Speed-Dating for charity

Sorry it's been a while since I posted. My dad passed away in March, my job (teaching middle schoolers) has been getting to me, and I've been posting a little more regularly on my general blog instead at http://HerArtichokeHeart.blogspot.com

But I wanted to post about the photo my friend Lord Lillis (http://lillispad.blogspot.com/) took in February and thoughtfully sent me. It is of a sign that said "SPEED-DATING FOR HAITI"! That's right, a speed-dating evening where all the proceeds went to help Haiti's earthquake victims. Sounds a little weird, but it's nice to think you could meet the person of your dreams while helping others. They should do more speed-dating events for charity.

Another NYC speed-dating company; and New Year's Day

A few days ago I received a nice e-mail from Rich, the president of NY Minute Dating (http://www.nyminutedating.com/). He said that he enjoyed reading my blog and offered to let me register for one of his company's speed-dating events for free! I won't be doing that since I'm now dating the Nicest Guy in the World, but any of you NYC-area readers who want to try speed-dating may want to check it out. I thought I'd tried every speed-dating company in New York City, but NY Minute Dating is new to me. On their web site, they promise you will meet up to 15 other singles and have a five-minute "date" with each. In addition to more general events, they have some niche events coming up, including Asian Singles, Russian Singles, Latino Singles, Interracial Singles (one event for white women to meet black men, one for white men to meet black women), Middle Eastern Muslim Singles, and single parents. If you attend, let me know how it goes.

Nicest Guy and I had our second official date on New Year's Day! I'm sure it comes as no surprise that the Nicest Guy in the World has the Nicest Family in the World, so for our second date we went to his sister and brother-in-law's place and played with the new Wii Fit they'd given their kids for Christmas. It was so much fun because his sister and her family are really great, AND it turns out I'm a much better athlete on the Wii than in real life. For example, I've never bowled above a 74 in an actual bowling alley, but on the Wii, I bowled a 130! The only Wii sport Nicest Guy and I didn't enjoy was boxing -- you couldn't really see what you were doing, so it felt like we were just flailing our arms around (and my arms got sore!). I also wasn't very good at the ski jump. But bowling, tennis, baseball, and yoga were all pretty cool. If only I could've had a Wii gym class back in school, I might've actually gotten an A in phys ed once in a while.

Since his sister's place is a little tricky to find, especially for someone like me with 'directional dyslexia,' I had driven to the nearby mall, Nicest Guy met me and left his car there, and we drove to his sister's in my dad's car. When we left, we drove back to the mall to get his car, so we shared our second kiss in -- where else? -- a parking lot.

"We have to stop kissing in parking lots," I said.

"I know," he agreed. "People are going to start thinking we're trashy!" ;)

Artsy Photographer: disappointing

Sorry it's taken me so long to post about my date with Artsy Photographer from HurryDate (http://www.hurrydate.com) -- but unfortunately, you weren't missing much! I can see why my friend barely made it through her first (and only) date with him a few months back. I like quiet guys, but he was too quiet in an awkward way. I would bring something up, like telling him about a trip I went on to Ireland last year, for instance, and he would basically just say, "That's nice." No tales of his own vacations, no questions about mine, nothing. So I found myself talking too much to cover up the silence. Once I realized I was doing this, I forced myself to let the silence linger. And then, just as I was about to pass out from the awkwardness, he would FINALLY ask me a question or contribute something to the conversation. That did not, however, make it any less uncomfortable. Even when I asked him a question, he would give me a short answer -- not in a rude way, just matter-of-fact -- but it made things difficult. If I'm on a date, and a guy asks me, for example, "Do you have any brothers or sisters?" I won't just say, "Yes, a sister." I'll also add where she lives, what she does, you know, to liven up the conversation, and then I would ask him about his siblings. But this guy would just say, "Yes, a sister." I would wait for more, but there wouldn't be any more, just that awkward silence. I had to pump him with questions to continue the conversation.

And at the end of it all, wouldn't you know, he didn't even treat me to dinner! I swear, when I had a full-time job, the guys I went out with paid 95% of the time. But I lost my full-time job in early October, and suddenly none of the guys I go out with ever pick up the check, just when I can least afford it! Is the bad economy making them all cheapskates, or is it just bad timing of who I'm dating? To be fair, Artsy Photographer had just lost his job the week before (on the day of the HurryDate event, actually). But he's a computer science person, so you know he was making more than I ever have, and he told me he'll be able to find another job quite easily when he wants to. And HE was the one who suggested dinner! If I'd known for sure I'd have to pay for myself, I would've preferred meeting for coffee. I was also slightly annoyed because as I looked at the menu, I asked if he'd ever tried the Ethiopian wine (we were at an Ethiopian restaurant). He said yes and that he liked it. I said I'd never tried it, then went to the restroom. When I came back, he had ordered us each a glass of wine. Nice gesture, but I had never said I wanted, or could afford to pay for, a glass of wine. Arrrgh! (But I must admit, it WAS delicious.)

Then when we hugged good-bye, I got a distinctly creepy feeling. I can't even explain why. But when I talked to my friend who'd had the date with him a few months ago, she asked, "Did he give you the creepy good-bye hug?" So she had gotten a weird vibe from his hug, too!

It's too bad because he was a smart guy, interesting when he actually talked :O and he did have a good sense of humor. I didn't send him a thank-you e-mail, though, and I haven't heard from him since.

Artsy Photographer

From the HurryDate (http://www.hurrydate.com/) speed-dating event last week, I received three mutual matches, and four other guys picked me who I didn't pick. One of the mutual matches I had was with the Artsy Photographer, the one who showed me the photos he takes of topless pregnant women (!). We had actually met once before, at another speed-dating event several months ago. I liked him and picked him, but he didn't pick me. He did, however, pick the friend I'd gone with to the event. They only made it through one date, after which she told me, "We had nothing to talk about. He picked the wrong woman -- he would have had much more in common with you!" You have to set up a profile on the HurryDate web site when you sign up for an event, so she gave me his username, I looked up his profile, and I really liked it. We even said something really similar at one point in each of our profiles and worded it almost identically. So I sent him a "virtual drink" on the site, and -- he never responded.

But I guess he didn't recall any of that at the event last week. This time he chose me, he e-mailed me first, and we're going out for dinner (Ethiopian food - yum) tomorrow night!

I went speed-dating tonight

Because a HurryDate (http://www.hurrydate.com/) speed-dating event I attended in the spring was rather sparsely attended, everyone there (the few of us who WERE there) got a credit to attend another one for free. Since it was going to expire at the end of this month, I finally hauled myself out to a HurryDate event tonight -- and I have to say, it was pretty fun. It was much better attended than the last event, I got to see the same cute host again, ;) and I met more than the usual number of guys I'd like to see again: 7 out of 22 -- almost 33%!

Not the first guy I talked to, though. He made this big show of saying, "I RARELY go south of Houston Street, but I decided to for tonight."

"Where do you live?" I asked.

"Jersey," he admitted. Um, I'm from Jersey. You can't be choosy about where in NYC you'll travel when you live in Jersey! He also picked the strangest topics of conversation, like, "There are more swimming pools in Long Island than in NJ." I thought, a) who cares? and b) seriously -- who cares!?

There were also some random men there who I already knew. Back when a friend and I were both unemployed in 2002, we used to go to these free parties and events where we eventually started seeing the same people over and over (which is why we eventually stopped going, ha!). Well, TWO of those guys were there tonight! One completely remembered me, and one didn't remember me in the slightest ("2002 was a long time ago," he said plaintively).

There was one guy there who was totally obnoxious, though. He was making up all these crazy stories, like that he was 48, "thrice-divorced" and had lost his kid to his ex-wife in his latest divorce, even though she wasn't the kid's mother. He even told the woman two seats away from me that he'd killed a guy in a bar fight the night before. (!!!) But he told the friend I went with, "I actually want to date you, so I'll tell you the truth," and explained that he's friends with someone who works for HurryDate, so since they were short a few guys tonight, his friend "made" him come to fill in, even though he's only 23 and the men for this event were supposed to be 35 - 45. So ridiculous. As my friend said, I'd rather sit there and do nothing for four minutes than waste my energy talking to some doofus who doesn't even want to be there. Ah well. At least he was entertaining.

But the strangest part of the evening was with one of the guys I'd met before at another speed-dating event a few months ago: the Artsy Photographer. I had liked him and chosen him, but he hadn't picked me (I didn't remind him about that part - awkward!). I remembered he had some sort of artsy hobby, and he said, "Oh yes, I do photography. Lately I've been doing pre-natal photography."

"Pre-natal?" I repeated, trying to figure out how you take a picture of a baby before it's born without using an ultrasound machine. But he explained that "pre-natal photography" means taking pictures of pregnant women.

"I actually have some photos with me if you'd like to see them," he said, pulling out his digital gizmo and passing it to me.

So I looked at the first photo: a pregnant woman, lying on her side in bed, wearing a halter top type of thing so her belly was bare. In the next photo, she was wearing even less clothing. They were beautiful photos and all, but it was bizarre to look at these intimate pictures of some pregnant woman taken by a guy I didn't really know, but who was sitting across from me. Then I got to the third photo. The woman was topless. OK. This was getting really weird.

"Great photos!" I said brightly, quickly passing the gizmo back to him.

After the event ended and most of the speed-daters had left, I was chatting with the friend I came with when suddenly she nudged me, hissing, "Look!" as she pointed to the bar. The cute host was totally making out with some woman! We weren't sure if she was one of the speed-daters or not, since we'd been paying more attention to the men. If she was, then wow -- good for her. That's putting the "hurry" in HurryDate!

Why do men just want to be pen-pals?

I'm sorry I've taken over a week to write a new post, but argh! Men! After he cancelled on me with one hour's notice due to an alleged eye infection, I had a nice talk with IT Guy (from eHarmony: http://www.eharmony.com) on the phone -- but then he never contacted me again to re-schedule. And what kind of an excuse is an eye infection, anyway? I mean, don't you know you have one when you wake up in the morning? So why wait until only an hour before our date to cancel? Maybe he actually has one of those social anxiety disorders where he's afraid to date in person.

Then there's New Jersey Journalist (also from eHarmony). We'd been e-mailing for weeks, I finally suggested getting together, he said he'd have this whole week off from work so maybe we could get together then. I e-mailed him in agreement and suggested we meet for lunch in the city one day. Instead of e-mailing me back a day later, like he always had before, he waited four days -- and the part about actually scheduling a date was the only part of my e-mail he didn't respond to! Do these men really want to meet, or do they just want an e-mail pen pal?

There's a GREAT speed-dating event happening next week through New York Easy Dates (http://www.nyeasydates.com) that I would totally attend if I weren't already taking a class that night. It's called "Speed-Daters Celebrating Obama!" :) It's taking place in Manhattan next Wed. 11/12 at 7:30 PM for men and women in their 20s and 30s who voted for President-Elect Obama. Ah, President-Elect Obama. I just love typing those words. :) :) You can find the details at: https://www.nyeasydates.com/new_york/events/815/event_details.html
It costs $30. If you go, let me know how it is!

Post-speeddating-marathon date

Yesterday I met up with Learned Optimism, who I met at the New York Easy Dates (http://www.nyeasydates.com) speed-dating marathon a week ago. We went to a coffee shop, and he bought me a hot chocolate. He had an interesting way of speaking – business-like, almost like we were on a job interview, but from time to time he would momentarily relax and flash this great smile. His parents moved back to Bangladesh last year, and he lives with a roommate in the city. He’s a software engineer and is starting an MBA program part-time in the spring. When I was telling him about work, he said, “So it’s your third job?” I nearly spit out my drink. I was on my third job by the time I was 23! “Oh, no, I’ve had tons of jobs,” I said.

“Really?" He looked confused. “When did you graduate from college?”

That’s what I realized he must have thought I was younger than I am. So I told him I’m 36. He’s only 28! After an hour I said I had to go, and we parted ways. An hour later he sent me an e-mail saying, “It was nice talking to you today. I hope you had fun too.” So I don’t know. Maybe he was just being polite. I’m meeting with another speed-dating guy for lunch later this week. I still haven’t heard back from favorite guy of the night at all, even though I e-mailed him four days ago.

But to tell you the truth, I still have a crush on the Nicest Guy in the World (see my June 11th and June 4th posts – I think those are the last times I blogged about him in detail). I’m nervous, but I keep thinking about him!

Speed-Dating Marathon: not for the faint of heart!

On Sunday, through New York Easy Dates (http://www.nyeasydates.com), I attended my first ever speed-dating "marathon," where you have at least 30 dates in one evening. The most speed-dates I’ve ever had in one night was around 15 or 16, and even that was tiring, so I wasn’t sure how the marathon would go. But in many ways I think I preferred it to the regular events. I got to meet 35 guys, more than twice as many as I would’ve met otherwise, and there were others I couldn't even meet because we ran out of time. The bar was too air-conditioned, and I shared my booth with another woman and her dates, which was a little strange. But fortunately (because I was really hungry) there was an “intermission” in the middle of the evening with finger sandwiches, fruit and other snacks. Each date was really short in order to fit in as many dates as possible – they must have only been three minutes each. You would think that wouldn’t be enough time, but it worked out well because the awkward dates didn’t last too long. ;) It WAS a bit exhausting, and I had to take quick but accurate notes after each date or I never would've remembered anyone, so I can see why some people prefer the regular events. But afterwards I felt really good, like I’d genuinely accomplished something. I guess that’s part of what motivates people to run real marathons.

I ended up choosing 10 of the 35 guys I met, even though one looked awfully young, and I’d actually met two others at other speed-dating events – both of whom I had picked, they also picked me, I e-mailed them, but then I never heard from them. One of them used a different first name this time, oddly enough (running from someone?). He chose me again this time, too, but my other “repeat” didn’t. Four other guys did, though, including my favorite guy of the night. :) I hope he e-mails me soon. One guy contacted me almost as soon as he got my e-mail address and asked when we could meet for coffee. It’s refreshing when they cut to the chase like that (and rare). So we’re meeting up this weekend. And another has already e-mailed me, too. We’ll see what happens.

Speed-dating this THURS. 8/28: only $20!

I received this e-mail a couple days ago. If any of you in the NYC area who are between the ages of 26 and 39 have been wanting to try speed-dating, this should be a great introduction to it. New York Easy Dates (http://www.nyeasydates.com) is one of my favorite speed-dating companies, and $20 is a good price, too. If you attend, let me know how it goes!

>Do you know anyone who has wanted to try speed-dating, but has felt a little apprehensive about it? Someone you'd like to encourage to try it? Maybe someone who hasn't been involved in the NYC dating scene for a while, and needs to plunge back in?
If so, please do forward them this e-mail. Next Thursday (August 28th), we're going to hold an event for people who are trying speed-dating for the first time.
Our friendliest hosts will be running the event, and we'll take a bit of extra time explaining the concept and how everything works. There will be complimentary appetizers and drinks specials, and the event will be just $20.
Here's the link for more details, or to register: https://www.nyeasydates.com/new_york/events/783/event_details.html
Event details: Madame X Lounge, 94 West Houston St, New York, NY
Thursday, August 28th at 7.30 pm
Women and Men, ages 26-39
regards,
The NYED Team

Cuddle parties

Have you ever heard of "cuddle parties"? They're kind of like speed-dating, except you cuddle with each other. No, I'm not joking. They even have a web site: http://www.CuddleParty.com. Apparently, a cuddle party is "a playful social event designed for adults to explore communication, boundaries and affection." You arrive at the event, change into your pajamas (!), participate in the hour-long "welcome circle," and then transition into "two hours of self-directed adventure and connection," where you "cuddle according to your desires and comfort (or just talk if you prefer)." Hmmm -- wouldn't you go to a regular party if you wanted to "just talk"? It seems to defeat the purpose of the whole event.

Since it took me a while just to get a massage for the first time (I couldn't see how letting a stranger put his or her hands all over my back would relax me), I don't think the cuddle party is for me. But it's interesting to know it's out there.

Sometimes the subway is so crowded during rush hour, it seems like everyone is trying really really hard NOT to have an accidental cuddle party. Actually, it's more like an inadvertent game of Twister -- with no eye contact.

Recommendations?

A friend recently asked if there’s one dating web site, company, etc. that I would recommend above all others, considering my frighteningly vast experience. I had to think about that for a bit. I do know that in my current mood I wouldn’t recommend speed-dating. The idea is terrific, in that you get to meet people immediately rather than waste weeks e-mailing someone you’d never like in person, or vice versa. But it hasn’t worked for me at all. My favorites, the guys I know right away I would love to go out with, never choose me – except for one, who, after one phone call, backed out of the date, saying he wasn’t ready because he was still getting over a serious relationship. (Sigh.) And with the guys who do choose me -- guys who seem nice enough to have potential -- it just never works out. I’ve never had any speed-dating relationship last longer than one date, or two at the absolute most. My whole Date & Dash experience (http://www.dateanddash.com/) is just one more example. I ended up with only one match, sent him an e-mail, and he never wrote me back. At least that event was free.

I’ve actually had the most luck on Match.com (http://www.match.com/): two relationships that lasted about two months each, and multiple dates with other guys. But I also spent the longest time on Match – about seven months – and met the most people through it, so that could be partly why.

You know which company I never heard from? Cause and Effect Dating (http://www.causeandeffectnyc.com/), where they match you up with someone on a date to do volunteer work. I filled out the contact form in May, but they never called or e-mailed me. Strange. Maybe I’ll try again.

I still don’t know what to do about the Nicest Guy in the World and Mr. No Touchy-Feely. Honestly, deep down I think what I want is someone who is more like Mr. No Touchy-Feely, but who treats me as well and as thoughtfully as the Nicest Guy in the World does. If only I could combine them, I’d have the perfect man.

Date and Dash update

Yesterday evening I finally received this e-mail from Date and Dash (http://www.dateanddash.com):

"Hi,
Thanks for attending the event.
We are aware that the male numbers did not match numbers in our system due to a card printing error.
This is how to correct the problem:
When you enter your "yes"s into our system, please follow this rule:
Just take 20 off from male's number, for example:
Guys-If your number was 51 enter results as 31, if you your number was 52, enter it as 32, if your number 65, enter it as 45.

Ladies-If you liked number 52, please select "yes" to 32.
Guys-when entering your selections, you DO NOT need to change the ladies numbers.

In addition, due to this mistake, we re-assigned different party number to the event. Please use 369.

Click here to enter and check your matches (you will need to create username and password)

Contact us if you have any further questions."

Geez. Could anything else have gone wrong? It's like a puzzle trying to get your matches for this one. Anyway, I finally was able to enter my matches, and got one mutual match from a guy I was on the fence about, but decided to choose at the last minute. He seemed a little intense, but he has a cool job -- he works on celebrity chef television shows -- so I decided to pick him. I just wrote him an e-mail. We'll see if he contacts me.

I'll be away for the Fourth of July weekend, but check back for a new post next Tuesday or Wednesday. Happy Independence Day and, as always, happy dating! :)