All the Single Ladies...

Where are you? Last weekend I visited Bill in Milwaukee again. As usual, I had a relaxing, but fun time. Once again, we went to my favorite MKE bar, Redroom. I was hoping to see the film student I had met the month before, but she wasn't there. That's alright I guess. If I didn't have a few good friends with me while I was there, the bar would have been pretty lame. It always seems like there isn't a single girl in some bars. Or I would just have no interest in those who are.

So this weekend I'm driving to Madison for my sister's birthday. I'll get to see some other good friends, which should be a good time. At the same time, this is two weeks in a row I'll be out of Chicago. I like staying around here, too, so that kind of sucks. After this trip, I don't anticipate any more.

Just to give myself at least a little hope of a relationship, I think I'm going to ask a mutual friend about a girl she brought to go out drinking two weeks ago. The whole time she was out, a guy was hitting on her, so I did my best (drunkest) to not say much. Though I have the creeping suspicion that she may be no genius, I think I should at least try it out and not just assume.

Back to Zero

Well the bad news is that the girl from Nerve has a boyfriend. I guess the good news is that I'm not wildly disappointed. Now I'm back at the point where there's no one around I actually have met who I'd be interested in. A coworker mentioned that while I say that I really want to date a smart girl "maybe nice and cute are enough." I'm still not sure what to think of that. Does it seem shallow? I don't know. That's not to say that as soon as I try to talk to girls who I might not think are geniuses they'll be charmed. Quite the opposite, if I remember college correctly.

So now I'm back not knowing what to do. Should I try meeting girls at bars only? Where? I guess that's the lifelong question for me.

St. Patrick was Actually Asian

For some reason, I thought that St. Patrick's Day in Chicago was a nighttime only thing--I was wrong. After a Friday of solid drinking for a coworker's birthday, I was told to be at a friend's house by 10am. Well, okay, I got on my nifty week-old bike and rode down.

After being greeted with the strongest Bloody Mary I've ever had, I had another one. Prebars are pretty nice in the idea that you get to hang out with your friends and not feel awkward about meeting strangers also. I don't mean to brag about myself too much, but I believe that I successfully managed NOT to hit on either of the hostesses (which may be a first).

The rest of the day was a pretty standard drinking day. We ran around the neighborhood bars spending too much money. I remember running into a a girl who I hadn't seen for four months or so. She and I share a mutual friend. Despite her beauty and possibly apparent intelligence, I've never found a way to ask her for her number.

My night ended hanging out at a Wrigleyville apartment watching a beerpong playing visitor swear at his opponents while wearing an unbuttoned shirt and ski goggles. These are the reasons why I hate Wrigleyville. As I stepped outside to have a cigarette, I thought that I was too drunk and tired to keep drinking/spending money for the night. So at 9:00pm on a Saturday night, I caught a cab home without telling anyone.

You can't have St. Paddy's Day without an Irish Goodbye.

YFW on a Date

So last week I went on a date with a girl I met on Valentine's Day. I didn't have extremely high hopes going into it, so that's what I got out of it. The food was good, the conversation was long. Usually I'm quite easy to please when dealing with pretty girls, but this girl didn't do it for me. I feel like she was trying to be funny/cute and it just wasn't working for me. Anyone else...possibly, but just not me I guess. But here comes the kicker: as I walked my date to her door (and politely declined to check out her apt, whatever that would entail), I tried to give her an awkward goodbye hug. After that, I felt like she was just standing there waiting for me to kiss her...so I did. Now, I obviously have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to girls. but at the time I thought that it would be better to kiss than to just leave her hanging. I haven't talked to her since our date on Wednesday, and I'm not sure how I'll approach the situation if she calls soon. I'm always sick of getting mixed signals (self-perceived as such), so I wouldn't want to do the same. I guess we'll find out.

10 years and Another Weekend

So last Thursday marked ten years since my father died. I had thought about it at the beginning of the week, but ended up completely overlooking it all of Thursday. I'm not sure if that really means anything, but it's kind of hard to completely keep the same feelings for such a long time.

Sure, his absence is one of the most difficult parts of my life, but There have been more years without him than years we really had together. Sometimes I'd have dreams where he would be in them, but they would always turn out for the worse. Either I would realize in my dream that he won't be there when I wake up or I do wake up and then realize that was it. The reason I don't discuss any of it with my family isn't because I'm trying to put up some kind of tough guy facade. Really, I just know they won't have any answers or be able to make me feel any better. So I guess that's just how things will always be for me in that respect.

On a more upbeat note, I've now been doing better for about two weeks now. I haven't had any really negative thoughts and I've stopped worrying too much about what people (read: girls) think of me. My Milwaukee friend, who I'll call Bill, had his birthday on Saturday, so I drove up to meet him. We went out to eat at maybe the best restaurant I've ever been to, Coquette. That's not saying I've been to a ton, though, but it was very good. Afterward, we did the standard act of drinking heavily. Instead of the previous few months where I would drink a lot and then get depressed, I enjoyed myself. I actually ended up talking to a pretty film grad student. At the end of the night, we said our goodbyes with the idea that we likely won't see each other again. In retrospect, I probably should have asked her number anyway, since I've been to MKE every 3-5 weeks. The nice thing right now is that I'm not beating myself up over it as I had done before.

Question: Is it legitimate to be instantly (or make it the tipping point) uninterested in a girl if she says cutesy phrases? Example: Falafel? That sounds yummy...

I'm thinking yes.