[okay, why does this .jpg not work in my browser? I don't have time for problem solving right now. I will fix later, maybe.]

I swear this is a true story. I figured if nothing else, at least I'd have something to write about in my Xmas letter. At the beginning I was all enthusiastic and kept notes on all of my responses and "dates". My notes say things like: "is a Doctor", "nice looking in a Richie Cunningham sort of way", "originally from east coast." As the adventure progressed, my excitement waned and my notes get less complimentary: "geeky message on answering machine", "sounds like a complete moron," "aiee!" Or my favorite: "Has the voice of a cartoon character." My ad (luckily) didn't get a whole lot of responses and just as well because I was totally overwhelmed just setting up one meeting with each of the responses I got. There were only two responses I didn't answer, one because he sounded like some perv who would lean out of a station wagon beckoning, "like some candy little girl?" and the other because he was a rambling drunk and slurred some comment that he always appreciated the disinterested sarcasm of girls who graduated from UCSB. As if.

In sum I was expecting to generate great scathing dating stories from the adventure but it really wasn't that bad although not worth trying again. It takes a lot of energy and it's so random you have to have less than zero expectations or else you're bound to be bummed. I liked most everyone I met enough to try a second date but for reasons I will explain in a second, I only ended up meeting 2 of them again. Turns out the cartoon character was the best one, and we have struck up a friendship. Of course I had to see the doctor again and after getting a perplexing phone message at work that my doctor called, I sat myself down and said, "What could you possibly be thinking?"

In a twist of irony, one of the guys went to school with Brian which warranted the aiee!. Two of the guys were "technically" still married and two of the guys had kids. They casually mention these gems about midway through the date when your mouth is full of coffee or something. The common theme seemed to be finding it tough to meet people because of their jobs. Many of them were regulars to personal ad meetings. So now you know.

Personal Ads Really Work

As it turns out, in the midst of these frenzied phone calls and anxiety-filled meetings standing around on street corners with a tulip behind my ear looking out for a 'brown-haired guy wearing jeans', I ended up having the great fortune of becoming reacquainted with my cousin's friend Mark at her Halloween party. This is a person I originally met at about the same time I decided I was going to move to Oregon. Now we see each other all the time. Isn't it strange how things work out?

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This page was made on December 3, 2000. Featured artist: Paul Westerberg. Featured beverage: water. My computer is a much loved lime iMac named Yoda. My software is BBEdit 5.0 which I am barely competent at using and Dreamweaver at which I am even worse.

http://www.pamrentz.com/pampage/xmas/v3/p2.html