Category: ‘Personal’ · TangleBones

Adventures in Dating, Pt. 1

So here’s a little story about how com­put­ers suck:

As some of you know, I’m the kind of person who likes to ago­nize about things for 9 months before doing any­thing about them. Buying a car? Gotta research, gotta test drive, gotta ago­nize. Get­ting a loan? More ago­niz­ing. But what you may also know is that I’m also a multitasker.

So I fig­ured that I wasn’t plan­ning on even think­ing about the con­cept of dating until Decem­ber or later. I didn’t think you should go on a date when all of your sto­ries start with, “my late wife once said,” or “when my wife died,” and your inter­ests and hob­bies are “grieving” and “crying” respec­tively. But at the same time, I knew that when I finally decided to do some dating, I was going to have to ago­nize about that for a while. So why not grieve and ago­nize at the same time?

Add that to the fact that a friend at work sug­gested that I look around at Match.com to find people who are even more pathetic than me to laugh at, and guess who had a pro­file? Hey, you got it in one!

It wasn’t much of a pro­file since it actu­ally said, “I’m not look­ing to date any­body and am only using this to check out pro­files - please don’t talk to me.” Not that this pre­vented people who live a thou­sand miles a way and look sur­pris­ingly like escorts from trying to send me messages. 

Where this becomes inter­est­ing to you (let’s hope) is that every so often the site sends you a list of people who “match” you. And this is fun in itself, because you get to play the “next level” game. This is like when you’re a kid and the doctor says “this won’t hurt” and you know that means it’ll hurt a little. And if he says, “it’ll hurt a little” you know it’s gonna hurt a lot. Right? Well when you look through the pro­files you dis­cover that “slender” means “a few extra pounds,” “a few extra pounds” means “overweight,” and “overweight” means, “HOLY SHIT WHAT THE HELL DID YOU EAT? LET GO OF MY LEG!”

That’s not to say that you don’t get all types. In fact, there are some cute folks on Match.com. Case in point, one of the first pics they sent me wasn’t too shabby, but the angle was sketchy. People have learned every trick in the book to hide neck fat, etc. I cer­tainly did. But regard­less, she was an okay look­ing girl. That’s not the prob­lem. The prob­lem was the second pic. The “match” that they sent me? That match is HUG­GING former speaker of the house Newt Gin­grich. Repub­li­can poster-​boy Newt. Conservative-​to-​the-​core Newt. How the hell am I matched with a girl that would a) go to one of his sign­ings and b) not stab him in the face?

Which brings us to prob­lem 2: her user­name was snowflakeGOP. Now the GOP is obvi­ously to indi­cate that she’s a Repub­li­can. And hey, that’s fine and dandy. Odd that they matched her with some­body who listed him­self as “ultra-liberal,” but what­ever. The prob­lem is that once you iden­tify as con­ser­v­a­tive, snowflake starts making me ner­vous. Are you inter­ested in winter sports? I don’t see that in your pro­file. Or are you call­ing atten­tion to your white­ness? Why would you do that? OH SHIT ARE YOU SOME NEO-​NAZI?!!?! WHAT THE HELL?!?

So there’s my review of Match.com: they set you up with your enemies.

The Places Where I Very Nearly Got into an Accident Today

On my way to work today, the driver of a car ahead of me decided that, having misssed her exit, she should slam on the brakes and swerve wildly through the median to get to 295 North-​bound. Obvi­ously, those of us behind her were not thrilled.

On my way home from work today, 3 high school stu­dents stepped out from in front of a van that was stopped at a light in the center lane as I was dri­ving up in the right lane. They looked really con­fused that a car might be dri­ving right there on the road.

Also: trying out Ubiq­uity’s Add Map fea­ture. Which doesn’t work, I guess. Updated manually.

Aiming for Fuel Economy: A new source of frustrations

With gas prices hov­er­ing around four dol­lars a gallon, I, like every­one else, have been feel­ing the pinch. And it has been par­tic­u­larly bad because my fuel effi­ciency has been down and my dri­ving has been up, as I’ve spent a good deal of time racing back and forth to Bal­ti­more to see my lady fair. Com­pletely worth­while, I assure you. But in order to mit­i­gate the cost, I’ve been trying to adjust my dri­ving habits in recent days.

Dri­ving like a madman through the city costs me 14% of my fuel effi­ciency: that’s a dip from my normal 22 miles per gallon down to 19. Ouch. When com­bined with the extra mileage of at least 40 miles every other day, it’s been quite a painful expe­ri­ence at the pump.

So lately I’ve been more con­scious of my dri­ving habits. No more jack-​rabbit starts. No more floor­ing it to make a yellow light. No more flying up an on-​ramp at a greater speed that the cars actu­ally dri­ving on the high­way. And it’s done won­ders for my pock­et­book: where I was get­ting 19 mpg dri­ving like a jerk, I’m get­ting 24 mpg nowadays.

And while you might think that saving some gas and money would make me happy, you’d be fool­ing your­self. I have to drive in Mary­land: home of the obliv­i­ous driver. As far as I can tell, there are no sug­ges­tions made at Mary­land dri­ving schools that slower traf­fic should keep right. Get­ting into the turn lane before you slow down so that cars behind you don’t have to come to an almost com­plete stoo? Unheard of. It seems that it’s the goal of the Mary­land driver to do every­thing pos­si­ble to frus­trate every­one else on the road.

But chang­ing all of that just so I could eke out another 1 or 2 miles per gallon seems self­ish, so I’m only going to request one tiny thing of the people of Mary­land, and it only requires a change of atti­tude, not behav­ior: when you cut me off on the high­way, don’t get mad when I tail­gate you - if you’re going to make me slow down, you could at least let me draft off you.