RIP Mr. Current: January 10, 2007 - February 2, 2007
Oh friends, it appears I spoke too soon. Mr. Current is likely to be dead after Friday.
Mr. Current and I went out for a brilliant fancy Italian dinner, followed by lovely drinks. Four days later, Mr. Current took me out for tapas and then to Cirque du Soleil's "Corteo", having scored the best seats in the house. Mr. Current was fab.
I haven't heard from Mr. Current in a week and a half. Granted, I've been out of the country for five days (which he knew), but I'm giving Mr. Current two more days before I retire him to the Moratorium of Guys Past, a large but ever-growing purgatory.
I'm not sure what I'm more disturbed by: the fact that we met our brief ending after two really great dates without reason, or the fact that I am ambivalent about the situation. Hmph. He's a great guy, but if this is the way things are gonna go, I might have to look at this as a blessing. If anything, this is one less person's phone calls and texts to return, and one less person I run the risk of yelling out the wrong person's name in the sack.
The up-side to all of this is that I am still interested in at least two or three other people. One of them is probably you.
Voulez-vous partager un croissant éventé avec moi ce soir?
Bonjour ! Ce soir je pars pour Paris. Je serai là pendant cinq jours avec ma soeur. J'ai lu dedans peuple le magasin qui l'épice snob et le Katie Holmes sont là maintenant. J'espère que nous deviendrons les meilleurs amis. J'espère également rencontrer un Français attirant avec de bonnes dents. Je m'ennuierai de vous tout. Essai pour ne pas s'ennuyer de moi trop. Je serai en arrière la semaine prochaine.
Talk Java To Me, Or Why Nerds Are The New Bad Boy
I wake up every day and feel like I'm still 13, even though I am exactly twice this age. I don't feel age, even though I have an upcoming mortgage, and a job, and a cat, and my parents keep nagging me about getting married.
But the process of evolution is slow and felt only in the nuances and subtleties of
everyday life. And the other day, there was nothing more evident that I am growing up than the realization that my taste in men has changed completely. Even in the past year.
For me, nerds are the new bad boy.With all due respect to the men of the past and the men of current, each group stands on an opposite side of the planet, divided like our little friend Moses parted the Red Sea. And I, my friends, have crossed the bridge into Canaan.
It used to be that the meaner you were to me, the more I loved you. Come to think of it, with few exceptions, I'm not sure how I ever really had boyfriends, but I did. I liked them rough around the edges (and in the middle) and emotionally unavailable. So appealing was the idea that I could "save" them that I reduced myself to doing ridiculous things, like baking cookies to cheer them up and flying across the country to see them. And yet I was shat on time and time again, and couldn't figure out why. It was exciting, and frustrating, and
exhilarating, and the more the
rollercoaster winded, the more involved I got. It seems a little crazy to me now, but I feel like I'm such a stable person that I craved a little instability. It was my weird way of rebelling vicariously, I guess.
I always liked the "cool" guys, the guys that I initially assumed wouldn't give me a chance. I liked them good-looking and cocky and complicated and aloof. And if this isn't proof, consider that I broke up with a boyfriend because he was going to jail. Believe me now?
And then, somewhat recently, that changed. I stopped looking for Mr. Cocky and started valuing completely different things. A job, for one. Unemployed? Not for me. Confused about your career? Likely not for me. Hourly wage? Not for me. Sorry buddy, but I didn't spend six years of post high-school education to support your ass. I don't expect you to give me the keys to your
Lex, per
se, so don't expect me to chip in for your bus pass. I know I sound like
Chilli from TLC when I say that I don't want no scrub, but shit man, those girls were on to something.
Also, you must be nice, particularly to me. Get along with your family. Have a solid group of friends - more than say, 6 total. Have you gone to college? Perfect. Grad school of some sort? Even better, but not required. These are the things I'm looking at, friends. No longer can you get to my girlish charms with a nice smile and a big dick (which is a bonus, but no longer sole criteria). The bigger your
brain, the better chance you have.
My Mr. Current is college-educated, close to his family, has a nice group of friends who seem to love him, and has an extraordinarily nerdy job that he loves. In the many conversations we've had about his job, he speaks so fluidly about shit I don't understand that he may as well be speaking Swahili to me, but I love it. Here's a guy who has a passion for something and can speak intelligently about it (and by happy coincidence, is very financially stable and quite successful). Granted, he's out of his twenties, so he's a few steps ahead of those of us who are still trying to figure out how college flew by so quickly, but he has his shit together, and I love it.
The other night, we were talking about something technical, and he started spouting off all of this jargon about a client he's working on. At the very mention of "wide area network", I felt a "ping" and my knees went weak. I didn't understand half of what he was saying (and he knew it), but f*ck was I interested. Stimulated, even. It occurred to me that I was actually learning something from this guy, and it excited me that I was excited
to learn. Score!
Best of all, he's nice to me. He's nice to me because (and I hate to make him sound bad by saying this)...well, I'm not sure he knows how to be
not nice. I'm never secretly stressing out that he'll forget to pay for dinner or open the car door and thus ruin the fantasy I have in my head about being treated like a lady, because he always does both. And then some. I guess I've never really appreciated being treated well until now, but as I mentioned a few blogs ago, it's so much more important than I ever thought. It's nice to feel protected, and cared about, and...well, womanly.
I never thought I'd be into someone who might be categorized as "dorky" solely by virtue of what he does. It went against everything I ever thought I wanted. Did I really want someone who could take a computer or a car or a bed apart and put it back together? Wouldn't it just be more fun to be with someone who would order me to get him a beer and pile the laundry in the corner? But the thing is, he's not dorky at all. He's a passionate guy who has varied interests and actively pursues them and doesn't give shit whether
you think it's cool or not. And that attitude makes him cooler than any hot bum I've ever known.
There's a distinct difference between what we think we want and what we really need, and I think I've stumbled upon one of my hooks. Nerds of the world - I am calling. I hope I didn't jinx myself with this guy and something goes awry now that I've gone and blogged my fat mouth off about how great he is, but you know what? Even if it doesn't work out, I'll be okay. With my pocket protector as my witness, I will set my sights elsewhere, and never give up my dream that someday, I could have a "Magic: The Gathering" themed wedding with the man of my dreams.
Get Off Your Ass - The Dog Didn't Eat Your Monitor
Wow. Good thing "write more in blog" wasn't a 2007 resolution, or I'd be failing miserably. Whoever said that life slows down in January was a serious f*cking moron. I have never been more busy, or more excited, or more backed up on the blog due to living too much life...but I am leaving for Paris (yes, Paris!) in two days for a mini-vacation while my sister takes a deposition for work, and I just can't sleep. I owe you a blog. Let's hear it.
Dating someone new is always a very tricky game. It's exciting, it's exhausting, and it's...well, suspect. Especially if you know absolutely nothing about the person prior to the dating. There's a total feeling-out process that lasts hours, days, and even months as you attempt to maneuver the Jedi mind trick of behavior prediction (and that's if you even last that long).
I've been fortunate in most of past relationships to have known the guy in some other capacity prior to the dating. As with anything, this had its benefits and its drawbacks, but I always found it beneficial to know about the person because it helps to keep perspective. Knowing someone beforehand affords you the intelligence to understand what the relationship will be like - how often you'll talk or see one another, or how he'd handle certain situations. And if worse comes to worst, you can always remind them that you remember that they peed their pants in 5th grade. You know,
maturely remind them.
An added layer of difficulty gets thrown into the mix when not only do you have no prior history with the person in any way, but also, you met them randomly. No mutual friends, no setups...I mean, here is a total random stranger who wants to take you out to dinner. What the hell do you do? It's a little unnerving!
In this day and age of our little global village, we are lucky enough to rely on Al Gore's internet to help us research these things and make sure we know a little something. Some of us choose to ignore our homework and allow ourselves to be "surprised" - I'm talking to you Amber Frey and pretty much anyone who dated Ted Bundy - but most of us rely on Google to help us out. I mean, who
is this person? Did they really go to school? Do they really work where they say they do?
Hopefully we aren't surprised in a bad way. Hopefully that search under "sex offenders" turns up empty, no record of firstname-lastname anywhere in the database - hooray! Hopefully we're not a little weirded out, like the time I typed my friend Matt's name into Google and found out that a) he played the trumpet in high school (no current evidence of that, so this was a shock) and b) his nickname was "Snatch". I now do willingly admit that my merciless taunting might have contributed to the demise of that friendship.
And yet sometimes we are surprised in a good way, as I was when I decided to look up one of the guys I am dating. All I had to do was type in his first name, last name, and profession (all of which I will not share with you in order to protect his privacy), and there he was - I found a series of posts from the latest talking about work-related information on a professional blog. (See above post for more on that.) I clicked on the link and read, and can honestly say that after reading about things I had no understanding of whatsoever, I was completely pleased...and a little turned-on. Who knew he wrote so intelligently? Who knew he could put those things together? Good Lord, take your clothes off, man. You're hot.
I feel much better now.
Seekonomics: The Business of Relationship Economy
The more I date - which as of lately, has been very active - the more I realize that it's a lot like economics.
Which is too bad given that I had to audit Microeconomics 201 in college. Twice.Give me props here. I am out, I am about, I am meeting people left and right (thank you Sweet Jesus for giving me my Mojo back, as it has been missing since 2003), and I am taking chances. I am susceptible to mindchanging far too frequently for my own good, and often find myself ranking the prospects multiple times on a daily basis with each text message, email, date, and/or phone conversation I have. Many a guy has been dumped in my head this week. Many a guy has gotten laid. Often these guys are the same people. For their sake, let's hope they're getting laid first, and then getting dumped. Or if they're a real asshole, they're probably hoping for vice-versa.
Anyway, if there's anything I've learned, it's that we need to make like Charles Schwab and look at ourselves as stock to invest in. It's most important to invest in your own stock, obviously. If you speculate that your stock will do well, you'll prosper. If you prosper, you garner even more interest. And if there's enough interest, you pay dividends. It's really just another fancy term for "getting laid a lot", but it's a small (yet thrilling) price to pay for having people invest in you.
Yet oftentimes, we realize that even with the worth of our own stock, it would be helpful to have another stock. We get to a point where we want to invest elsewhere, be it so that we can become more prosperous, successful, or even just because it's nice to invest and we can afford to do it. This is where investing in others' stock comes in.
We look at a lot of things before we make this decision. We look at stock history, we look at employee relations, we look at investor relations, and - never to be forgotten - we look at marketplace conditions. The key is to find a rising stock that you feel confident investing in the long-term. A stock that may not be the be-all, end-all stock, but is ultimately the right stock for you.
In the process, you play the game like a simple case of supply-and-demand. The more supply you have, the less demand you'll get. Scarcity - in just enough of an ample quantity - will usually drive consumer desire, or at least raise some interest. And when we feel comfortable enough to make a commitment, we buy in.
We hope for the best, but sometimes that doesn't happen. In the best-case scenario, the marketplace shifts and there's a hotter stock to invest in, so we shift our investments there. In the worst-case, Martha Stewart sells her stock, the stock falsely reports profitability, and we end up f*cked, or broke, or in jail - and possibly all three. But resiliace is the nature of the marketplace, and the beauty of it is that we can bounce back better than ever. And we often do.
But if you're fairly new (and/or bad) to the investment game, your best bet is to do as I do, which is to diversify your portfolio until you feel comfortable making a choice. You pick some short-term players, some potential long-terms to keep your eye on, and some wildcards. Then, you sit back and wait to see who performs best in the marketplace in order to optimize your investments accordingly. Sure, you have your gut-favorites. You have your Ohio States or your Walmarts (suck it, Gators). You have your Boise-State-surprise-favorites-excluding-tacky-proposals, and your pharmaceuticals in 1999.
And while I always thought it best to play it safe, I'm in the process of learning - as we do with investments - that the most favored or most reliable aren't always so. It's the stocks that are at the start of that perfect upswing that often yield the most pleasantly surprising results. I am learning that there's nothing wrong with being noncommital, or with refusing to stick to particular parameters, and to keep an open mind instead. Maybe the time will come when I decide to throw all my chips in something and hope for the best, but for the time being, I am perfectly happy with a diversified portfolio.
What do you think about that, Charles Schwab?
Happy New Year!
I just got back today from a fun little jaunt to the Blue Ridge mountains, where I spent the past two days. Had a great New Year's - spent semi-quietly in a hot tub with a gaggle of friends and more booze than I'd like to recall. It was the best NYE I could have hoped for.
At any rate, I hope all of you had as enjoyable of a New Year's celebration as I did, and that 2007 brings you health, happiness, and - as always - lots of laughter. Enjoy catching up on that inevitable pile of email that awaits you tomorrow. We'll talk soon.
