The day started off with a bike ride from “Mexico.”  It was the last day of volunteering on the third floor.  It was also the last day of sxswi  I finally got around to checking my twitter to see what the Canadian dude from last night had written.  The message was actually from someone else.

DailyMarauder@spinsta We have your arrow. Ransom to follow #sxsw

@DailyMarauder Your associate was unaware of the fact that he was supposed to hold the arrow for ransom. You should have words with him.

Nothing else after that. I skipped that core conversation.  I had plenty of work to be done.  10hdg and M thought that I should have scammed free food off of the dudes since they planned on checking out places to eat on Wednesday.

The day went by without a hitch (no more demons in room 10).  We managed to have everyone out of the panel rooms and have the laptops upstairs by 6:30.  I really wanted beer by then.  Unfortunately all the shift leaders had to hang back and have tribal counsel.  It was our turn to decide who would be coming back next year.

I headed back to my house to deal with the angry kitty and bring home some dirty clothes.  When I got back to Mexico I was starving and needed a nap.  I made dinner and passed out watching The Daily Show.  I woke up in time to get my FREE BEER and see Franki Chan spin twice (SXSWi closing party and PureVolume).

Cost of today: $1 for tip (FREE BEER)

Beer credits : 2

DISCLAIMER: I would like to apologize for the use of “e-mon” on many of the the adjectives used in this post.  I am blaming M and 10hdg.  One word. Viral.  I am also skipping the spell and grammar checking.  Not enough time right now.  Maybe after SXSWi

So today we managed to have a nice sunshiney day to ride to the convention center on the bikes.  After the usual welcome to tech crew meeting, I headed back to the third floor.  For the most part things went ok.  Room 10 is still possessed by demons.    Room 8 has some mild visual problems but we were able to get by.

The afternoon sounded promising.  There was supposed to be a fake riot staged by the ARG panel in room 6.  We were also promised that the AVW guys would replace all of the sound equipment in 10.  Bad news: RIot was LAME!  Good news: NEW SOUND BOARD.  M and I took a break from the insanity to play with “rockets” in the hall (They were promotional darts by capstrat.  I may have to order some.)

At the end of the day, we cleared out the panel rooms.  I had a little trouble getting rid of the Brits in room 6.  I had to resort to an old stand by to get them out.  I told them that there was FREE BEER in the park accross the street and at several other venues.  They were a little confused so I had to spell it out.  There are companies that throw parties and they want people to have fun so they make the alcohol free.  If no one comes to drink the free beer it will go to waste.

After the Brits leave I meet up with M and the crew in the hall.  I explain the Brit thing and end up starting a new dance craze at the same time.  We head off to the Rails party to learn more about otherinbox (BTW. beer facilitates learning).   We hung out there and have not acquired enough food credits to offset the beer credits. You might say that we were dunk-e-mon. <social networking experiment> (more…)

The shoes make their first appearance, originally uploaded by Limorama.

I know this is a late posting, but I’m attributing that to a) the 8 second delay and b) being busy finishing my application stuff. This is what 10HRDG and I did for valentine’s day.

We had discussed going out to test drive cars, but didn’t end up having enough daylight for that. Instead we went back to the scene of the crime. We went back to the place where we first went out. (I know, puke, right?)

It was actually pretty cute. Maybe it’s my perception, but I didn’t and don’t feel like we’re over the top with the shmoopy-ness or anything. I mean don’t get me wrong, we are a lot more affectionate when our friends aren’t around, but I’d like to think that in public we’re pretty good at containing ourselves.

He cooked me dinner after, a family recipe at that. It was good. It was a super nice day, we basically just chilled out most of the day. I’m getting less and less scared to admit it, I like him. I’m actually beginning to let my guard down a little around him. I hope I’m right in thinking he’ll stick around for awhile.

I have been holding out on you, little readers.  It’s 2009 and I wasn’t sure if I should post the follow up on the cyclist.  We went on two more dates after my project ended.  I could tell that things weren’t going to amount to much (even before I read the book).   The originally scripted ending was for me to walk off into the sunset and not care if I heard from him again.  It’s 2009 and I was supposed to be enjoying men like I enjoy a good meal. Unfortunately the network decided that they didn’t like that ending and they wanted something a little more dramatic.

Check out this edited script…

<Jen is drinking coffee and reading her email. She almost chokes on the coffee when she sees that there is an email from the cyclist.  It had been over a month since she last saw him.>

<voice over reads the email>

Sorry about the radio silence. I’ve been pretty busy and I’ve also started seeing someone in that exclusive way which is going to tend to suck up time in the future. Anyway, I think you’re a great person and doing a lot of really neat things, and I hope to see you around town every once in awhile. I think we could have done better at forming a more solid foundation for our relationship, but I gotta say part of the weirdness was due to me and my crappy last relationship. Sorry about that.

Argh, and I just realized that I’m sending this on V-day, even though I’ve been thinking about it for awhile. I hope that is only a minor dick move.

The Cyclist

<Jen begins to feel the anger rise up. She is unsure what to do, then she does the only thing she can.  She begins to type furiously.>

<voice over reads the email>
Do you think that I was waiting for you? I could have sent you an email after my gchat account was deleted. I chose not to. It was pretty obvious that it wasn’t going to work. After our last lunch date I had pretty much written you off.

You freaked out about things moving to fast and said that you didn’t really know me that well. Well that’s because communication works both ways. There could have been more email. There could have been more phone calls. There just wasn’t. I could have forced it. I could have tried harder.  But that would have been a disservice to myself. I’ve been that girl. Never again.

Good luck
-Jen

<Jen clicks the send button with a sense of accomplishment.  She fires out another round of email to her posse to let them know that her mama didn’t raise nobody’s doormat.>

I wanted to tell the network to go fuck themselves.  Bad food usually comes back to haunt you not too long after you eat it.  It doesn’t wait a month to cause you indigestion.

For the readers playing the at home game, yes, this is the 2nd time this year that a guy couldn’t commit to me but was ready once the next chick came around.  To the readers that have been paying really close attention, you may want to place your bets on when this one gets married.  The chances that he marries this girl are pretty high.  We are at 3 for 3 now.

PS. I hope it wasn’t a dick move for me to post those emails unedited on the internet.  If it was, my bad.

Why was I reading that book, you ask?

I had originally planned to read it because of the upcoming film release. The other reason is because Keely had recommended it to me ages ago and I ignored her advice.

Anyways,  the book was a quick read and in a few hours I learned the sick, sad truth.  I have never been in a relationship with or dated someone who was into me.  That’s right, NEVER.  I have the journal entries to prove it.  My cat also falls into the same category.

So what now?  Apparently I am going to have to suck it up and deal with the painful truth. Even if being alone sucks,  it is better than being with some emotionally stunted/unavailable fucktard.  The book definitely didn’t offer the promises of Obama.  Nowhere did it offer hope.  It merely reminded you that there are more women than men on the planet and that most of those men were completely losers.  As far as change goes, it did promote a change in attitude/behavior for the ladies.

Camel - from wikipedia

I searched through the old posts and apparently this hasn’t been documented.

So here is the definition

sex cam·el (sks kml)
noun A person, who can go for long periods without sexual intercourse in the same manner that a camel can go for long periods without water. They have found a way to store it up so they don’t need it as often.

In the case of myself and many of my girlfriends, it’s the dude that stops putting out.  In the beginning, there is non-stop sex (hell yeah!). Then all of a sudden you can’t remember the last time you had sex (booo!).  Or it becomes routine (woo hoo, it’s Wednesday night, let’s do it).  What happened? These are not elderly men who have entered the Viagra years.  These are able bodied dudes.  They just won’t put out.

One of my exes admitted to the fact that he was getting himself off nightly.  REALLY?  If given the choice, most guys I know will choose a women over their hand.  Or maybe a combination of the two.   He also admitted that he was trying to ween me off the sex.   He was frightened, he claimed it was like opening up Pandora’s box.  He didn’t think that I would be THAT into it.  First, he managed to get me down to sex on the weekends. Then, it was every two weeks. Then a month or two went by. That’s when I decided to get out.

Feel free to write in with your sex camel stories.  Maybe we can get these animals tagged so they can be identified in the wild.

What spawned this post?  Well, I got an email off the dating site from some 23 year old dude.  He said he really liked my profile and he thought that we would get along… blah, blah, blah.  Then he says, “I just gotta know.. are you real, you seem too good to be true so i had to ask.”

I have yet to respond to the 23 year old. If I do, it will look a little something like this…

Um, yes.  I am a real person and not a figment of your imagination.  My profile is a little wordy but that is only because I wanted to make it clear that a) I am not going to be your ghetto princess, and b) this is who I really am, can you handle this.

At least he had the balls to ask rather than skip over my profile thinking that I was some fictitious creature.

So this past few days Jen and I and another unnamed friend have gotten on one of those interweb dating sites.

Honestly I’m still not sure what to make of it all yet. I got a few messages from a few dudes. The majority were cute, some however were not. The ones that did not interest me I did not respond to. That’s what it’s all about, right? It’s kinda the lazy man’s way of meeting people.

In my profile I wrote: Music: I feel like I shouldn’t get into that right now cause I don’t want to get all pretentious or whatever, so how about you suggest something. I’m totally into listening to new stuff.

Surprisingly, I only had a few of the messages be about music. However the site does have an IM feature, and a stalking feature. When I saw that I knew that it was either a) going to get me into trouble, or b) be very useful to avoid the creepies.

When I first got on, the IM business started going nuts. There are apparently some setting on it, i.e. you can say you only want to get IM’s from guys who are: single, a set age range, and a set distance from you. Once I figured that out, pretty quickly I stopped getting IM from creepy dudes that lived across the world somewhere. So props to that at the very minimum.

There’s also this other feature where you can get a quick look at someone’s profile, then the site asks you to rate them based on looks and personality. Truth be told, I don’t think that’s really fair, I believe I’m much better in person or actually talking to someone. I mean, you guys probably think I’m some kind of asshole from reading my writing, but eh.

So I am going through the profiles, seeing who the computer thinks I should be matched with, it’s not doing it for me. I looked through those matches the first evening I was on the site, replied to a few dudes, thought about replying to a few more, but decided it would be better to get some homework done.

The next day, maybe the day after? (I think I’ve only been on the site for 3 days now, maybe 4?) I decide to explore a little more. The quick look thing looked to me like it could be fun. It may put dudes in there who weren’t in my matches, and what the heck, can’t hurt, right? I’m just here to meet people, they may or may not want to date me, but knowing more people is good. I’m not saying I going to meet the next jen on there and have a new BFF or anything. I just think some variety would be good in my life.

So, tonight I was on and going through the quick looky thing. Saw a cute dude, so I rate him as cute. I’m down, alright. Leave that as it is for then. A few minutes later I get an e-mail from the site saying that dude also thought I was cute. Awesome! What an ego booster.

Then I end up chatting with Kleen for awhile, on the other chat thing I use. Next thing I know I have another e-mail from the site saying I have a message from that dude, sweet! I go to read the message and see that he’s still online. So I just go ahead and IM him… Ah the nerve, a girl who’s not afraid to get what she wants.

We ended up chatting for a few hours, eventually moved the conversation to the other chat program I use b/c the IM from the site is kind of silly.

Talked about beer, music, and not surprisingly, hipsters. Haha. Then I started getting punchy, cause well, I’m tired, was drinking a glass of wine, and had practice earlier.

I mentioned that I did actually think he is cute. He was very polite and said thank you. It’s a little hard to tell through a chat application, but I think we were flirting. At least I was trying to. Works for me.

We discussed also how this site in particular might be a better place to meet friends rather than “dates.” He makes a valid point, even in only being on it a few days, I’ve gotten a good number of hits, i.e. messages (maybe 7 or 8 total?). And of those, I think I would like to be friends with 2 so far, would like to go on dates with 1 maybe 2, and the other(s) I have no interest in whatsoever.

So now dear readers, as some of you know Jen and I have been on the 17 dates in a year quest. Probably many more of you know that I haven’t done so well, so I’m officially abandoning that in favor of a new experiment. This new experiment will be: How many people do I meet from this dating site in the remaining months of this year. I will keep track of how many dates I go on, and I will keep track of how many friends I make from it.

I see this as being a much more valid challenge than 17 dates in a year. I just don’t have the energy to keep up with a whole year of seeking out dudes to date, so I inevitably fall off the wagon. I can do this for 2 months though.

I’ll let you know what happeneds. Stay tuned.

I knew I would eventually run into one of those guys again.

Today I was out watching the debates with my posse at a local bar (I know, we are dorks for watching the debates in a bar, but it was high def and most of us don’t have cable). M and I were watching the door for hot guys and the rest of the crew. I saw guy walk in and did a double take. It was the redhead (who according to his facebook profile is engaged). I turn to M and she looks at me. M starts to get up and have a chat with him. I told her to ignore him. I look away and try to be invisible (Not very easy. A black girl is kind of hard to miss.) He starts walking towards us and ends up a few tables away. I maintain my cool and keep talking to my peeps. M offers to take him out for me. I said no. He’s just a sad little boy in a bar watching the debates all by himself.

In the end he decided to move to the other end of the bar. I am guessing he felt a little uncomfortable (At one point in time I turned around to talk to my peeps at the table behind me and we made eye contact. Neither of us said a thing). I, on the other hand, felt truly blessed. I have a posse that will always be by my side rain or shine.

Oh, and I saw David Byrne last night. More reasons to be happy.

I love you all.
-Jen

Today the profiles were deleted. I still had 400 points left on my nerve personals account but I decided to cancel anyway. Has it done me any good? Mmmn, not really. It did get you a few good stories. I doubt that if I had met Napoleon Dynomite in person that it would have resulted in a date. Yahoo Personals was totally lame. No hits from people remotely interesting.

I was spending way too much time man hunting on the internet anyways. I will use my new found extra time to get more sewing and blogging done. Maybe some reading.

I need to find a place to meet straight men. I meet plenty of gay men in my travels (Fabric Store, Project Runway screenings, etc…). Maybe I will join a kickball league this fall.