Tuesday, September 29, 2009

I got nothing

Thus far, the online dating thing hasn't exactly panned out. Other than the two very aggressive post-30 girls, I met one girl who lives in Boise and one girl who lives in Arizona. The one in Arizona was quick to inform me that she had just gotten out of a relationship and was just online to "check" things out. And the one in Boise... well, she lives in Boise.

There are two 18 year old girls in my ward that are cute and that I am friends with. My friend BFF gave me a really hard time last night about them. She was like "how can you possibly find them engaging?" I guess it offends her. Truth be told, I don't find them particularly engaging. They are just attractive girls. Also, I don't really care about age. It's just a stupid number. It doesn't say what you have experienced. It doesn't dictate your maturity. Odds are, both of those 18 year old girls will be married before me. Five years ago, my friends gave me crap for dating some 18 year old girls. Well, those girls are now 23 and married. Some of them probably have children. But because I am older than them, I should count them out? Plus, lets be honest, I am more attracted to younger looking girls. Girls my age look old. Shoot, I showed some of my buddies pictures of girls I went to high school with now and they laughed cause the girls looked like they were in their 40's. With the online dating well drying up, should I perhaps focus my efforts elsewhere? Mail order brides?

Friday, September 25, 2009

No Luck (well, sorta)

So I paid the fees, uploaded a few pictures, and wrote some embarrassingly positive "reviews" of myself. Then, I looked at tons of profiles. Ugly girls, pretty girls, short girls, tall girls, girls in state, girls out of state, younger girls, older girls, divorced girls, unmarried girls, widowed girls, girls with children, girls that want children, girls out of the country. I would say I found close to 40 girls on the site that I wouldn't mind taking on a date. Not bad but certainly not great. When you view someone's profile, it lets them know who you are. Thus, out of those 40 girls, approximately 4 have viewed my profile. I sent out about 10 messages to girls. None of those girls has sent me a message back.

However, I have received a number of flirts, profile views, and messages indicating interest from other girls. These girls are very aggressive. The other night, I logged on around 10:30 and within 2 minutes, I was chatting with two girls who requested to chat with me. I am a nice guy, so I didn't really know how to get out of it. One of them was very nice, from the Philippines. Not cute but nice. The other was a single mom of 2 or 3. She was very aggressive. Within 2 minutes of talking to her, she started hinting that I should ask for her phone number. I had no interest in dating her, I just didn't want to come across as rude. Well, she got more aggressive. She told me that I was extremely attractive. Then, she practically demanded that I get her phone number. I told her no and she kinda got upset. She told me I had hurt her feelings and then she logged off. Wow! Two days into online dating and already I am being a jerk to girls.

Overall though, unless at least one of the girls that I liked messages me back, it seems as if I wasted the $20 or so that joining the site cost me. Part of the problem is that I think most of these girls haven't paid the fee so they can't read my message.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

My First Real Venture into Online Dating

I did it. I signed up for an online dating service today and paid the fee for the first month. There sure are a lot of single mothers on there. Should I be opposed to going out with girls with children? In the past, I have generally avoided it because well... instant family. Not sure if I am ready for that. I sent a couple messages to a few girls. I received a few messages from some girls that I have zero interest in dating. Thus far, no response from any girls that I might have real interest in. If any of you want to offer specific help with online dating (such as suggestions of which pictures to post or what to write about myself), I would greatly appreciate it. Just let me know and I will show you my profile. But for now, wish me luck.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Paris holds the key

Littlebrother told me last night that he doesn't think I should ask Giselle out again. He talked to her friend and apparently she isn't really interested in me. Not exactly unexpected. Well, a little unexpected. This brings my dating pool down to exactly zero girls. Am I just dating the wrong girls? Meeting the wrong girls? Pursuing the wrong girls? Or is it me? Should I try online dating? What sites? Or should I just take a long break from dating?

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

I used to be love drunk but now I'm hungover

Text received last night from Catcher.

"Tripp! I meant to call you today. I have been dating a guy this summer just having fun and just last night we decided to date exclusively. Thank you though!!"

Kind of upsetting. Why do I bother?

Monday, September 14, 2009

The fair is veritable smorgasboard

Catcher texted me on Friday to say that she couldn't go out with me. She said she had been looking forward to it all week but that a family situation had just escalated. It seemed legit. She suggested we reschedule for this week. I must admit, it was a bit of a letdown. I really was looking forward to running around the fair with Catcher, laughing and playing and just having tons of fun. The plan is to go to the fair with Catcher on Wednesday. Every time something gets pushed back though, the likelihood of it happening decreases. So, I am not near as excited about this Wednesday as I was for last Friday.

On Saturday, I took Giselle out on our second date. Because Catcher canceled on the fair on Friday night, I decided to take Giselle to the fair. We struggled finding a decent parking spot and ended up parking pretty far away. Giselle harassed me quite a bit about that. It was all in good fun but Giselle definitely harasses me a lot. We kinda parked in the ghetto. Not that the state fairpark has any areas around it that are not ghetto. One of the first things we did was go and see the animals. Giselle wasn't too excited to see them. She kinda thought they smelled. It was disheartening because I had planned on going with Catcher and I thought her and I were going to be running around having lots of fun. Giselle just isn't as much fun. She just didn't have an opinion on much. I would be like "what do you want to see next?" and she would say "I don't care." It got old.

Eventually, we walked through the games section. There was a carnie with darts and balloons and some bears that seemed like they might be cool for me to win for Giselle. So, I ask the carnie how much it will cost to win that bear. He hands me a dart and kinda gives me the signal like he is going to hook me up. I asked if I needed to pay him and he said no. Strange. So, I throw the dart. He says something about 2 times 2 is four, hands me another dart. I throw it, he tells me 2 times 4 is 8. Ok, great, the guy can do math. But what does it have to do with anything? Hands me another dart and says 2 times 8 is 16. I throw it and he says "done, you won the bear. That will be $16." Wait, what? $16 for the bear? Yeah, I just got hosed by a carnie. I decided that paying him $16 for a cheap bear was a better idea than getting stabbed in the back by an angry carnie so I handed over the cash. Giselle told me that I probably shouldn't be in the games section anymore.

We went to get a deep fried snickers bar. While waiting in line, some girl walks up behind me and grabs my hip. I turned expecting to see an old friend. Instead, it was an unfamiliar face. She kinda just stood there next to me, glaring at Giselle. Didn't say anything. Stood there for at least a minute, kinda close to me, like her shoulder was touching me and then just walked away. Really weird.

The date was going fairly well so I decided to take Giselle back to my house to watch a movie. We watched Just Friends. Not a super good movie. But, we cuddled on the couch. Definitely felt more of a connection with Giselle after cuddling with her. Took her home. Decided to not try and kiss her. Overall, the date was ok. Nothing great but nothing horrible. I think I will take her out again within a week or so.

Other notes: Went to FHE tonight and met a girl, 18 which I know is way young. But very cute.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Now I know how Jimmy Buffett feels

Sorry for the long delay. I had a date last week with a new girl named Giselle. I met Giselle about a month ago through some mutual friends. We went to this chinese restaurant. It was my birthday. Somehow, during dinner, it came up that I get really grossed out by lip gloss. Pretty sure it was littlebrother who brought it up. Giselle had just put on a bunch of lip gloss. She turned to me and put her face close to mine and said "I really want to kiss you right now." Then, to make matters worse, littlebrother's date, the girl he has been pursuing for months and months, says "If you kiss Giselle, I will kiss your brother." Littlebrother looked at me with hopeful eyes. This was his chance and all he needed was for his older brother to kiss a girl...

I couldn't do it. I thought about it. I seriously considered it. But all that chinese food in my stomach? Just thinking about it made my stomach turn a little. It wouldn't be so great for me to throw up on my birthday on a first date after I kissed her! I think she felt rejected. Littlebrother was kinda mad.

We took the girls to a park and played our guitars for them. I did an improv song about Giselle that was pretty funny. Then, as littlebrother and his date were walking away, I moved in to kiss Giselle. She totally denied me! She said "Now you know how it feels to be rejected." Not one to be outdone, I went in a second time and stole a kiss from her. It was kinda awkward but I thought it was pretty funny. She definitely is showing some interest in me. Our next date is this saturday. I haven't planned anything yet.

Last Saturday I went on a date with Jasmine. I was excited. We were gonna go canoeing. The weather wasn't looking great but we took off anyway to where the canoes are stored in my hometown. Things started out bad and basically never improved. When I knocked on her door, she was on the phone. She let me in but kept talking to some guy who was in Germany. We finally got in my car to go but she was still on the phone!

She got off the phone as we entered the canyon. Jasmine had made us a picnic for lunch. On the way up, she got hungry. So, we stopped at my parents' house and ate our lunch. It was quite good. I was feeling better cause Jasmine had gone out of her way to plan our lunch. I thought maybe that was a sign of interest. The weather looked even worse so we decided to take a drive. Driving through the small town I grew up in, we passed a young (mid 20's) girl hitchhiking in the rain. We decided to pick her up. Her name was Lisa. We drove Lisa 40 miles up into the mountains. It was actually really fun having her in the car. At one point she said "You guys are a really cute couple." I thought that was cute until Jasmine responded "We aren't a couple. We might be someday." Weird. Granted, if her mom had said something like that, we would tell her. But the hitchhiker? The one we were about to drop off in the middle of the mountains to never see again?

I suggested we get out of the car and walk around a bit but Jasmine didn't want to. This was my first real chance to see what kind of person Jasmine is. Basically, she does only what she wants to do and expects things to always go her way. It was very frustrating. We were driving back down and she said she was getting tired. I suggested we go take a nap at my parents' house but she insisted that her dog had been alone for 5 hours and she needed to go take care of him. I like animals. I grew up on a farm. Dogs are not babies! It was so annoying. So, I took her home and then said that I needed to go home. I went home and watched some football. An hour or two later, I decided to give Jasmine another chance. I texted her suggesting we go have dinner or go watch a movie. She responded that she was cooking a pizza and I could come over and eat some of that and we could watch a movie. Good sign right? Wrong. I got there and we ate the pizza. Her dog was there, demanding most of her attention. Then, we went to watch a movie. However, there was nothing Jasmine wanted to watch. So, she told me I could choose between some cake baking challenge show and a home redecorating show. Basically, she was going to control whatever we watched. I didn't want to watch either show. They were lame. Plus, I wanted to cuddle with her. Instead, she cuddled with her stupid dog. I haven't talked to her since. I have thought about it but I just can't get over how badly our last date went.

Tomorrow is the big night. My first date with Catcher. I texted her the other night and she said she would love to go to the fair with me. I am hoping that there will be a serious connection. Kinda worried though because she is such a pretty girl. I am sure she has tons of options. Abercrombie and Fitch models hitting on her all the time. I am sure it will go better than my last date with Jasmine though.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

You're a rockstar

Met up with Jasmine last night. She said she had a busy week but I suggested that we take her dog and the dog she is watching for a walk together and stop and get ice cream. The walk was nice, I walked Melanie the pug and she walked her little dog Kinsey. There wasn't a whole lot of physical contact, which kinda disappointed me. I'd sorta hoped we would at least end up cuddling or watching a movie or something but it didn't happen. We got back to the place she was staying at (where the dog lives) and talked for a minute and then she said she was tired and needed to go to bed. It was 11. My guess is that she is just playing it cool cause she has been burned before. However, I don't think it is a stretch of the imagination to think that maybe it is a sign she is pushing me into the friend-zone. I have enough friends that are girls. Too many in fact. I don't need any more friends that are girls. We have a date planned for this saturday. I was thinking we could go canoeing.