Zoinks!

I must have been sending positive vibes out to the universe because I had very limited maction up until about a week ago, and then my account started blowing up with winks and emails. Not all of them are brag worthy (of course), but I did find a couple of diamonds in the rough. Well, maybe.

So yesterday afternoon, I went on an hour-long coffee date with NeedsToEatACheeseburger McMichigan. This guy isn't quite as skinny as Foody McGradSchool, but he could probably stand to put on a few pounds. I'll let his lack of body fat slide, though, as the guy is 6'5" - I can't imagine how much you might have to eat to sustain 6 feet, 5 inches of body mass. Actually, who am I kidding, I probably eat enough to sustain a 6'5" man's body mass... hence the reason I have never been referred to as "skinny" in my life... waaaaaaah, I am crying now!

Anyway, back to our date. It was really nothing to write home about. (Therefore, mom, that would be the reason why I did not bring it up at dinner last night.) He is a giant, which I love, with dirty blond shaggy hair - in fact, now that I think about it, he kind of reminds me of Shaggy from Scooby Doo. I think he might have even been wearing brown corduroy pants - isn't that what Shaggy wears in the cartoon? And I wouldn't be surprised if he had smoked a bowl before showing up for our date. Hold on, let me check my sources: What do you think, Scoob? Zoinks! Ruh-roh! OK, good. Scoob says it's not the real Shaggy, so I will continue with my description. He has glasses, fair skin, and freckles. All in all, not bad to look at. He has this chill, Santa Cruz (hence the smoking reference above) vibe about him. Maybe even a little too chill. I mean, this guy could not have a care in the world! "Yeah, sure, whatever" was his standard response, and while I love a guy's chill nature, I also appreciate a guy who can make a firm decision. I know the pants look REALLY good on me, but I don't always want to be the one to wear them. Especially on our first date. That is YOUR job as the man, buster. Step up.

So conversation flowed really well. Witty banter back and forth. He made me laugh, I made him laugh. No awkward silences. Funny, interesting. And that's about it. There was nothing sparkly about the date. I felt like I was having coffee with an old friend. Or my brother. Yikes! That is not a good sign, is it? I want to like this guy because he has a lot of potenty - he, like me, is a teacher. His nickname, actually, should probably be TeachyMcTallGuy and then we would seem like the two most compatible people in the world. He would be the yin to my yang. But the truth is that he is not. We are not that compatible. We just happen to have a lot of things in common, including the same majors in college, but - sadly - that does not mean we are meant to be.

I left the date thinking, "Well, that was a fun use of an hour." I told him to call me if he wanted to hang out again. Since I have been the One-Date Wonder for the past several dates, I figured I would not hear from this guy again. But, alas! He texted me this afternoon: "hey Teachy, I had fun yesterday. Would u like to go out again this week?" I was shocked and kind of happy. I have broken the One-Date curse! It must have been those positive vibes I have been letting out into the universe. Perhaps because I am turning 21+10 this week and nothing makes me happier than celebrating my birthday! I am certain that happiness has been seeping through my pores and Mr. McMichigan sensed it. So, what was I to do? Turn down this perfectly nice gentlemen who clearly thinks I am an awesome, funny, and beautiful creature? No way, Jose! Instead, I agreed and we will be embarking on Date #2 on Wednesday night. Stay tuned! Current vote: Bud... but you never know!

What gives?

Today, I received an email from Winky McWhatGives. This one's a doozy. A week or so ago, he winked at me. His profile looked interesting and he seemed like an OK guy, so I winked back. As per basic match.com etiquette, if you wink and then the person winks back, the ball is back in your court and it's your responsibility to make the next move.

In this instance, the next logical move is to send an email that says "hi" and asks a few questions, such as "What do you do for fun?" OR "I noticed you like to travel. Where's the last place you traveled?" You see, these are just suggestions, but the questions or comments you can make about someone's profile are endless.

Well, rather than send an email asking me one or more of above-listed questions, Winky waited about a week, viewed my profile multiple times, and then sent me the following message this morning:



*Shakes head in disbelief* WHAT? Who is this guy? First of all, "what gives"??? Secondly, "after all the winking"?? REALLY? There were two winks exchanged in total!

Now, there are two things I could have done with this email: 1) I could have ignored it and lived happily for the rest of my life; or 2) I could have sent him an email back putting him in his place.

What do YOU think I chose to do?

Yes, you are right. Here is the email I sent back (within minutes and via my iPhone, btw. I was fired up!):

Hi,

First, with "all the winking" are you referring to the one wink you sent me and the one wink I sent back? That's only two winks, which hardly implies a vigorous back-and-forth exchange of winks.

Second, why couldn't you just send me an email to start the process of communication rather than sending me this message, which sounds angry and bitter and which also gives the impression that I owe you something, which I clearly don't. You know what would have been nice? A simple email where you ask me some questions about things I enjoy doing or something from my profile that sparked your interest.

Finally, sending a message with the subject "What gives?" and then blaming me for the lack of communication isn't the best way to lure a girl in. So in the future, if you find a girl that you think you want to "exchange words" with, my advice would be to send her an email complimenting her, not telling her she's done something wrong.

Oops. I guess I was REALLY high up on my horse there. But come on, I couldn't just sit back and let this one slide. I mean, I know that many dudes are on match.com for this very reason - because they honestly just do not know how to communicate with women - but I figured I could take this as an opportunity for a teaching moment. He needed to be served. And he was.

But, here is what I was NOT expecting ...... to get an email back from him .... within 10 minutes of sending my email ......... that said this:

ahhh.... so that is the way I sounded :-( .... sorry it comes across that way.

I'm hardly upset ...... just trying to be persistent and silly/ goofy (ofcourse I know we have not been winking vigorously).

... A girl who is tall, very cute, can be goofy, humorous ... is especially interesting to me.
Even if I do not meet your dating "criteria", you seem like you will be a fun friend to hang out with.

I wish my composure and decorum didn't go out the window when I find someone I like online (like now)

by the way, the "peace sign" underwater... totally cool :-)

also I see you like John Grisham, have you ever read any Sidney Sheldon novels? His "Rage of Angels" or "Other Side of Midnight" are both truly amazing!

I love beaches, lakes, too.... aside from Santa Cruz, where else have you liked in the area?

oh bt w, I like the way you broke your paragraphs out into first, second, and finally... nice structure there :-)
Though my unstructured email might not indicate this, but in my spare time, I advise people about admission essay writing (and usually advocate for a good paragraph structure as well)

Now let's break this down piece by piece in order to get a real understanding of what's going on here: First (clearly, I love making lists), please proofread before sending emails. No one likes to receive a sloppy message in their inbox. Second, why so many ellipses? I just ....... don't .... understand. Next, you're complimenting me on the structure of my bitchy email? Oh man, I don't even know what to do with this one. Finally, are you also an advocate for proper punctuation and verb tenses? Because it doesn't really seem like it based on this email. Oh, and P.S. I am the sweetest bitch you'll ever meet. ~Natty Sweetheart.

So, obviously, I have not responded yet. I cannot even think of what to say (other than what's written above). But, Blondie says that "for the sake of the blog" I should continue communication with him and even potentially go out on a date! No promises yet, but it's definitely a possibility...

Current vote: freak! (there are so many freaks out there, we might have to change the name of the blog).

The hottest thing on match.com?

That would be Hottie McAsian, our fake match.com profile. It has now been one week since Hottie's profile has been active and she has... drum roll please... 52 new emails and 105 winks! Wha? Huh? What did you say? Yeah, exactly. I don't even know what to make of this, but I am pretty sure that every man in the greater bay area - between the ages of 18 and 50 - has either winked or emailed her. Damn, girl. You are smokin'!

every girl's got a little crazy in her...

Ok, this is going to sound a little psycho, but the truth is... as a member of the Female Race, crazy is unavoidable, as it is an unchangeable part of my DNA. And honestly, when one member of the Female Race gets crazy, she shares her crazy with other members and then the crazy spreads like a disease. So, what happened here is that I contracted my crazy from my good friend Blondie McSmartyPants.

Blondie McSmartyPants, as you know, recently ended a relationship with Tooly McWankFace. And when I say recently, I mean like last week. This is a fresh wound here. So as per standard crazy post-breakup behavior, Blondie immediately began scouring match.com to see if he had re-posted his profile. Then, on Tuesday, she discovered that he had indeed re-posted his profile. Crazy just got crazier.

Now, there is one inherent problem with match.com: when you look at a dude's profile, it shows up on his "See who's viewed you" section of his page. So if you view it today, it shows up. If you view it tomorrow, it shows up again. How in the world do the match.com creators expect us to secretly stalk dudes if we're constantly showing up on their "Who's viewed me" page??

So there are two things that caused the crazy to spread from Blondie to me: 1) She told me about finding Tooly back on match. That wanker! 2) She asked me if I had ever searched for my ex. Dammit! I hadn't even considered that! (For those of you who don't know the back story, my ex - Douchey McF***Face - and I broke up in August. While Douchey and I didn't meet on match, that doesn't mean that he wouldn't sign up to try to find the byatch of his dreams. And just for the record, I am COMPLETELY over him, but honestly, I am just a curious person by nature).

Here's what happened. I got curious. Duh. So I conducted a search for men of his age range, height, location, etc. I was very specific so as to narrow the field. And after browsing just two pages, I found him. My heart stopped. What a douche. But, I hate to say this, the crazy didn't stop there. It really does get worse - way worse. I did not want to click on his profile, because the last thing I wanted to do was to give him any sort of impression that I think or care about him at all. So, I immediately IMed Blondie. What do I do?? She was in the same boat as me. She had been consumed by the crazy. I know I should not have turned to her, but the crazy was running coarsely through my veins. I was not thinking straight. In haste, we shot ideas back and forth about what to do. How can we properly stalk our exes without them knowing it?

"I've got the BEST idea," Blondie wrote (in reality, not a good idea at all). "We can create a FAKE PROFILE!"

"OMG! That is such a good idea!"

No it's not. But... it was too late. The crazy had already won. Blondie moved quickly. She suggested using the photos of her coworker, who is happily relationshipped. Brilliant!

So immediately upon getting home from work on Tuesday, I set out on my task of creating a faux stalker profile using Blondie's coworker's photos! We'll call our newest match.com member Hottie McAsian. Let me tell you this... it is hard work making a match.com profile! So many questions! So many things to make up! But by the time I had sat down in front of my laptop and created a fake gmail account for Hottie, there was seriously no turning back. I was in it to win it. I had to create a fake birth date, a fake college, a fake degree, a fake job, and even fake interests (Hottie really loves the beach and experiencing new adventures - ok, maybe there is a little bit of me in this fake profile...) I felt like Dr. Frankenstein creating my monster. It was so much fun! After about 40 minutes of hard work, my creation was complete. I just needed to wait for the profile and photos to be approved.

When I finally had my chance, I logged on immediately to stalk Douchey's profile. Eew. So glad that relationship's over. Viewing his profile ultimately brought me no satisfaction, other than knowing that I am glad I am no longer with him. (That, and the thought that I am way too hot for him anyway.) After viewing his profile, the crazy started to slowly wear off. WTF were we thinking? But, since we already had the profile up, we figured we'd check on it every once in a while to see who's winking at her. If Douchey or Tooly wink at her, we both thought, they're going down. (Crazy clearly still lingering).

As a non-paying match.com member, the only thing you can do on the site in terms of communication is wink for free. You can also see those who have winked at you. What you can't see is "who's viewed you" or emails that have been sent. We didn't envision this being a problem because we were only anticipating using her profile to stalk our exes.

But here's the crazy part... Hottie has had a fake profile now for about three days. I logged on to her profile this morning, just to see what kind of action she's gotten (and to see if Douchey winked at her, which he did not). You will not believe this, but she has 19 new emails and 40 winks! Are you kidding me!? That is more emails and winks than Blondie and I put together! How is it possible that our fake profile is more popular than our real ones!? Waaaah we are crying!

If there is a lesson to be learned here, folks, it's that stalking is bad. And so is creating fake people. Or using real people to make fake people to secretly stalk real people. Ugh. What a giant, crazy mess...