actually does these nerdy boys automatically think this means "She loves me! She talked to me so that must mean she loves me!"

There was one in nerd in particular that I always made sure to talk to be nice. Just to be nice is the key there. He was just so shy all the time and I felt like I could just say hi. Of course this was taken WAY out of hand in his mind. So the worst day of the year (as has been my mantra since the 8th grade) Valentine's Day was coming. I had, of course, called my sister and begged to watch her adorable baby boys on that day so that she could go out with her husband and I would have the perfect excuse to turn all dates/offers down.

The day before Valentine's Day I left the apartment in a rush and tripped (of course since I have horrible ankles) over a flower pot. I was furious that someone would put a flower pot right in the way of our door. Seriously, who does that? So I kicked it, then at a closer look I saw that it had my name on. I got the familiar sick feeling in my stomach that I get when I know someone is going ask me out and I don't want to go. I also saw all of the signs of a "creative date ask out." I remember physically shivering and dreading what I saw.

I came in and threw the dreaded flower pot on the table. I then proceeded to call every guy I thought could have possibly done this and accused them of trying to be all cutesy to ask me out! Each one of them told me that they knew I hated Valentine's Day and that they wouldn't dare do something like that because they knew they would face my wrath. So while I was trying to ignore the detested flower pot my roommate decided to dig into it and see what was in it. She eventually coaxed me into helping her.

The flower pot was full of chocolate pudding, Oreo cookies, gummie worms, a small baggie with 86 random letters, and a note that said "will you be my Valentine? If you say yet, meet me at my apartment at 8 on Valentine's Day." After finding this note I once again felt sick to my stomach and kept wondering what kind of idiot did this to me!!

We searched and searched for anything else that would tell us who this flower pot came from and just what apartment the note referenced. We got totally messy as we dug and dug around this flower pot! We dumped it out, and went through the whole thing with our hands! We found nothing, nothing at all. So we turned to the bag of letters hoping there was a clue in there.

Boy were we disappointed!!! There were just 86 totally and completely random letters in the baggie. There was no clue at all!! You can spell anything with 86 random letters! Some letters were in red and some letters were in black. So just to amuse ourselves we spelled words like "idiot" and "moron" it just made me feel better to spell those words out.

After not being able to solve the mystery of who and where on Valentine's Day I couldn't even call whoever had sent it to tell them I had plans! I had no idea what to do, so I ended up doing nothing. On Valentine's Day no one showed up at my door or called me to tell me they were the one who left the flower pot there. I was still furious!!

After the incident about a month passed by with still no word. I got caught up in school and work and stop thinking about my fury. One of my other roommates let a small crowd of nerds into our apartment to hang out while I was at work one night. I got home exhausted and was not happy to see the small gathering in my apartment. As I walked in she was telling them about the flower pot and the nerd that I was always nice to turned bright red. It was obviously him who had given me the flower pot! It was VERY difficult to contain my rage and not just fly off the handle at him!!! I looked at him and said, how in the world was I to know that it was YOU!!! He said that the black letters in the bag spelled his name. I told him as nicely as I could that there was no way in the world that I was going to get that, that I had no idea who it was and couldn't even call to tell them that I already had plans. I neglected to tell him that my plans had been to babysit because I decided it was best if he thought that I had a boyfriend! Hopefully that would keep him from asking me out in the future!!

So that is the end of the story. As I look back on this experience I feel bad for the little nerd, but then again not really because there was nothing I could do! I'm sure that this wasn't a very good experience for him either. But the whole "creative" thing just killed his chances!! So that is my story about the "creative ask out" going completely awry!

First date kiss...

In order to create blogs such as this, it is necessary to go on lots of dates. Now don't get me wrong, I have nothing against relationships but I also don't feel the need to assume everyone is "the one" either. Consequently I actually get quite a kick out of being set up, afterall there are really only 3 possible outcomes: 1- it actually goes well and is worth my time; 2- there are no major ups or downs to the night, he's a one-hit-wonder (maybe two) and life rolls on; or 3- he is blog worthy.

With that in mind, I was all for going out with my friend's gym friend.

He called; we talked; in a spontaneous choice we went to sushi night and the he was normal, nice and I did not spend most of the night wondering what my friend thought of me that he thought we would be a good match. He did have a few strikes- 1- he was shorter than me. I know some people think its no big deal but call me traditional or insecure but I think height matters; 2- he asked if I was a "bad girl" (let's get real, that is never a good sign); and the big one 3- he felt the need to be a player and to lie about it.

Guys complain when girls play games but girls aren't that different. If you just want to make-out, thats fine, there is a possibility that is all we want to do too. I know the great fear of boys is that we will assume we are engaged the second you say hi to us but most of us are not this intense. Boys like to make-out, so do girls, if you don't believe me, continue reading our blog and that should be reason enough to believe me. So don't feed me a bunch of lines, "I haven't done this in awhile," "I love it when blind dates work out," "this makes me nervous"... ok, you go to the gym 5 days a week at least- at 5 am; you told me all about the gym all through dinner; you are slightly older, your teenage days are behind you, you have been on hundreds of dateyou are decently cute; you dress the part= you are not in a shortage of girls, if I plan to kiss you on the first date none of your lines are necessary, I know your type. You probably know mine. Telling me you will "call me later" and "let's do this again" is not necessary, I also do not need the obligatory text a few days later asking how I'm doing or the infrequent texts telling me you are doing homework. The kissing on the first date spoke volumes, your lines to get to that point buckled with your "nice guy" texts later complicate the situations more than the initial date.

So guys, next time you have an "ok" blind date and you want to take the player approach, just assume that if we aren't trying to track you down frantically a few days later, we are ok with it and please don't confuse us by trying to check up on us, you only confuse us more.

Charlie and the Chocolate Bet

I love chocolate.  I believe it can solve most of life's problems.  I also believe in eating it on a regular basis.  Luckily for me, so do most my friends.   

One night my friend was hanging out with her boyfriend and his best friend, Charlie, who was visiting from out of state.    Charlie is from Alaska and was in town to help his brother propose.  Of course I went along, and the night started with us playing pool.  One thing you need to know about Charlie is he is very good looking and very confident, if my friend hadn't been dating her boyfriend she would be open to dating Charlie.  As the games went on my friend came up and whispered that she had noticed that I had caught Charlie's attention.  That was the start of the "game".  It was the beginning of November and we had finals coming up.  Prime chocolate time. The bet was that if I could get him to kiss me, she'd buy chocolate for the rest of the year.  (We also had a thing for kissing guys and since she couldn't kiss Charlie, that meant I needed to) If I failed, I'd be buying.  As we've already discussed on this blog, I hate to fail.  She told me the bet and my initial reaction was that she was a little crazy.  I told her I didn't think it was possible.  The pool games continued and curiosity started to get to me so I thought I would test the waters a little bit.  Up till this point I hadn't been paying particularly close attention to him so I hadn't noticed anything that would make me think the bet was an option.  It took maybe fifteen minutes for me to change my mind and take the bet.  

The time soon came for us to head out and start helping with his brother’s proposal.  We had quite the to-do list and not much time.  First we went to Kinko's to print off some pictures and to this day Kinko's still makes me laugh.  I'm sure the attendant there was not to thrilled to have us there but we were having a great time!  I was feeling more confident.  Then we went up the canyon to set the scene for his brother and of course decided to stay hidden up there and watch, we also didn't dare leave the ring unattended.   He and I were over on one part of the trail while my friend and her boyfriend were on the other side of the park watching from that side.  It was November which means it was a little chilly up there so I stayed really close to him but nothing happened.  I was running out of ideas since the canyon had seemed like and ideal location to win our little game.   His brother came and proposed which meant it was time for us to go so we went back to the car, I was feeling slightly discouraged.  We had been talking and laughing and joking around, he'd been pretty flirty during the pool games and at Kinko's, had we really been totally wrong about it all?  On the way back down to where we were parked he stopped and dropped off my friends boyfriend, he had to work early and it was getting pretty late.  My friend and I were both going to my car and the possibilities to win at this point looked slim.  Charlie had suggested he wanted to go eat but when we'd dropped off his friend we had kind of figured the night was coming to an end.  We got back to the pool hall where I was parked and my friend and I got out of the car and into mine.  The first thing she asked was if we had kissed in the canyon and I'm not sure who was more disappointed to know I had failed at the contest, her or me.  That was when her inspiration struck, we needed to track him down and all go to Denny's.  We drove off after him and he was of course all to happy to go eat.  Even though it meant she'd be buying chocolate, it was really a win-win situation for both of us.  We came up with a plan.  We ordered and my friend ate really quickly then announced she had to get up very early the next morning and really shouldn't have come and since she and I lived in different directions from the restaurant could she take my car and go straight home and could Charlie drop me off on his way to the freeway (it was on the way) of course he said yes.  We finished eating at a much more normal speed and then he took me home.  We got to my driveway and I was frantically trying to figure out how to get him to kiss me (that he had to kiss me was also part of the deal) Feeling out of ideas I finally went to get out of the car.  I'll be honest, after all the ideas we'd come up with to get this to happen, failing was really disappointing.  I opened the door and he said I owed him a hug so I leaned back into the car and let the door partially close.  It was a good thing I did, I won the bet.   We were out there for a while and by now it wasn't so much late as it was early.  This was another problem, my friend had to be at school extra early that day and I had early work,  but she had my car.  We had made plans that she would come get me and I'd take her to school and then go to work and it was almost time for her to come get me!  Charlie on the other hand wanted to go hangout somewhere and get breakfast or something.  I finally got him to leave, walked upstairs and was there for maybe 10 minutes before my car came around the corner and it was time to start the day.  Needles to say I was extremely tired that day but I got chocolate for the rest of the year and we both had the satisfaction of knowing one of us had kissed him so it was worth it!