back on the dating horse again

I've tried just about every online dating option out there, barring three major competitors. And since a good friend of mine recently met a great guy on chemistry.com, I figured I'd give it a try. (And it didn't hurt that they had a 3-months-for-the-price-of-one thing going on.)

It's been, well, interesting.

The site works like eharmony does; you take a test and they send you guys based on your results. And then they send you to different guys -- presumably the same guys they send to you, although it's not seeming like that's the case, and the truth is, I can't figure out what the hell's going on.

All I know is that it's not working very well.

I've set some pretty clear parameters. Things like "no kids," "no smoking," and "must have bachelors degree or above." I've been generous with my physical requirements, simply asking that they be taller than I am, and active/fit. And I keep getting guys who smoke, or live deep in New Jersey, or neglected to mention that they have kids. There's the one guy who was drastically overweight but claimed he fell into the category of "a few extra pounds." (Sure, if we're counting it as a few extra pounds for each extremity!)

There are guys who are clearly foreign and leave articles out of their sentences. ("I go to gym and I go grocery store.") There are guys whose profiles are written IN ALL CAPS AND WITH ABSOLUTELY NO PUNCTUATION AT ALL. There are guys who have 11 pictures of themselves posted and each one is fuglier than the next.

But for me, the kicker was the guy whose profile read:

I am divorced. I don't have any kids . I have a very healthy lifestyle. I try to get the best of my day , and to fully enjoy it. I love to prepare myself . I belive education is something that nobody can take away from you. I am looking for an inteligent person with a lot of common sense and a good heart.Just write me an email let's meet and take it from there.

I'm an inteligent person. And I'm staying away.

holy crap, k8, where have you been?

I know. I know I know I know. But I'm back now and that's all that matters.

To appease you, I've come up with a list of games that I've been playing as the mountains of snow here have been melting. Stand in line, put on your pinney, and get picked last for your team as we play...

1. Wow! Pigeon Poop Turns Snow Green

2. Is That the Sidewalk, or a Four Inch Puddle of Slush? Let Me Step In It To Find Out

3. Honking Makes That Truck Able to Get Past That Bus -- Really!

4. Single File Walking Behind Grandma: A New Olympic Test of Patience

5. Who Doesn't Like Four Jam-Packed Trains in a Row?

6. Love Me, Love My Snowpants

7. Whoosh! Boom! Splat! Falling Down is Funny!

8. I'm the Only One in the Office: It Must Be Naptime

Happy New Year!

Jewish Buddhism

(Again, an old chestnut from my former work's inbox...)

Take only what is given.
Own nothing but your robes and an alms bowl.
Unless you have the closet space.

Let your mind be as a floating cloud.
Let your stillness be as the wooded glen.
And sit up straight. You'll never meet the Buddha with posture like that.

There is no escaping karma.
In a previous life you never called, you never wrote, you never visited.
And whose fault was that?

Wherever you go, there you are.
Your luggage is another story.

To practice Zen and the art of Jewish motorcycle maintenance, do the following:
Get rid of the motorcycle. What were you thinking?

Learn of the pine from the pine.
Learn of the bamboo from the bamboo.
Learn of the kugel from the kugel.

If there is no self, whose arthritis is this?

Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out.
Forget these simple things and attaining Enlightenment will be the least of your problems.

The Tao has no expectations.
The Tao demands nothing of others.
The Tao does not speak.
The Tao does not blame.
The Tao does not take sides.
The Tao is not Jewish.

Drink tea and nourish life.
With the first sip, joy.
With the second, satisfaction.
With the third, Danish.

The Buddha taught that one should practice loving-kindness to all sentient beings.
Still, would it kill you to find a nice sentient being who happens to be Jewish?

To Find the Buddha, look within.
Deep inside you are ten thousand flowers.
Each flower blossoms ten thousand times.
Each blossom has ten thousand petals.
You might want to see a specialist.

Be here now. Be someplace else later.
Is that so complicated?

Zen is not easy. It takes effort to attain nothingness.
.... And then what do you have? Bupkes.

the hilarity of my sister

I love my sister for sixty five million reasons, but one of my favorite reasons is because she laughs so easily. I can tell a joke, and before I'm even halfway done, she's in stitches. I can tell a story about my life and, even though I may be crying about the plot line, she'll find something in it that cracks her up. Sometimes, I can just look at her out of the corner of my eye and she'll snort. Now, I'm not saying that I'm actually hilarious. (In fact, it's likely just the opposite.) There's just something about our relationship that makes me funny. Whatever it is, I'd like to bottle it and hand it out to men worldwide.

Luckily, I feel much the same about her. I've heard stories of hers that make absolutely no sense, and I'm in hysterics before the end of them. So I'm not entirely sure that the inanity below is actually funny, but I certainly think it is.

Witness a poem she wrote me many moons ago:

Oh zit,

why do you have to be so prominent? yet dig to the heart of my soul.

you are so big and right under my eye, i can barely see.

and I am squinting every day.

Oh zit,

why couldn't you just go away, every day you get redder and redder

and I want to pick you. but you are one of those under ground zits.

and I can't.

So I'll just look at my computer, with a popeye stare

and look forward to the day when you are gone.

Or another message entitled "pee you," which she sent after having outlined for me the night before everything she had ordered from room service:

"since i described everything i ate yesterday, i bet you were wondering how that would all smell later.
the answer is not good."

Snort.

thoughts that only have my head in common

I received this message from my mother recently:

"This morning the Refrigerator Police invaded a home and arrested 43 items for loitering beyond their expiration date. 'We knew a new refrigerator was coming tomorrow and so we cleaned out this nest of dead bottles and cans in preparation.' The oldies are being held in the garbage can without bail. Some, police said, are old enough to collect social security."

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I overheard the following conversation on a rainy morning between two super-bedraggled-arguably-still-drunk-from-last-night women without umbrellas. Imagine, if you will, that both voices have recently smoked sixteen thousand cigarettes and are way louder than anyone should be at 9am:

Woman 1: I don't know why they were asking for it anyway.

Woman 2: Don't you have to carry it around?

Woman 1: No. That's your drivers license, not your marriage license.

Woman 2: You don't carry your marriage license with you?

Woman 1: No. I carry my drivers license.

Woman 2: Not your marriage license?

Woman 1: No. Why would I? When do you need your marriage license?

Woman 2: So you don't carry it?

Woman 1: No. I don't.

Woman 2: Would you carry it if you had it?

Woman 1: No. Why would I? When do you need your marriage license?

Woman 2: So you don't carry it?

Woman 1: No. I don't.

Woman 2: Would you carry it if you had it?

Woman 1: No. Why would I? When do you need your marriage license?

Woman 2: So you don't carry it?

(Repeat ad infinitum, or until your pace far outstrips theirs.)

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I participated in this conversation recently with my friends' seven year old son.

Him: You know what our soccer team's colors are?

Me: No, what are they?

Him: Gold, black, and alabaster.

(pause)

Me: Do you know what color alabaster is?

(pause)

Him: No.

(Now, I have always hated this kind of moment. When you wonder if the other person is going to tell you what it is they know, or if they're just going to lord it over you that they know something you don't. My mother scarred me on this when, as a kid, she didn't tell me what "dildo" meant.)

Me: It's a kind of white.

Him: Oh, I knew that.

(I said the same thing when confronted with the shocking truth of what a dildo was.)

Me: You know what color your face is?

(pause)

Him: Um, white?

Me: No. Dirty Alabaster.

And because we're both seven and dorky, we broke into hysterical laughter.

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Nerdy Word Thoughts:

1. I saw a typo in a job listing indicating that the job was at a top "coorporation." And the idea appealed to me -- a company where everyone really worked together. Kind of works, no?

2. Can you wear participants?

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I found this entertaining. It's an ad for lab equipment.

gratuitous blonde jokes

I was cleaning out my office email account and came across these gems in an email from 2006. They're not the best I've ever seen, but they are chuckleworthy...

LOGIC
Two blondes living in Oklahoma were sitting on a bench talking........ and one blonde says to the other, "Which do you think is farther away..........Florida or the moon?"
The other blonde turns and says "Helloooooooo, can you see Florida...???"

CAR TROUBLE
A blonde pushes her BMW into a gas station. She tells the mechanic it died.? After he works on it for a few minutes, it is idling smoothly. She says, "What's the story?"
He replies, "Just crap in the carburetor"
She asks, "How often do I have to do that?"

SPEEDING TICKET
A police officer stops a blonde for speeding and asks her very nicely if he could see her license.
She replied in a huff, "I wish you guys would get your act together. Just yesterday you take away my license and then today you expect me to show it to you!"

RIVER WALK
There's this blonde out for a walk. She comes to a river and sees another blonde? on the opposite bank. "Yoo-hoo!" she shouts, "How can I get to the other side?"
The second blonde looks up the river then down the river and shouts back, "You ARE on the other side."

AT THE DOCTOR'S OFFICE
A gorgeous young redhead goes into the doctor's office and said that her body hurt wherever she touched it.
"Impossible!" says the doctor. "Show me"
The redhead took her finger, pushed on her left breast and screamed, then she pushed her elbow and screamed in even more. She pushed her knee and screamed; likewise she pushed her ankle and screamed. Everywhere she touched made her scream.
The doctor said, "You're not really a redhead, are you?
"Well, no" she said, "I'm actually a blonde."
"I thought so," the doctor said. "Your finger is broken."

KNITTING
A highway patrolman pulled alongside a speeding car on the freeway. Glancing at the car, he was astounded to see that the blonde behind the wheel was knitting! Realizing that she was oblivious to his flashing lights and siren, the trooper cranked down his window, turned on his bullhorn and yelled, "PULL? OVER!"
"NO!" the blonde yelled back, "IT'S A SCARF!"

BLONDE ON THE SUN
A Russian, an American, and a Blonde were talking one day. The Russian said, "We were the first in space!" The American said, "We were the first on the moon!"
The Blonde said, "So what? We're going to be the first on the sun!"
The Russian and the American looked at each other and shook their heads. "You can't land on the sun, you idiot! You'll burn up!" said the Russian.
To which the Blonde replied, "We're not stupid, you know. We're going at night!"

IN A VACUUM
A blonde was playing Trivial Pursuit one night. It was her turn. She rolled the dice and she landed on Science &Nature. Her question was, "If you are in a vacuum and someone calls your name, can you hear it?"
She thought for a time and then asked, "Is it on or off?"

BLONDE PETS
A girl was visiting her blonde friend, who had acquired two new dogs, and asked her what their names were. The blonde responded by saying that one was named Rolex and one was named Timex.
Her friend said, "Whoever heard of someone naming dogs like that?""HELLLOOOOOOO......," answered the blond. "They're watch dogs!"

what should I be when I grow up?

I've been keeping something from you. For the last howevermany months, I've been looking for a new job. I didn't mention it before because, well, a couple of my coworkers know about this site, and on the off chance that one of them should visit before I found a new one... Well, it seemed safer to keep this from you.

I'm sorry. Please understand. I wasn't trying to mislead you...

The good news is that I have finally gotten a job doing what I think will be exactly what I want to be doing. (We'll see if it actually turns out that way, but at the moment, I'm so psyched I can't see straight.)

Over the course of looking for a job, I entered my resume and credentials into a number of search engines, and was continually entertained by some of the results I'd get. Mostly they were technological training jobs or programmer positions, but occasionally there were a couple of gems. Like these:

Executive Chef

(What on earth made them think I could cook? I don't even have "enjoys baking" at the end of my resume.)

Cardiopulmonary RN

(I have a circulatory system, but something tells me that's not their only criterion.)

Regulatory Attorney -- Corporate Governance

(Ok, so I work at a law firm (for five more days) and I could see how they would think that I might be all legal and stuff, but really? You're promoting me without the JD?)

Assistant Buyer, Kids

(I'm not really up on the going rate for kids these days.)

Bodily Injury Claims Specialist

(I do bruise easily.)

And my two favorites:

U.S. Army Band/Musician and U.S. Army Sewing Machine Operator.

(Are there dorkier positions available in the armed forces? I think not.)

Also, one of the things I saw listed as a job requirement for a job I was actually considering struck me as odd. Should I have worried that "use of box cutters" was required?