Date 2: Oh My Gawd
I showed up at the Daily Grill to meet C, date 2. I drove, and because of an obsession with being prompt, I arrived about 20 minutes early. So I sat down at the bar and ordered a cosmo. After doing this, I wondered if there was any etiquette I should be considering. Is it rude to start a drink if you arrive early for your date? Obviously I have to wait, and if I wanted to sit at the bar, I really had to order something. So let's assume that it's ok for me to have done this. The next question is, how MUCH of my martini is it appropriate to consume before my date arrives? This is less a matter of etiquette and more a matter of appearance. I think I have two options here: (1) completely down the martini well before the start time of the date, or (2) sip it slowly and be certain to leave at least half of it in the glass so as not to appear to be a barfly. Though my preference is (1), my concern is if he arrives earlier and notices me. I won't know it's him. Slamming back the liquor won't necessarily create a great first impression -- this ability is something to be revealed later in a relationship. So I settled on (2), which is tough for me, but I bravely took very small, well-spaced sips while I waited.
Close to 7:00, I went to the host and asked if he had a reservation under my name. Nope. How about under C's name? Nope. Once again, K at IJL proves her worth, or rather, her lack thereof. The host suggested that I call my date, but I explained that not only did I not know what my date looked like, but I also didn't have his phone number. As I look back on this, I wonder if the host considered the possibility that I was a prostitute; after all, I was wearing my tall black sexy girl boots. Anyway, it's really a good thing I'm not terribly shy. After giving up on the now-suspicious host, I looked around the bar, and spotted a man in a cute little sweater vest with a cute little bowtie sitting alone at one of the bar tables. I walked up to him and asked him if, by any chance, he was C? He was not, and apologized for not being C. I also lament this.
I went back to the bar and sat back down. A man came in, and asked the host a question, and then appeared to be in deep conversation with him for awhile. The host pointed at me, and the man came over and introduced himself as C. I started from the bottom up, and saw marked clothes improvement over the date 1: khakis, blue button down shirt. Standard, acceptable uniform. Kind of dorky, overall -- some weirdly formed 80s hair going on. Then...the lazy eye.
Actually, after doing more research today, I realize that it probably was not a lazy eye, but rather a condition called strabismus (crossed eye(s)). So this morning I was briefly fascinated with the topic, and read "The evolution of two-eyed vision," which describes the advantages of having two eyes. Not really the evolution, sadly -- I've been unable to find any evidence that one-eyed creatures exist outside of cyclopian mythology, with the exception of this poor one-eyed kitty that was born at the end of last year (do NOT follow this link if you are easily disturbed).
OK, so the crossed eyes are certainly not an insurmountable issue, but they are pretty distracting at first. As with anything out of the ordinary, you have to focus on not staring. As the date wore on I started to acclimate, and was able to better pay attention to the conversation. I'll start out by saying he was very nice, for the most part. One weird thing -- he mentioned that his hometown in Florida is pretty blue collar, so it was hard to meet people unless you wanted to date someone who wo.... he trailed off here, as if he realized that whatever he was saying was inappropriate. I've tried to fill it in: was he trying to say that he didn't want to date someone who works? If that's it, I have to say that I consider that to be firmly on the "pros" half of my chart.
C said that he enjoys traveling -- a common interest! I mentally chalk a point up to IJL. He hasn't really traveled much to date, but he did seem genuinely interested in it. This is in sharp contrast to date #1, who had an excess of time to travel but didn't bother to take advantage of it. C told me that he was going by himself to the Ukraine in April (props for guts -- deciding to take a big trip by yourself is a big step, and choosing the Ukraine as your first target, rather than somewhere easy like the UK, is even spunkier). Oddl, he is staying in a single city in the Ukraine rather than traveling around -- seems a long way to go for one city. But he expressed a serious enough fascination with a particular type of Ukrainian architecture (which apparently there is oodles of in Odessa) that I suspect he won't have any trouble filling his nine day trip.
I brought up Vegas, to gauge if this relationship had even the remotest possibility of moving forward. He had been there, but said that he "didn't really gamble much anymore." To this point I'd found him pretty boring, so this statement peaked my interest -- an addiction? Did he gamble away his house, family and friends? But it's really not appropriate to ask about GA on a first date. Anyway my interest quickly dropped again when he revealed that, in his gambling days, he liked to play the slots. Blech -- so ok, poker and slots may not seem so different to my non-poker playing readers. However, in fact these two pasttimes are not even remotely similar, and reflect serious differences in one's world view. You'll just have to trust me on that.
Looking back, I can't really figure out what I didn't particularly like about him -- he was perfectly nice (did I say that already? That adjective might be working its way towards "boring"). He had a tendency to say "Oh my gawd, yeah" in response to the majority of my statements (am I really that awe-inducing?), and while irritating, that couldn't have been the only problem. I guess that my standard response to his request for a second date -- "It was nice to meet you, but I don't think there's any chemistry," was accurate. Unlike date #1, where I could have gone into SO much more depth...
IJL compatibility rating: 1.5/5
IJL service rating: 0/0 (no improvement from last time)
For those of you who cross-reference with Alcohawk, 2 martinis/1.5 hours brought me to 0.053.
Close to 7:00, I went to the host and asked if he had a reservation under my name. Nope. How about under C's name? Nope. Once again, K at IJL proves her worth, or rather, her lack thereof. The host suggested that I call my date, but I explained that not only did I not know what my date looked like, but I also didn't have his phone number. As I look back on this, I wonder if the host considered the possibility that I was a prostitute; after all, I was wearing my tall black sexy girl boots. Anyway, it's really a good thing I'm not terribly shy. After giving up on the now-suspicious host, I looked around the bar, and spotted a man in a cute little sweater vest with a cute little bowtie sitting alone at one of the bar tables. I walked up to him and asked him if, by any chance, he was C? He was not, and apologized for not being C. I also lament this.
I went back to the bar and sat back down. A man came in, and asked the host a question, and then appeared to be in deep conversation with him for awhile. The host pointed at me, and the man came over and introduced himself as C. I started from the bottom up, and saw marked clothes improvement over the date 1: khakis, blue button down shirt. Standard, acceptable uniform. Kind of dorky, overall -- some weirdly formed 80s hair going on. Then...the lazy eye.
Actually, after doing more research today, I realize that it probably was not a lazy eye, but rather a condition called strabismus (crossed eye(s)). So this morning I was briefly fascinated with the topic, and read "The evolution of two-eyed vision," which describes the advantages of having two eyes. Not really the evolution, sadly -- I've been unable to find any evidence that one-eyed creatures exist outside of cyclopian mythology, with the exception of this poor one-eyed kitty that was born at the end of last year (do NOT follow this link if you are easily disturbed).
OK, so the crossed eyes are certainly not an insurmountable issue, but they are pretty distracting at first. As with anything out of the ordinary, you have to focus on not staring. As the date wore on I started to acclimate, and was able to better pay attention to the conversation. I'll start out by saying he was very nice, for the most part. One weird thing -- he mentioned that his hometown in Florida is pretty blue collar, so it was hard to meet people unless you wanted to date someone who wo.... he trailed off here, as if he realized that whatever he was saying was inappropriate. I've tried to fill it in: was he trying to say that he didn't want to date someone who works? If that's it, I have to say that I consider that to be firmly on the "pros" half of my chart.
C said that he enjoys traveling -- a common interest! I mentally chalk a point up to IJL. He hasn't really traveled much to date, but he did seem genuinely interested in it. This is in sharp contrast to date #1, who had an excess of time to travel but didn't bother to take advantage of it. C told me that he was going by himself to the Ukraine in April (props for guts -- deciding to take a big trip by yourself is a big step, and choosing the Ukraine as your first target, rather than somewhere easy like the UK, is even spunkier). Oddl, he is staying in a single city in the Ukraine rather than traveling around -- seems a long way to go for one city. But he expressed a serious enough fascination with a particular type of Ukrainian architecture (which apparently there is oodles of in Odessa) that I suspect he won't have any trouble filling his nine day trip.
I brought up Vegas, to gauge if this relationship had even the remotest possibility of moving forward. He had been there, but said that he "didn't really gamble much anymore." To this point I'd found him pretty boring, so this statement peaked my interest -- an addiction? Did he gamble away his house, family and friends? But it's really not appropriate to ask about GA on a first date. Anyway my interest quickly dropped again when he revealed that, in his gambling days, he liked to play the slots. Blech -- so ok, poker and slots may not seem so different to my non-poker playing readers. However, in fact these two pasttimes are not even remotely similar, and reflect serious differences in one's world view. You'll just have to trust me on that.
Looking back, I can't really figure out what I didn't particularly like about him -- he was perfectly nice (did I say that already? That adjective might be working its way towards "boring"). He had a tendency to say "Oh my gawd, yeah" in response to the majority of my statements (am I really that awe-inducing?), and while irritating, that couldn't have been the only problem. I guess that my standard response to his request for a second date -- "It was nice to meet you, but I don't think there's any chemistry," was accurate. Unlike date #1, where I could have gone into SO much more depth...
IJL compatibility rating: 1.5/5
IJL service rating: 0/0 (no improvement from last time)
For those of you who cross-reference with Alcohawk, 2 martinis/1.5 hours brought me to 0.053.
posted by Katie S @ 11:41 AM
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