Where Is She?

I'm a firm believer that there's someone out there for everyone. Finding the person out there for me is, well, proving to be a problem..

I've never possessed great skills with the opposite sex. What is it that makes someone dateable? I wish I knew, because I'd like to know if I possess it. It's mostly frustration talking at this point, but I cannot figure it out.

I'm 26 and have had one girlfriend in my life. It was a high school relationship that ended like a bad Jerry Springer episode after about the six month marker. She was beautiful, smart and emotionally insecure. She desperately needed to be loved by someone, and I was the one chosen for the role. I was in the immediate area. Being seventeen at the time, I loved her completely, although now I see that there never was a real connection between us. I was in love more with the idea of love than with the person I shared it with. She ended up cheating on me with one of my best friends, all the while she was living in my home and sharing my bed. It didn't end when I discovered the infidelity, and last few months were spent with her bouncing between two competing friends for her affections.

Obviously, it wasn't a healthy relationship. I think it took a few years to get past the emotional scarring left behind. Now here I am, eight years later, with a clean bill of mental health and that is still the "high point" of my dating life.

Of the core group of my old high school friends I'm the only single one left. Most are in long-term committed relationships, or at the very least have had several good runs with a couple of women. Not me, and I cannot figure out why.

I used to joke that I'd been "skipped in the rotation," or I'd refer to myself as "painfully single."

I've been on dates since high school, I just can't seem to find "her." None of my ventures into the dating world ever seems to get to a third date, let alone a good night kiss. There just hasn't been any chemistry.

As I said before, I seem to lack some of the skills associated with dating. My theory is that I was absent from school the day they pulled all the little boys out of class to teach them some of this stuff. I'll be sitting in a Denny's with some friends and the waitress will hit on me (blatantly hitting on me, according to eye witnesses) and I'll be completely oblivious to it, missing all the signs. I'll be talking with a woman that I'm attracted to, only to discover that she's already got a boyfriend. When a woman isn't single and there's a connection, we'll take a one-way trip into "friends" land before I know that I missed a window. Eight years, no progress.

I bring this whole thing up because (as I mentioned earlier in a previous post) I signed up for eHarmony. I took the leap a few months ago and signed up, hoping that I've just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. As I said: she's out there, I'm just having some trouble locating her.

History's repeating itself, it would seem. Every single promising "match" has closed on me, most of them before the actual conversation part starts. I've re-read my profile, and I don't come off as brooding, desperate, sleezy, negative or otherwise stalker-ish. Am I making a bad first impression? Is it bad timing? Is it fate? Am I making too much out of this?

Where is she?

I hope this post isn't coming off as the desperate cry of the lonely pathetic man-child. I'm honestly just confused.

Adjustments

This was a week of personal health.

Step one was going out for some new specs. Finally. In two or three week's time I won't have to chase little flying screws around the apartment anymore. Ah, simple pleasures.

I think I did a pretty good job, don't mind if I say so. The whole process, including frame selection, took under an hour. In my last (and only other) trip for glasses eons ago I'm fairly certain that last part took about an hour in itself, and even then I needed a couple friends to help seal the deal. This time around I was looking at glasses more from a personal style sense, rather than an intimidated eye-wear rookie, so it was pretty painless. I knew what I was doing. The final winner was a nice angular set of black rectangular frames which will soon send my weather-torn brown oval-ish suckers into retirement. The best part was how natural the sample pair felt, better than the current pair ever did.

The other thing I've been doing is reading. A damn lot of reading. I've read six books in the past two weeks and am about ready to start number seven. It's a freakish amount of reading for me, like a temporary compulsion, but I'm really getting into the swing of things. I've made two trips to the bookstore in a week, and I suspect I'll be making the third in the next day or two. I'm just getting lost in the pages, and the nights have been flying by. It's been relaxing to say the least.

This month's reading:
Starship Troopers, Robert Heinlein;
Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk;
A Certain Chemistry, Mil Millington;
The Secret History, Donna Tartt;
Survivor, Chuck Palahniuk;
The Book of Joe, Jonathan Tropper
King of a Small World, Rick Bennet

And to top it all off I'm sleeping really well again.

Party Hopping

I went party hopping yesterday, a first for me. Two parties, one night. I didn't know I had it in me.

Let me start off by saying that I've never in my life been hung over. Oh, I've been drunk on many an occasion, but as my stupor turns into a really nice buzz I remember a little next-day prep routine. I end up drinking as much water as I can, take a couple of Advil, eat something bland (bread or pasta) and crash out. Am I glad I remembered last night.


Shindig number one was at my friend Richard's new place, a housewarming/birthday get together. Richard's always looking for excuses to have people over, so this fit right into his master plan. The party had a secondary function, too, marketed as a "build-a-bar" event, with all excess liquor (provided by the guests, of course) going towards what would become his mecca of alcohol. He didn't want any gifts, just booze, so everyone did their part to wish him a "Happy Birthday."

Richard's a work pal and I don't get the opportunity to see him outside the office much. He's always said I'm more than welcome to hang out with him whenever, but most of his mid-week stories seems to revolve around being up until the wee hours of the morning hammering Jack Daniels. Just a bit too much excitement for me. The boy parties like he just earned his right to purchase booze legally (which happened many years ago, actually).

The gathering was planned as a "day event," although I'm not certain if Richard's non-work friends understood that part. I showed up a couple hours late, only to find that everything was still in the early stages. I ended up staying about five hours, finally putting some faces to stories I'd heard. Had myself a couple beers and a really strong Jack & Coke (read Jack with some Coke flavor), and got to meet several more of Richard's friends (most I wouldn't recognize by sight now). The party was just starting to kick off by the time I'd decided to bid farewell, but overall a nice break from the normal Adam routine.


Shindig number two could best be described as a frat party. I use the term only because it best describes the atmosphere – most of the attendees were well past college, but it did have that unfettered binge drinking you'd expect to see. Brooke, another girl from work, threw this event with some of her roommates at a house they're all renting together. It was mostly people I didn't know, but I had a couple of friends to latch onto until I got comfortable. Everyone just let loose at Brooke's, and its a night I won't soon forget (although a good chunk of the others, Brooke included, probably have forgotten significant parts already).

Hmm, if I had to list the highlights I think it'd go something like this (no significance to the order):

• Multiple kegs and various other alcoholic tasties (including soaked fruit and Jello shooters).
• Kara's buttoned-down boyfriend, Matt, getting completely plastered. At party number one he was talking about his desire to get the number 42 tattooed on his arm in binary code (42 being the answer to life, the universe and everything in Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide series). At party number two, already schlokered up, he started to slur his speech and tried to become the life of the party. Matt was involved in damn near every conversation I saw, and got into a little bit of trouble for drunkenly oogling over another girl. He was completely forgiven. To my knowledge, his battery died about midnight and he ended up sleeping it off for a couple hours in a papasan chair in the living room.
• Brooke and another girl dancing on the bar on the back patio. Multiple times, as a matter of fact. As a guy, I can truly appreciate a good drunken bar-top dance, lemme tell you. I believe the second female atop the bar was the girlfriend of one of Brooke's brothers, but I'm not entirely certain.
• There was a guy that passed out by the firepit, a close friend of several of the people I didn't know. Well, someone brandished a marker and he got some colorful phrases and phallic symbols added to various parts of exposed skin. He was not pleased when he finally came to.
• Brooke's failed attempt at a keg stand.
• Watching a couple sneak out of the bathroom after just a little too long in there, both of them having to take some extra time to make certain pieces of clothing were on correctly.
• My roommate's sexual frustration at having her husband overseas, and the interesting conversations that that sparked.
• Live music. Basically, it was one guy with an amp and an acoustic guitar, but he could play.
• Brooke's gay ex-roommate trying to give me sage advice about the nature of women. I revealed a little more than I would have liked to, so I'm just praying that he doesn't remember enough to repeat certain chunks of that little talk.
• Listening to a drunk ex-employee from work talk lovingly about a guy we both worked with. Nothing sexual, but it is a little entertaining when someone repeats adjectives because they'd forgotten they'd said them already.
• Willie, the ancient house dog, strolling casually though like he'd seen parties like this many, many times. Apparently, they'll just leave the front door open sometimes and Willie just strolls about, walking himself, and comes back when he feels like it. The most laid back dog I think I've ever seen.
• Watching much drunken flirting, which is really amusing once you start to sober up enough to notice it.
• Listening to a couple try to give a cabbie directions home after about three too many.
• Getting the opportunity to finally unwind after a really tough week.

I'll try to fill in some more details on Tuesday, after I get to compare notes at work.

Seven Out

Friday just sucked. Like Office Space sucked. The overall volume of work has picked up lately, which is normal for this time of year (and will increase until just before Christmas). A handful of the graphic artists ended up pulling a Saturday shift last weekend (myself included) just trying to catch up on some of the backlog. The extra shifts and OT seemed to help, until Friday.

[talking on the phone] And I said, I don't care if they lay me off either, because I told, I told Bill that if they move my desk one more time, then, then I'm, I'm quitting, I'm going to quit. And, and I told Dom too, because they've moved my desk four times already this year, and I used to be over by the window, and I could see the squirrels, and they were married, but then, they switched from the Swingline to the Boston stapler, but I kept my Swingline stapler because it didn't bind up as much, and I kept the staples for the Swingline stapler and it's not okay because if they take my stapler then I'll set the building on fire…

The aforementioned suckage on Friday was a result of (what I believe to be) some sort of scheduling brain-fart. We had seven artist out, which boils down to roughly one-third of the production staff. Most (if not all) of the absences were pre-approved vacations (two artists are on long-planned trips to Europe, one is getting married this weekend and another recently had a death in the family), but I'm not entirely certain what's up with the rest. Now, I'm not privy to anything personnel related, so take into account that I'm mainly just talking out of my ass at the moment. For the life of me I cannot fathom how we ended up so short staffed, especially given the workload. Didn't someone look at a calendar and go "umm...guys, we've got a staffing issue here?"

This led to eight hours of chaos. You've got a group full of artists hunkered down, just trying to keep the engines running. I got myself into a bad mood pretty early, and nothing seemed to go right the entire day. Several orders appear "cursed," and nothing flows smoothly. I was frustrated, and if it wasn't for the light-hearted WTF jokes being tossed around amongst the artists I think I just would have…snapped.

The stress was self-inflicted, I can see in retrospect. Things that shouldn't have been big deals turned into them. At several points throughout the day my entire workload got shifted around on me. I was told that "A" was my "top priority," only to be told an hour later that "A" and "B" were both "top priorities," and why wasn't I working on "B?" I think I just blew everything out of proportion, and amplified my frustrations, as the day wore on.

I love my job, but these past couple of weeks have just been hell.

Meals on Wheels

Right now I'm trying to decide if I'm a procrastinator, a lazy bastard or just unmotivated.

I haven't been to the supermarket in a couple of weeks. The food stores here at the home base are completely depleted, even down to that box of Top Ramen I bought a couple years ago and saved for "emergency rations." I've got condiments galore and some plain pasta, but not much else. No meat, no greens, no pasta sauce, not even anything in the junk food department. My roommate's got her pile of Healthy Choice microwave meals that she seems to live on, but that stuff's off limits (not that I'd chow on it if I had the option).

Now, I knew the food was scarce for days. Tuesday night I hit a drive-thru. Wednesday and Thursday I got creative. I was out with some friends tonight, and knew driving home that the baked potato I had for lunch wasn't gonna sustain me much longer. I didn't make a supply run. Did I mention that there's an Albertsons within spitting distance (literally visible from my patio)?

The food situation isn't the only part of the story, but it does help me get to the next part. About an hour after I get home, right after I get comfortable for the night, the hunger hits. A headache is creeping in, a sure sign that I need to eat. After a good forty-five minutes of inner debate I decide, fuck it, I'm getting something to tide me over. I get dressed, hop into the Jetta and hit up the local Taco Bell. Half a burrito later I feel better.

So I'm sitting at my desk munching on the preprocessed gringo burrito when the second event happens: my glasses break. I'm not talking I fiddled with them and they snapped. I've got one hand on my food, the other around the book I'm reading. They literally popped of my head without any assistance. The screw holding the right lens in place is worn, and has been for weeks – every so often it wiggles its way free and shoots off into oblivion while the lens itself goes a-tumbling down. Right into my burrito.

My burrito fires sauce right into the copy of Fight Club I bought the day before last. Page 93 (which, ironically, is the part talking about Marla's Meals on Wheels scam) takes the brunt of the attack.

Meanwhile, I'm searching half-blind though dark carpeting for a jewelers' screw. Lemme tell you how fun THAT is.

I finally locate the screw (by feel alone) and start the reassembly process. The only screwdriver I own small enough for the task is in my car, used to repair my specs the last two times this happened. I ended having to use a set of tweesers to finagle the screw back.

I've been meaning to get a new pair of glasses for weeks, if not months. I've had the same pair for about six years (yeah, I know how bad that is for your eyes and I'm not happy about it either). Every weekend for the past month I've ordered myself to go take care of it, but by Sunday's end it's still not done. It's by no means a financial issue. I've got vision insurance through work and enough petty cash if I didn't for just such an occasion. I just haven't dealt with it.

This sloth only pops up with personal stuff. Basic maintenance and upkeep stuff. Things I need to do for my own sake.

Mental Note: Do not continue to tempt fate.