Archive for January, 2010

My friends Eric and Elissa are real adults who just bought and moved into a brand new home. They supervised the building of this home. They decorated the kitchen and the 3 bedrooms and the master bathroom. They made sure there’s a cohesive look running throughout the house. They thought about things they might like in their home in the future and added them into the design. They are my age. They are much more responsible than I am.

Because they wanted to celebrate this momentous adult occasion, Eric and Elissa decided to throw a housewarming party and were nice enough to invite me. They ordered pizza and made Chex mix for the event. I wanted to contribute something, too. Since I try to be socially acceptable in most situations, I decided to bring a bottle of chilled Riesling, which is something both Eric and Elissa enjoy.

The day of the party, I went to Nebraska to see my grandparents, so I knew I was going to be about an hour late. I called Elissa to tell her this so she would save me a slice of pizza. Everyone else was already there, but there was plenty of food left over. Thank god. I might have starved.

I decided to do my wine buying at my old neighborhood favorite on 6^th Avenue both because it was on my way and because I trusted their selection. It’s a small shop with good knowledgeable help, something I relied on heavily back when I had no idea what I was doing when it came to buying wine. Perhaps it was because of this that I behaved the way I did: like a total d-bag.

I entered the shop and scanned the white case quickly, finding not a single Riesling appropriate for the event. I looked around the shop for Germany, and as I clearly looked confused, one of the clerks came over to help me.

“Can I help you?”

“Germany?” I asked.

“There,” he said, leading me unnecessarily 2 steps to the right, “Anything in particular?”

“I’m going to a party and my friends are big Riesling drinkers. I was going to bring something German, unless you have another recommendation.”

“Honestly, if you don’t want to spend that much, maybe this one from Washington.”

Nice, normal conversation at this point, right? So please explain to me why I suddenly decided I needed to aggressively prove my knowledge on wine. Please explain to me why I became a huge wine d-bag. This is a situation in which I knew in the MOMENT that I was behaving inappropriately and just refused to stop myself. I would have punched me in the face. I wish you had been there to do so.

This is how I continued: “How’s that Washington drinking? Normally, domestic Rieslings are too hot and too sweet for me.” (By the way, “too hot” means “too much alcohol” in wine language)

“Well, I’d describe this one as off-dry. If you want something less sweet, this other one is done in a dry style.”

“Yeah, I like high acidity, myself. No cloying sweetness for this girl.” (First off, every Riesling ever has high acidity. I don’t think I need to elaborate on what’s wrong with the rest of that sentence)

“Uh, right. Well, which one?”

“I’ll go Washington. Do you have that thing that instantly chills?”

“Sure, it’ll just take 7 minutes.”

As my bottle was chilling, the clerk busied himself with other tasks. I browsed the shelves and promptly noticed Scarpetta, a wine made by one of the Master Sommeliers for whom I used to work.

“Do you guys sell a lot of Scarpetta?” I asked.

“Yeah, I suppose so.”

“Cool. I’m from Boulder, and I used to work with Bobby Stuckey. It’s all over up there.” Great. So now I’m name-dropping Master Sommeliers completely unnecessarily and talking about something of little to no import.

“Yeah, Bobby’s a cool guy.”

“Definitely. Do you sell Richard Betts’s wine, too?” This may have been the moment when I considered putting my head through a window to shut myself up, but it still kept coming.

“Yeah, good stuff.”

“Definitely. He’s a cool guy. Great palate.”

“Right, well, your wine must be ready by now.”

I walked out the door rolling my eyes at myself and proceeded on my way. 15 minutes later, I was pulling up at Elissa and Eric’s house, shaking off my d-bag move and preparing to give them the bottle of wine I’d carefully selected for their consumption.

Sometimes, when I go to my grandparent’s house or when I feel like being a social ruh-tard, I like to wear slippers out in public. Had I remembered that post-grandparents I’d be headed to a classy little party, I’d have brought a change of shoes. As it was, I was ill-suited for not only social interaction, but also outdoor exposure in my traction-less house shoes. Elissa and Eric live in a charming neighborhood so new that snow removal is not yet included in their neighborhood amenities. This added another treacherous element to my journey from my car to the front door.

I crossed in front of the threshold of the first house on the street and hit a patch of black ice (I swear it looked just like the sidewalk). I slid clown-on-a-banana-peel style about 3 feet before both legs flew out in front of me, and I hit the ground like a tree felled by a lumberjack. That bottle of wine, which I’d just taken great care and major hits to the pride to procure, shattered, Riesling spewing forth across the sidewalk.

I lay there for a moment, trying to decide what to do. Obviously driving somewhere to get another bottle of the wine was overkill, but I am loath to show up empty-handed. So I picked up the half-empty half-shattered wine bottle and marched up the steps to the couple’s front door, knocking with conviction. Elissa pulled it open, surrounded by about 20 people I didn’t know.

I thrust the remnants of my journey into her hand and managed sheepishly, “Mazel Tov.”

Laura makes a grand entrance, as per usual.  Decorative vase perhaps? Happy housewarming, kids.

Well, here I am again. And by here, I mean, sitting in my seat on an airplane, vaguely sweaty and slightly nauseous having just sprinted about a mile and downed a 20 oz cup of coffee in approximately 4 minutes.

It’s actually baffling to me how often I’m in this situation. I do this thing if I really want a scenario to go a certain way: I visualize the outcome and then practice. The airport scenario is one I really want to go a certain way. It’s a scenario I’ve visualized about a hundred times. And it’s a scenario I’ve had the chance to practice over and over and over. And I’m about 0 for 1000. Not good odds.

In my constructed environment, I’m the confident strutting international woman of mystery, clothed in a long coat and moving quickly but gracefully through the cheaply carpeted terminals, travel bag resting perfectly on my forearm. I move through the security line at lightning pace, pulling my shoes off and my laptop out in one fluid movement. And I arrive at the gate just in time to board, cup of coffee in manicured hand, only to relax into my seat and smile at the other more nervous passengers as they scramble for coveted overhead storage.

Ignoring the fact that I rarely have a manicured hands or an appropriate travel bag, I’m usually running too late for this to work (I know, shocking). Because I never fail to dangerously underestimate the amount of time it will take me to check-in, get through security, and find a decent cup of coffee (35 minutes, right?), I’m required to awkwardly sprint from the moment I step inside the automatic glass doors, risking dismemberment (or at least shoulder dislocation) by my rolling suitcase that is a little too heavy due to my frantic inefficient packing.

Security is never the breeze I expect, and instead of serenely gliding through the line, I end up standing 3 inches from the person in front of me, neck veins bulging, in hopes that my intensity will magically move people through the checkpoint in a timelier manner (it should be noted that this does not work). Savvy travelers have a system: they get their laptops out and ready, their coats off, and their shoelaces untied BEFORE they reach the little conveyor belt, and this allows them to shave several seconds off the whole ordeal. The rest of the pack has no such system, and I find myself sighing loudly as the family of five unpacks their electronic devices, contends with shoes, breaks down the stroller, inevitably loses and then finds something, and tries to herd the kids through the metal detector. Without fail, one of the kids sets off the alarm, and chaos ensues as the parents try to figure out what the cause is. Meanwhile, I’m having an aneurism, offering unhelpful advice, like hiring a babysitter next time, standing in my socked feet and worrying I’m going to miss my flight.

On a related note, airports these days are creating separate lines for travelers of varied experiences. There’s the family line, the casual traveler line, and the expert traveler line. Of course, I always choose the expert line, because I’m good at everything. This is a trick and always a bad call. This is because everyone thinks they’re good at traveling and chooses the expert travel line to feed their own ego. The TSA doesn’t think about this, however, so they make more casual traveler lines. So I get to have a heart attack because some dude just breezed through the casual traveler line while I’m waiting on the family of four shoving the car seat through the conveyer belt in the one line reserved for expert travelers. It’s times like those when I wish the TSA would relegate more people to crowd control and less to telling me that contact solution comes in travel size bottles that would prevent them from having to test mine every time I go through security. Really? I’ve been wearing contacts since 8^th grade. You mean I’ve never realized there’s another bottle size?

Once I do make it through the TSA process, the next order of business is coffee. I cannot fly without coffee. I do my best work on planes, and this is completely contingent upon me being caffeinated.

In any circumstance, caffeine is a magical magical drug that makes me ambitious, motivated, and focused. When I’m caffeinated, I can do anything. I have the energy to run a marathon, the optimism to commit to lofty goals, and the articulation to craft great pieces of writing. I can save the planet on caffeine. I can run for office. I can compassionately wax poetic about my fellow man. There is one danger of caffeine, though (uh, besides the whole explosive stomach thing): wasting its potential. Sometimes I get sucked into diversions when I’m caffeinated, and then I end up spending high-potential hour upon high-potential hour being the best facebooker ever, only to realize that I could have been doing something good for humanity with all of those wasted minutes.

Which brings us to why caffeine is essential for plane rides: with no other distractions on an airplane, I have a perfect environment in which to achieve. The amount of work I can pump out in a coffee-enhanced trip is truly stunning. So no matter how late I’m running, finding that black nectar is paramount.

Usually, this means sprinting bowleggedly, trying not to run myself over with my carry-on, to the side of the terminal I know houses a Starbucks or a Caribou Coffee or some other chain of mediocrity that I at least know will be drinkable. Upon obtaining my scalding hot cup of joe, I have to run back, risking second degree burns, so I can be first on the plane and get my choice of overhead storage space. In my nervousness over whether I’m going to be able to achieve that end, I down the coffee as fast as I can, burning the roof of my mouth and ensuring I’m going to be counting the seconds until the seatbelt sign goes off so I can relieve myself in the bathroom.

So we’re pretty much up-to-date on how I got here, sweating and nauseous. Standard operating procedure.  Baffling.

Woops. I’m in Chicago. Can you guess why? I’ll give you a hint. See the Seven Day Love Affair. Where was he moving? Woops. Chicago. Woops. At this point it seems silly to keep his identity anonymous since he’s become a major character and knows I’m writing about this, so I will henceforth refer to him by his name, which is Tyler.

Late Monday evening, amidst talk about experience whore-dom, Tyler suggested I hop on the next plane to Chicago and come meet him. He has a handy little perk that allows him $60 roundtrip buddy passes from Denver to Midway; chump change when you consider most people spend that on dinner and a night at the bar (or, uh, just dinner OR just a night at the bar). I agreed to see if I could come Wednesday morning for 48 hours. Tuesday night, about 4 hours before I needed to leave for the airport, I booked the ticket.

I’ve taken spontaneous trips before, but flying 1000 miles to hang out with some dude that I met online and was supposed to have just ended a seven day love affair with is somewhat crazy by anyone’s definition (including mine). Apparently, I was lying when I said I wanted this neatly buttoned up on my dating resume. Apparently what I meant by that was I wanted to make rash decisions and be eternally suspended in some weird gray area. Apparently I have no willpower when it comes to certain things. Cool. And okay, those of you who have known me forever are rolling your eyes at how NOT surprised you are. Fine.

I arrived in Chicago a little before noon and realized what winter temperatures in this place feel like as I plodded up the jetway. I’ve visited Chicago in the winter, but I guess it was during a heat spell. This was like the arctic tundra. Since I’d thrown things in a bag at about 4 am, I wasn’t appropriately prepared for this event; I didn’t have socks, for instance. I learned why people complain about the Chicago winter as I stood without socks waiting for the above-ground train. Not good times.

Tyler’s school is located on the IIT campus in an area of Chicago where the administration actually tells the students not to venture (specifically, they’re not supposed to venture south of 35^th street… so of course the first thing I wanted to do was venture south of 35^th street). Tyler picked me up from the train and then romantically scanned me into the dining hall for lunch. The dining hall felt like a totally normal experience when I was a college student, but being 3 years removed from it (and about 5 years removed from the days of actually eating in the dining hall) had me reflecting momentarily on just how weird the whole concept is. Welcome to Taco Thursday… it’s like summer camp.

The afternoon passed mostly uneventfully other than my brief reminder of roommate politics in, uh, social situations, and then I browbeat Tyler and his friends into watching the State of the Union address and drinking bourbon. In order to execute this plan, we had to hit a liquor store on the aforementioned 35^th street, famous divide between the semi-safe and semi-sketchy. Though the three block walk threatened to eliminate my extremities due to frostbite, it gave me a taste of the local neighborhood, which was full of check-cashing spots and ethnic diversity. We purchased Jack Daniels in a store that kept everything behind the counter, presumably to prevent theft. I was reminded of my old neighborhood in Brooklyn to some degree, except that my old neighborhood liquor stores also had a cage for the clerks so they didn’t get shot. Yay, gentrification.

We headed back into the fray only to immediately pass a soul food place. I don’t remember exchanging words on dinner plans; we just made the turn to the right into Mama Lou’s because it seemed like the only thing to do on a freezing cold Chicago night when the rest of the plans included bourbon and the State of the Union. The man behind the counter spoke and worked slowly, and I noticed some sort of fungus growing on one of his fingernails. Probably not the safest bet for food in general, but definitely a good sign for soul food. We waited patiently (?) as the woman in front of us, clothed head to toe in the color brown, ordered her dinner, making conversation with everyone around her, including us.

“Say, you kids go to school at IIT?”

“Yes,” we (I) lied.

“Figured. Anytime you see white folks round these parts, they go to IIT. Least ya enjoy our food. Where ya from?”

“Colorado,” we replied in unison.

“Coloradians! Coloradians in the HOOD! You be sure and remember that. You in the HOOD!” She laughed then to herself, and took her bags, walking back out the door and into the winter, and we were left to contend with the choices in front of us, which had suddenly become more appealing now that this woman had given us permission to view them as authentic ethnic foods from the Southside.

Chicken smothered in gravy seemed to be the way to go, coupled with garlic mashed potatoes and macaroni and cheese and a good healthy helping of peach cobbler. After a treacherous return trip, we were burying our face in huge chunks of messy chicken and licking our fingers. No dainty eating for this girl. I may or may not have eaten the gravy with a spoon.

The State of the Union viewing was, naturally, a group event, and the more bourbon we consumed, the smarter we got, so I ended the night in a political discussion with Tyler’s roommate about the implications of global warming on democracy. This made me more than a little nostalgic for my college days, which is probably the last time I got drunk and discussed political issues for hours on end. I’m sure that wasn’t annoying for others in the same room at all. Oh, liberal arts. How I miss you.

The next day’s events aren’t exactly story-worthy, other than a trek up North that was supposed to be for blues but ended up being for weird fusion sandwiches made of Asian noodles, hot dogs, meatballs, and other things that shouldn’t have worked together but did.  Over our surprise feast, we discussed the implications of my journey, affirming the fact that we’d achieved an uncharted level of honesty with each other and that neither of us wanted to give that up for anything.  It was a strange conversation, simultaneously acknowledging the potential of our future while very much defining that we were in a gray area.  While continuing anything should be almost impossible given the circumstances, the entire relationship is unnaturally natural; there’s no accommodating, no compromising, what we want is simply compatible, at least right now. In a sense, it allows both of us to have an incredibly selfish relationship, living how we would anyway, while knowing that it’s just that quality that the other appreciates.  And that brings me back to a topic I’ve explored for awhile now:  are we really looking for “The One,” or are we looking for the person who’s going to accept our selfish desires and accommodate them while not sacrificing their own?

And then we were one of those gross PDA couples that I oft make fun of on the train, not overtly making out or anything, but stealing kisses when we thought no one was watching, behaving like teenagers or the plot of a romantic comedy. Weird. Gross. I don’t like romantic comedies (uh, except for When Harry Met Sally and Love, Actually, obv), and I don’t like PDA couples. Am I going soft? That idea is disgusting to me.

Delightful and possibly implication-heavy as the two days were, there was no out-with-a-bang-let’s-confess-our-love last interaction. In fact, our last night was spent in strangely comfortable silence: Tyler reading Plato, me working on responsibilities I’d shirked and talking to friends via gchat while Billie Holiday played from the crappy speakers of Tyler’s computer, both of us exploring displaying some unbecoming habits in front of each other.

The risk Tyler and I ran throughout this whole event was that there would now be pressure to take a next step, whatever the next step to something like this is. After all, not even two weeks ago we’d discussed not hoping for any kind of a relationship. Flying to Chicago 10 days later is not exactly keeping the seven-day love affair a seven-day love affair. Would the shift in the definition of the relationship also shift the interaction, sending us backwards a step to the ever-present, albeit minor, awkwardness experienced in the get-to-know-you phase of a relationship? Would this somehow change the rules of the game, thrusting us into a complicated long-distance relationship we’d been adamant about avoiding?

Well, no. As for awkwardness, it just doesn’t exist. Somehow, Tyler and I’ve managed to skip right over the whole skeletons-in-the-closet-and-let’s-not-tell-each-other-everything-we’re-thinking phase. I chalked that up to our one-week limitation before, but two more days in uncharted territory proved it hasn’t gone away. There’s nothing in my past, present, or future that I mind him knowing, including other men I’m seeing. He’s become a confidant on a level reserved for just a few people in my life. It’s a strange place to be, a place I reach rarely, and a place I’ve never reached with someone with whom I have some semblance of a romantic relationship, mostly because my desire for that person to think I’m cool gets in the way.

Don’t misread here; I’m still not exactly banking on this interaction growing wings and taking some silly flight to Frank Sinatra’s moon. Lord knows I love an intense relationship (I can already see the comments forming in ex-love’s brains). Lord knows I love human connection. So it’s probably not really out of character at all that I went to Chicago for two days just to see where we were. It’s where we are that’s a new one for me. Somehow, our horrible timing and circumstances are what make this thing work: there’s no head vs. heart here, and there’s no pressure to make this black and white, planning for some happily-ever-after future in which we’re simply racing to the next step in conventional relationship terms. I’m getting my ideal situation: instead of fighting to keep things in a gray area so as to circumvent brutal honesty and keep living my life, I have a purposely defined gray area that allows me to keep living my life, except that I don’t have to circumvent the honesty part. Your guess is as good as mine as to how this turns out; anything’s possible at this point.

I’m not gonna lie, I’m hot for Barack Obama’s thoughts. That man could be talking about toast or paint colors on the walls and I’d be hanging on his every word. So it’s probably no surprise that after the State of the Union, I was inspired to wax poetic about most of the major issues discussed over several bourbons on the rocks (pretty sure I got smarter as the night wore on).

Inspirational speech (or at least speaking skills) aside, I think the tack Obama has been forced to take is an interesting one. Recent events, namely the surprising election in Massachusetts and the Supreme Court decision on campaign financing for corporations, have shaken the administration just enough that the State of the Union had our president strengthening his resolve and making more promises of change. Indeed, if he can’t deliver some of those this year, he risks alienating his roots.

I never thought I’d have to say this in the wake of Obama’s game-changing marketing strategy, but I think he’s suffering from some bad PR. I’m pretty sure it was under the Obama administration that our financial crisis was pulled back from the brink of the deep hole of destruction. Under his watch, our foreign relations have improved. We’re in uncharted territory in an international policy sphere. But, strangely, we don’t hear about this. Why? Because at the end of the day, we, and by we I mean most of the people who voted for Obama, want to see real documentable domestic change.

I think now is an apt time to consider the role of the president in general. Realistically, the unfortunate (or fortunate) fact of the matter is that no matter how intelligent and pragmatic, a new president alone cannot necessarily make sweeping change to the system. There’s a constitutional reason for this: we put checks and balances in place in order to make sure ruling doesn’t become dependent upon the whims of one man (or woman). And, quite frankly, even with a legislature stacked in Obama’s favor, after the Bush administration, a constriction of power in the executive branch should be expected. Unfortunately, as a lawmaker, the president is relatively inconsequential, doomed to lobby for his interests and set the general law-making tone.

That’s not to say the president is unimportant, however. He (or she) represents the face we show the world. How we negotiate with foreign countries, arguably equally as important as domestic policy in today’s global climate, is largely dependent on the president in power. And there, Obama is delivering, opening avenues closed by 8 years of President Bush. So you want change, you got it.

The problem is that Obama was elected on the assumption of sweeping domestic change. As a result, a large portion of his base is going to be the restless and fickle type that’s quickly going to lose heart when real change at home doesn’t seem imminent. This is why our president had to focus on reaffirming his promises, vowing not to quit, and acknowledging that change hasn’t come as fast as he would like. Don’t expect it to happen- Obama needs the legislature to put aside their regional and political differences in order for anything consequential to pass. Here’s hoping his speech stirred our politicians enough to try to work together.

Voters should focus instead on what Obama has the potential to represent, and what he already does represent. I voted for Obama because I think he constitutes change we can believe in because he’s a figurehead we can believe in. Obama is an intelligent fresh face we can show the world, opening doors that few other leaders, from either party, could have opened. And Obama’s PR machine would do well to remind us of that.

Still, I liked Obama’s overarching message in his address, and, particularly, his line about leadership. The kind of change I hope to see doesn’t have to do with any one policy. I’d like to see Washington working for a more compelling future, whether it’s popular or not. I trust that Obama is smart enough to have that vision. I’ll vote for him again if he follows it.

Alright, Boston, I’m sold. Though your humidity gives me an unbecoming bouffant hairdo, I’m gunning for a more permanent return to your city limits. I like to think I got a glimpse into my future life, law school and beyond, and it incorporated all of my favorite things.

Becky picked me up from the airport on Friday night and asked if I would mind attending her non-profit’s 15^th anniversary party. Though she assured me that it was perfectly okay for me to sit home and watch TV, I was vehemently opposed to missing out on the chance to make small-talk with awkwardly skinny men in used women’s cardigans and ironic tee shirts who have forsaken material goods in the name of schooling the youth of America. After a primer on the lingo of the program, I was ready to go, and I found myself flaunting a nametag in a room full of inner-city schoolteachers sipping Sam Adams and Yellow Tail.

All of my conversations went something like this:

“Hi, I’m Laura.”

“Hi, I’m —, what do you do here?”

“I’m a friend of the organization.” (I hoped they then assumed by “friend” I meant “wealthy donor”) “Yourself?”

“I’m a CT at the NSA in the MVMPBQ.”

(Nodding my head and smiling) “Very cool!”

(Sip beers. Eat food. Move away in silence.)

After I’d had a small talk conversation with every single person there (which didn’t take very long given my complete and utter lack of knowledge about educating), I crept down the stairs and stood awkwardly in front of the band, singing along vaguely to Motown hits performed by a large woman clad in a vest and poorly fitted black pants. It was vaguely reminiscent of my 8^th grade social circuit, which included a lot of bar/bat mitzvahs, except that there was alcohol instead of Hawaiian Punch (a welcome substitution). Becky was an excellent hostess, however, and upon the arrival of Ben via train from New York, we found ourselves out with a group of program alums hitting the Cantab, a delightful bar in Cambridge with another (remarkably similar) cover band and abundant whiskey ginger ales.

It was here that I noticed the sizeable population of highly desirable men for the first time. The crowd was very much in my favor: tall, dark hair, glasses, and that disheveled look that I associate with the intelligent grad student who has no time to think about fashion. It was literally about 27 seconds before I was engaged in conversation with a young man of my physical liking about insurgency politics in Burma, and then the musical genius and influence of Leonard Cohen and Daniel Johnson, and then the weirdest foods we’d ever eaten in the weirdest countries we’d ever visited. Hooray for the nerd heyday. Sold.

Saturday morning found our dynamic trio covering important pre-wine festival bases at Darwin’s, a coffee shop I plan to frequent with aggressive zeal until the staff knows me and starts giving me my coffee refills for free. I like few things better than perfectly yolky over-easy eggs, bacon, and croissants, but the happy combination of those three foods and the addition of avocado and cheese in breakfast sandwich form is nothing short of blissful. The yolk of my egg spilled pleasantly over the rest of the ingredients creating a well-textured and properly-flavored meal perfect for engaging the palate and preparing the body and soul for excessive consumption. Practically religious.

Then it was onto the trip’s original purpose. The Boston Wine Expo is the largest wine expo on the East Coast. Producers, distributors, and importers pack into the Seaport Center with their line-up, and the public descends, cattle style, upon the goods. Last year, Ben’s and my strategy was similar to my strategy at an open bar at a wedding: maybe move from white to red, but generally just get drunk. Quickly. This year, the first two hours found Ben spitting (I know, what?) and me waxing poetic on the 10% of wines I wanted to try like some insufferable snob. The brunt of this was on Jeff and Haley, who’d joined us from DC and had the unfortunate timing of arriving about half an hour later than us, when I was just tipsy enough to unabashedly share my “knowledge:” “You MUST try the German rieslings. They’ve REALLY brought some pretty stuff.” I would have punched me in the face, too.

Admittedly, the highlight of the Boston Wine Expo was seeing the woman Ben and I nicknamed the Chateauneuf Lady. Last year, after consuming a lot of other wine, Ben and I posted up at the Chateauneuf-du-Pape (henceforth CDP) table and talked for an hour to an adorable tiny woman from New Jersey who happened to be married to Alain Juguenet, the man arguably responsible for the enjoyable CDP trend currently taking the United States of America by storm. Obviously, we didn’t know that then and so were THOSE patrons, commanding attention from the entire Juguenet family until well after the show ended and they finally agreed to meet us across the street for a drink in order to get rid of us.

Since that experience, Ben and I had talked extensively of the legendary Chateauneuf Lady, proudly bearing the CDP temporary tattoos she’d given us on visible elements of our bodies at other wine expos. So when the entire family recognized us, it would be an understatement to merely say that we were pleased. They even remembered what we’d been up to, asking us questions about the wine technology application I was creating (woops) and our sommelier certifications. I flirted my face off with both the son (tall with dark hair… I can’t help it) and the Chateauneuf Lady in hopes that they’d ask me to join their family through either matrimony or servitude. Being much less drunk allowed for recognition of the moment when the social interaction was appropriately over, and we bid our mature adieus, ready to hit the North End for a plate of messy pasta.

The North End is a mass of winding cobblestone streets lined with Italian restaurants, pastry shops, and ice creameries. As much as I like all of those things, the neighborhood stresses me out. The abundance of choice is overwhelming, and the knowledge that the best Italian food in the city might very well be around the next corner is cataclysmically stressful. Normally, I’m equipped for this problem, armed with sound advice or a Zagat guide, but I was unprepared this time. When that happens, I end up stomping from restaurant to restaurant, halfheartedly reading menus and trying to determine whether one place is better than another. Toss in the hour and a half wait at any place worth patronizing and the politics of a party of 7 and the probability of satisfaction with the ultimate choice is frustratingly low. We settled on an upstairs table at a fairly generic spot and got what we deserved for our lack of patience: mediocrity.

Naturally, we merely drowned our sorrows in ice cream, and then Becky, Ben, and I headed back to Cambridge for Atwood’s, a bar that will likely become a staple of my social life. The extensive and delightful selection of beers on tap and the live music invited the three of us to throw the deep switch, riled up about politics and save-the-world complexes and Washington and the economy, and we leaned on the mahogany bar for about three hours, nursing IPAs and getting more passionate with each passing moment while an eclectic blues group sang off key and banged away on a two-string bass that resembled a ukulele.

Sunday was campus visit day, so after another breakfast sandwich at Darwin’s, Ben and I began our epic trek through the city of Boston, armed with just our conversational spirit and handheld devices to conquer Harvard, MIT, and Boston University.

I’ve got to admit, I’m at least a tiny bit remorseful that I popped off to Harvard and effectively eliminated my chances of attending. I’d visited the campus before, but I’d forgotten exactly the feeling of superior delight the colonial brick buildings and tree-lined grounds elicit. Most unfortunately, I could picture myself backpack-laden and heading to class, basking in the glow of America’s favorite ivory tower. MIT was a different story. An hour walk along the Charles later, we were surrounded by engineers and people doing science and 60’s and 70’s architecture reminiscent of the Soviet era. Not my fancy (sorry, engineers).

Over on the Boston side of the river, we wandered through Beacon Hill and brownstone-lined streets en route to the BU campus, which is a long stretch along Commonwealth Ave. We opted to eat lunch at Victoria’s Seafood, a Chinese restaurant with colorful tropical drinks posters in the windows. I like a little sketchiness in a Chinese restaurant, and this covered that base just fine. We really rolled the dice by ordering the lobster, however, and I spent the rest of the night wondering when my comeuppance was going to begin (luckily, it never happened).

Ben had to return to New York after that, and I wandered over to Brookline for a reunion with the one and only Robert (Roberto, for those of you who have followed my adventures since the original Argentina tour). We quickly picked up where we left off about 5 years ago: platonically cuddling in his bed with witty one-liners, tales of recent dating faux pas, and brutal analysis of the attractiveness of a slew of males on our favorite online dating site.

Robert’s always good for a good honest sketch of every neighborhood in the area, so we hit the streets to see what I’d experience if I opted to live in Brookline like a good BU grad student: “Here’s the Jewish pastry shop, and in case you didn’t fulfill all of your Jewish pastry needs there, there’s another right across the street. Kosher Chinese food you say? Fear not. It’s there. In case you need shoes when you move to Boston, here’s a store for that. And yes, they sell them in size ski, too!”

Feasting on Pho and ice cream gave us time to catch up. I regaled him with my recent run-in with a strategy-focused Scrabble-player during a date (at which Robert scoffed, “Oh, please. Two-letter words? Those little tiles are merely a vehicle for me to demonstrate my intellectual supremacy.”). He one-upped me with a tale about a date who had a well-disguised prosthetic leg, the surprising discovery of which rendered understandable inequitable uneasiness.

I was sad to leave the next morning, but relished riding the T (my friends are well-equipped with vehicles so the practice of my public transportation hobby was mostly unnecessary) and taking in the Boston business-culture scene, which is markedly less of a scene than New York.

Generally? Boston is an endlessly pleasant place filled with smart people with whom I enjoy socializing. I like the bars. I like the restaurants. I like the aesthetically pleasing neighborhoods. I like the slightly-less-aggressive-than-New-York East Coast intensity. So now I’m hoping against hope that Harvard accepts me—while getting comfortable with the idea of BU. Boston fits. Here’s hoping I’ll see you in the fall.

Before I start this entry in earnest, I’m going to make a big fat disclaimer: I am not so cruel as to merely online date because I want to tell-all about ridiculous situations on my blog. I am taking this whole thing seriously insofar as I’d like to have a pre-law school fling, and online dating merely gives me another avenue by which to pursue that end. However, because online dating presents a myriad of unusual situations to which I think we all secretly (or not-so-secretly) relate, there’s no use depriving myself of the material. For would-be suitors: I promise not to use names or incriminating information. And for people who think I’m toying with men’s emotions for my own creative purposes: I haven’t gone out with (and I won’t go out with) anyone that I didn’t think had potential. And now: the main event.

It’s probably true that any girl who looks back at her high school days and remembers ostracism due to smarts rather than acceptance due to looks has a thing for Michael Cera. He’s the adorably awkward Clyde to our seriously nerdy Bonnie. Or, more appropriately, the Jim to our Pam. The Darcy to our Elizabeth. The Jack to our Meg? Ew, no, that’s gross. So when I got a message from a veritable Michael Cera look-alike, there was a lot of glazing over words in his profile (especially after I saw key nerd phrases like “math” and “physics” and “eclectic musician”) as I scrambled to come up with a witty enough response to deem me worthy to go out with the hero of Arrested Development and Juno. He must have liked it, because he quickly wrote back. And then we agreed to meet.

We settled on a coffee shop near my house for a post-dinner chai. When I arrived, the place was very full and very quiet due to the experimental Irish musicians sitting in a circle on a tiny stage, hammering away on their unidentifiable instruments (oh, Boulder). My date was sitting at a tiny table next to the coffee pick-up point, ensuring an on-stage-like experience as all patrons would have to pass by our table to get a drink or get back to the seating area or exit. And he looked much less like Michael Cera in real life.

I approached. As soon as he saw me, he shot up, veritably yelling.

“OH HI LAURA, NICE TO MEET YOU, SHOULD I SHAKE YOUR HAND OR GIVE YOU A HUG?” Heads around us turned in curiosity to see what the commotion was about, and I caught a few unmistakable sidelong glances amongst friends that said, “Online first date. We’re so lucky to be witnessing this.”

I half hugged him, chest pounding and vomit rising in my throat, and went to order my chai, mustering all the poise I had to recover from the awkward feeling that was creeping through my stomach and soul. My chai didn’t quite take long enough to make, and I soon found myself back at the table, leaning back in my chair, arms crossed, trying to compensate for his intense eagerness by talking as quietly and slowly as possible.

“SO WHAT DO YOU DO?”

“Wellllll, that’s cooomplicaaaatedddd. Iii woooork at the Kiiiiitchennnn and doooo soooome freeeeelaaaancccce maaarketingggg. I alsooooo wriiiiiite.

“THAT’S GREAT MY BROTHER WRITES WHAT DO YOU WRITE.”

“Ohhhhhh I daaaabbbbbblllle iiiin a lotttttt offfff thinggggggggs.”

This was a classic case of two nice people in the same room with absolutely no surface-level interest in common. He was former 9-5er who “couldn’t handle that environment” and decided to quit to try to become a drummer in an Indian jazz band. In school, he’d studied physics, but didn’t want to do anything with it. The farthest he’d traveled was Canada and Mexico. He was interested in food and wine insofar as it was a topic I could say ten words about before we faded back into awkward silence. We hit on music for a bit, and had a band-name drop party that lasted about 10 seconds:

“I JUST GOT INTO OF MONTREAL.”

“Oh, yeah? They’re pretty good. Do you like St. Vincent?”

“YEAH, I JUST SAW ST. VINCENT IN DENVER.”

“Oh, cool.”

“COOL.”

Siiiileeeeence

30 minutes into the interaction, and I was scrambling for an excuse to end the date. And then, because my life is really, really fun, an old friend walked by. I don’t know about anyone else, but when I’m on an awkward online date, there are a couple of people that I absolutely don’t want to see: a current fling, a former fling, and a cute guy from my peripheral group of college friends that I don’t know well enough to explain the situation. So when the latter of that trio approached my table, I knew I was in for a real treat.

I’d only seen Ben once since moving back to Boulder. He was a friend that I’d run into many times since college during friend reunion tours, but we didn’t know each other well enough to hang out on our own. He’s a charming type, very smart, and very cute. I’ve never had an actual crush on him, but I’ve always wanted to appear cool in front of him. Him seeing me on an awkward online date is not something I felt was going to up my cool points.

“Hey, Ben!”

“Hey, Laura! Wow! I forgot you’re living in Boulder, what’s up?”

“Yep, just live a couple of blocks from here. I’m working with Lacey on a project, we all need to get together. She’s up here a bit.”

“Oh, that’s awesome! Yeah, we need to do that for sure. Oh, I’m sorry man, I’m Ben.”

“HI MY NAME IS —-.”

It was about this point where I stopped paying attention to our exchange and started praying to some higher power that Ben did not ask how we knew each other. That higher power either hates me or has my exact sense of humor. Ass hole.

“So, how do you know Laura?”

I tried to interject. I really tried. “We just met…” I began.

“WE JUST MET ONLINE.” Fail. Fail. Fail.

To Ben’s credit, he kept his composure pretty well. “Oh-Ohh. Cool, well I gotta run. Laura, shoot me a facebook message.” And then he was gone.

I’m fairly certain my face was some combination of Christmas colors, fluctuating violently from red to green as my emotions tried to decide whether this was the most hilarious or most hideous situation in which I’d ever been. Things kind of dropped off after that, our awkward pauses and lack of eye contact lengthening to the point where we were simply two people sharing a table and doing our own thing. When I saw my neighbor (who also fits into the Ben category) walk in, though, I decided the party was over.

“Right, so, I’ve gotta go, I’ve got an early- thing- tomorrow. Thanks for coming out, though, it was nice to meet you.”

“COOL, WELL THIS WAS REALLY FUN LET’S GET TOGETHER AGAIN SOON.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty busy for awhile, but give me a shout.”

53 minutes after the date had begun, I rushed off to sing karaoke stone-cold sober, which was remarkably less awkward than my date, and didn’t stop laughing all the way down my street. Bad with the good, I suppose.

Oh, NPR, you’re validating all of my hopes and dreams: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122612096

I’m no hairy-armpitted militant feminist screaming for equality now, but this article makes my modest bosom swell with pride, mostly because it’s reflective of a trend I’ve been aware of since entering the working world. Gone are the days of frumpy power suits, the she-male, and sworn vow never to have children in the ranks of successful women. In fact, if anything, I’ve noticed that being a woman gives a distinct interview advantage in more male-dominated industries. Subtle as it was, there was certainly a desire to recruit highly ambitious females into the ranks of financial firms, if only because it looks good to investors to have women in management positions. Suddenly, companies are offering family benefits like daycare and maternity/paternity leave as if to scream, “WE DON’T UNDERSTAND YOUR HORMONES BUT WE ADMIRE YOUR ABILITY TO MULTI-TASK! HAVE A CHILD! HAVE AN ARMY OF THEM! BUT STAY WITH OUR COMPANY INSTEAD OF GOING TO THE COMPETITION BECAUSE WE NEED WOMEN HERE!” Whatever the motivation for this shift, I say, thanks, don’t mind if I do.

I’ve oft quipped that I’m going to marry my first husband for his money (okay, gentle readers, that’s a JOKE…. I’m not as heartless as my last entry apparently suggests). In reality, though, I’ve got a strong personality and a problem with being the submissive member of any relationship. What’s more likely is what I told my grandma when she told me I could always learn to love a rich man: nah, I’ll just make my own fortune. If I’m really honest, when I fantasize vaguely about a future marriage, I get immense joy from picturing a relationship where I very much hold my own as an equal or greater contributor to our assets rather than a shoe-fetish-motivated drain on the bank account. And here’s the thing: I have no doubt about what my future holds.

What I really like about this article is that it’s proof of the critical juncture at which we find ourselves in the history of women’s rights: for women, our limitations are now mostly self-imposed.

Okay, I can feel a certain type of feminist friend squirming at those words. After all, the number of men in leadership positions still outnumbers the number of women. Fine. But I’d venture a guess that that’s not because organizations are actively keeping women down.

The limitation comes from choices we all have to make. What’s our main motivation? What do we want? And what makes us happy? If it’s a high-powered career in business, then that will come first, and we’ll find our road not easy, because few paths to meaningful goals are ever totally easy, but mostly unblocked from a gender perspective. But if it’s raising a family, or making a difference in our communities, or writing a book, then we’ll pursue those ends instead of the business career, and, remarkably (I know), NOT end up as a high-powered business leader. As women, we’re good multi-taskers, but we can’t have it all at once. Even without sleep, we can’t be full-time moms, award winning authors, and high-powered executives all at the same time. Guess what?  Men can’t do all of those things at once either.  And guess what else?  They aren’t wrapped up in trying.

What we have is a choice to define what it is that we want, and then do what we need to do to get it. It’s a choice that all of us, women and men, should consciously make. And when we make that choice, we should remember what Mae West said: Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but she did it backwards and in high heels. Women can do everything that men can, and they can do it with their own style.

The TRULY exciting thing about this shift is that gender roles within the household are grayer: the rise of the sugar mama shows that the choice to have a family no longer relies on a woman sacrificing her career if it’s not what she wants; there are plenty of men out there willing to rise to the family-rearing challenge. This is bound to terrify some women’s liberators: our last excuse for not achieving our goals is on the outs. But for those of us confident in our talents and human abilities, it presents an unlimited wealth of choice from which to craft our ideal life.

The best way to break through the glass ceiling is to not acknowledge its existence, choosing to actively pursue goals rather than let fate take over. Time to pull a Henry David Thoreau and go confidently in the direction of our dreams. No excuses, play like a champion.

As soon as I received the first message, I knew exactly where the night was going to end.

“I like your style,” it began, “Unfortunately I’m moving to Chicago in a week. Looking at your profile, I see you are here for new friends, long-term dating, and short-term dating. Perhaps it would be an interesting experiment to move through the levels of familiarity associated with these three stages of relationship at a hyper-accelerated pace! Who knows, if we perfected the process, we might move directly into the “winter-of-our-lives” stage of marriage where no words are needed to communicate our enduring affection while one of us does the crossword (dibs!) and the other feeds waterfowl.”

I was a goner at that point, doomed to meet in a socially acceptable and well-lit location and then inevitably make the trek back to someone’s house to sit on a couch and talk until enough minutes had passed to warrant a full-scale hook-up. Women more sane than me would have probably reflected at least momentarily on the possibility that a well-crafted email on an online dating website was just a ploy to get me out, get me alone, and then make me into a lampshade in a back alley, but as extensive personality testing reveals, I’m a trusting girl, and I’ve got a penchant for adventure. A suggestion to live life with reckless abandon for a bit, combined with a cute face and a pithy profile, went straight to my heart. So after a combined 10 minutes of instant messaging and chatting by phone, we agreed to meet for a chai at a South Boulder Indian food restaurant—or at least walk around Blockbuster making clever remarks about movies (without intention of renting anything)—until we felt comfortable enough to take our socializing to a more private locale.

I was, of course, late. I pretended this was because I’d gotten confused and driven to the wrong South Boulder intersection, but in reality, it was because I’d opted to shower and shave my semi-furry legs and marshmallow peep armpits in anticipation of what the night might hold. No use nipping the possibility of a 7-day love affair in the un-groomed bud.

He was sitting in the front of the awkwardly-tabled dimly-lit incense-perfumed restaurant doing a crossword puzzle, a prop I found somewhere between funny and overkill (besides the email, my profile suggested I wanted to meet someone who would call me out when I sneakily finished his crossword on Sunday morning) until I realized (later) that it really was a natural extension of his being. To my relief, he looked like his photos and was attractive in real life—positive reinforcement that not everyone trolling the web for girls is some perverted old porn enthusiast wearing sweats, collecting unemployment, and posing as a young successful member of society.

I approached him with what I hoped was a glowing, inviting smile, that, in hindsight, was probably a little closer to nervous beauty pageant contestant than comfortably enlightened being. We had the characteristic momentary awkwardness of a first online date: do we hug? Shake hands? Say nice to meet you? Is anyone watching us? Can they tell we’re on a first online date? Probably. I like to play the “Who’s-on-a-Match.com-first-date” game at my place of work; I assume other people do, too. We settled on an awkward hug and then took our places across from each other for the preliminary interview and accelerated get-to-know-you phase of our adventure.

Traditional dating advice suggests leaving baggage, past relationships, bad habits, nervous tics, and personality flaws out of conversation topic on first dates. But this is the 21^st century, and this is online dating, and this is instant-gratification interaction, so instead of heeding that advice, we began our real-life acquaintance with a baggage-off, covering all the major skeletons in our closet as fast as we could form letters into words and words into sentences. The baggage-off quickly progressed into a disgusting “me too” conversation: “I do x.” “Me too! I love doing x!” High Fidelity said it, but it’s worth quoting: “It’s what you like, rather than what you ARE like, that counts,” particularly on a first date, so it wasn’t long before we were raiding my wine collection for a winter white and heading back to his parents’ north Boulder home, a happily empty roommate-less place abandoned for the cold months and perfect for star-gazing, wine-drinking, and progressive, uh, conversation-making.

We stayed up all night, feeling cheesily deeply connected to one another, communicating on some disgustingly intense wavelength rarely experienced at all, let alone so immediately. I chalk this up to a combination of factors. One advantage to online dating is that it gives you a pretty good idea of whether you are going to have something to talk about with someone. When this works out correctly, it results in an instant deep-feeling connection that, when coupled with chemistry and the fact that everyone on those sites is LOOKING for a deep-feeling connection, can cause a pretty intense situation. What we also had, however, was one risk-free week. One week with which to experiment with the fabric of emotions in a relationship in a self-destructive or self-empowering way, testing the depth of human connection, before tossing it back to the universe and going on with our lives. In essence, we could act married, if we wanted, without worrying about what relationship milestone we were headed toward. The future would bring nothing; the moment was everything. Exhilarating.

After 12 hours of obsessive validation and the best, uh, sharing (?) I’ve ever experienced, which doomed me to a day of complete and utter lack of productivity, our contact progressed into the zone characteristic of month 6-12 of a normal relationship. We experimented with comfortable silences, meetings without pretense, and one member of the duo allowing the other to sleep while they worked away on a laptop deep into the middle of the night (by “work away” I might mean “play games” and “facebook chat”). We tested the waters with disagreement (particularly when it became clear how much I suck at things like Guitar Hero), but ultimately sought to make amends. We talked subtly about the true nature of our feelings so as not to let our guards down.

At one point over the course of the week, I worried that I was growing too involved, letting my imagination run wild with thoughts of following him to Chicago or entertaining an ill-fated long distance love affair based on meeting in exotic cities across the country for two days at a time. Ultimately, though, I was so romantically attached to the idea of a 7-day full relationship, neatly buttoned-up on my dating resume as something I’d done, that I couldn’t bring myself to suggest anything of the sort. Not making this into something that it wasn’t was paramount.

Our last night together found us at my house, cracking jokes about other couples and playing a few rousing rounds of Scattergories. If we weren’t actually 24, I’d swear we were my grandparents. I sent him off in the morning with a mix CD of 20 songs by which to remember our interaction and a note confirming my feelings that this had been a great week from which I had no hope or expectation of a continued future.

There’s something incredibly empowering about a relationship without pretense or respect for social mores, and I recommend it to everyone. Dating is supposed to be fun, and this experience certainly lived up to that standard. Longer than a week and it’s possible that we would have gotten on each others nerves, found each other suffocating, or realized there’d be no chance of interacting in a group setting. But as it was, this is an experience I’ll always look back on fondly, remembering the intensity of connection on all levels. If nothing else, it goes to show that there are a lot of interesting (and great) people in the world.

Online dating for a week and this is what I get… I’m sold.

I think this video is seriously rad.

Okay, which statistic in there blew your mind? The stuff on China and India? The info on today’s learners entering the job market (oh hi, I’m totally bringing that 10-14 jobs by age 38 average up)? The exponential increase of technology users?

How about the fact that 1 in 8 couples that got married last year met on the internet? Where in the HELL did they get that statistic? Don’t couples that met on the internet usually lie about their serendipitous moment? What compelled them to be honest for the Sony survey?

This statistic suggests something of which I’ve long been suspicious: everyone online dates. So I’m inspired to come clean. I’ve dabbled in the online dating sphere, and I’ve found everything from a boyfriend to new friends in a new city, which is not a terrible outcome for something once reserved for serial killers and anti-social nerds frequenting chat rooms and myspace.

Internet dating certainly seems easier than real life; it’s like going to a party where everyone’s wearing a sign that confirms they’re single, lists what they’re looking for, and gives a couple of key interests that facilitate easy conversation. This is like socializing for dummies. It’s impossible to fail. Except that as the numbers increase on these sites, it becomes remarkably like real life in that I’m wading through a pool of mediocrity to find a diamond in the rough. And with millions of users, I think it’s about as likely that I’m going to meet someone quality online as it is that I’m going to meet my future husband squabbling over vegetables in the produce section of the grocery store (and I’m sorry, which is the more romantic story there?).

As much as I like to complain, though, I oft find myself browsing Match et al looking for that profile that sucks me in and makes me sign away my $35 for another month so I can exchange a few witty emails with someone and probably never speak to them again. It’s been awhile since I pursued this end, what with my happily single status, but I may be ready to give it another go. After all, I’ve got some months ahead of me before law school, and I’m freakin’ tabula rasa when it comes to dating right now—no boyfriend, no big crush, just happy old me and my metaphorical cats.

As I prepare to enter this game again, I find myself thinking about how to craft the perfect profile. How do I define me in some choice words and colorful examples? What interests best sum up my vibrant personality? And where is the hottest picture I have? Arguably the answer to the third question on this list is the most important. David Sedaris may have said, “If you’re not cute, you may as well be clever,” but clever ain’t gonna cut it if no one clicks on the old profile (up next for discussion: is online dating making us EVEN MORE shallow?).

I’m not sure why I put effort into it at all. 80% of male profiles read like one of the three following bad examples:

1. HI BB! HOW R U 2DAY? IM JUST LOOKIN AROUND HERE 4 A GOOD GIRL. U LIKE MY MUSCLES? THEIR BIG. I GO 2 THE GYM A LOT. I JUST WANT A GIRL TO TREAT REAL GOOD. I OPEN THE DOOR 4 MY LADYS. I TAKE GOOD CARE OF THEM.

First of all, why are you writing in all caps? Are you shouting? I suppose I shouldn’t expect a dude to be an eloquent wordsmith to be a good boyfriend. But, for better or for worse, we’re living in an age of text communication. Learn to write. Nothing says “I’m dumb” like “Hey bb how r u 2day?” And nothing makes me want to punch someone in the face more than 9 million spelling mistakes in an email. I’m only looking out for the guy’s future interest.

2. I’m looking for a nice girl. I’ve been burned a lot by women, and I just want to find someone to settle down.

Oh, heyyy bitter-with-baggage-seeks-same. I’m sorry, would you tell a girl that at the bar? No, because she’d immediately decline your drink. Guess what? It works the same on match.com, only she doesn’t even have to waste time making small talk.

3. I’m a laid-back easygoing guy equally comfortable going out for a night on the town or curling up on the couch and watching a movie.

Really? You mean you’re so flexible you like to go out OR stay in? Why didn’t you say so? I like to go out, too! And I like to stay in sometimes! We have so much in common! We’re soul mates! We can probably talk or not talk for hours!

Occasionally, I happen upon someone who manages to express a promising sense of humor, a reasonable intellect, and a remarkable aptitude for grammar. Sadly, though, I know from my days of writing training materials that 93% of communication comes from body language and tone of voice. This means that what a person writes in a profile constitutes about 7% of what they’re going to actually be like in real life. The most articulate person in writing may have a lazy eye in real life. Or be unable to talk about anything other than Dutch and Flemish art. Or have a nasal voice. Or talk so slow I find myself trying to finish their sentences to move things along. Need further proof? Look at me. Trust me, I’m better in writing.

Aside from the pitfalls of expression through the written word, I guess there’s still that possibility that people doing online dating are lying in their profiles. I am always baffled by this phenomenon. You mean we’re not all a bunch of overgrown teenagers just looking for validation? Fine, I might say that I work out 5 times a week, which is really only true if by “work out” I mean “take the stairs instead of the elevator.” And, okay, sometimes I list things like “outdoor adventures” in my hobbies, and by “outdoors” I mean “patio” and by “adventure” I mean “happy hour.” But that’s just error in interpretation, right? That’s not prohibiting me from finding my soul mate, is it? It’s just making me more relatable, especially in the great athletic state of Colorado, obviously.

I mean, if I were totally honest, my profile would read like this:

“Hey guys, what’s up? I’m a total fart in the wind. I’ve had 9 different careers, lived in 4 different cities, amassed 100,000 airline miles, and dated about 30 people since graduating from college. I think this is pretty rad, actually, because it means I’ve done more cool things than you. I’m settling down, though, and becoming a lawyer. That is, unless my book deal comes through or someone invests in my latest business plan.

My most recent relationships have all lasted somewhere between 5 minutes and 6 weeks, and I like to leave things comfortably in a gray area in case something better comes along. If you decide to get in touch, there’s a good chance I’m going to think you’re dumb. There’s also a good chance I’m not going to want to introduce you to my friends. But that’s okay because I’m not really looking for a boyfriend right now, just a cute dude to make me feel pretty for a little while.

If I like you, we can date for a bit, then I’ll move to law school and obsess over you for a couple of years as the one who got away. Sound good? Drop me a line!”

It’s still up in the air as to whether I’ll actually embark upon this journey again, but if I do, I think I’ll keep a play-by-play going here. 1 in 8. Everyone’s doing it.