Here's the Deal
Alright. I suppose I ought to explain something. Everyone keeps asking me when I'll post again with the details from the little cliffhanger I left for you last time I mentioned something. But here's the thing - I haven't figured out what I want to say yet. Since the person involved doesn't know about this blog yet, I could keep it private and give myself license to speak completely freely. But if this person is going to be as important in my life as the indicators seem to be, uh, indicating, then I'd end up revealing the blog at some point. And while I might be okay telling the rest of you some otherwise-private things, I wouldn't necessarily be okay with this person finding out about it. So, there's the rub.
Plus, some of you might not want to know some of the details, and I respect that. So for now I will keep it fairly generic and "safe".
Besides, I couldn't come up with a nickname I liked. Do I go for the cutesy theme of everyone else I've named in here, or do I do something like Tallulah and refer to this person by first initial? Argh. I guess I can always change it later, but I wouldn't want to confuse any of my 5 or 6 loyal readers.
Gonna bite the bullet here. Bear with me.
The person I'm in the middle of trying to introduce will (for the time being anyway) now be referred to as "Kenyon", or perhaps "Ken" if I'm feeling shorthandy, or maybe even "Kenny" if I'm trying to be comedic, sarcastic, affectionate, or any of a bunch of other things. Let's just agree that if I write anything about "Kenyon" or a variation thereof, that's who I mean. Deal?
Kenyon's the new guy in my life. Yes folks, not like the 6 of you didn't know already, but maybe there's someone out there I missed who's reading it on here for the first time, there is a new guy in my life. Looks weird in print. Like it's real. It doesn't feel real, yet. We've been dating for oh, almost 3 whole weeks now, and I still feel like I'm making it up. (I think that's a good thing? Part of the "I can't believe life really works this way" or "things like this don't happen to me" vibe.) I'll be driving somewhere, alone in my car, thinking that surely I'm dreaming all of this and I'll wake up soon and get really upset that it wasn't all real. Except, three weeks later, I haven't woken up yet. I might start getting used to this. Anyway, he's the lacrosse player, and that's why lacrosse featured so prominently in the previous posts.
One of the things that makes it unreal is that it's all above-board, and normal, and Kenyon isn't someone I know from a past 6-year period of my life involving a certain fairly small community of people. (This community includes people I love dearly and who have profoundly affected my life like Dhavid and Tallulah, but most of the people I've dated in the last decade have been from this community and I had decided a long time ago to try to branch out. I just never really succeeded.) So now I can say I'm dating someone and I don't have to be wary of the "Oh so how did you meet?" question.
How did we meet, you ask? On Match.com. Yeah, I'm not ashamed to admit it. Beats having to explain how I met Dhavid and Tallulah. (Who also don't like explaining to strangers how we all know each other. :) Surprisingly, Match actually seems to work. I was totally surprised. I'd been on there for a few months after it became clear that I was not going to be moving on with my life in any other way, and after KarateKat goaded me into trying it. What the hell, right? So I signed up, filled out the little personality profile, and was told "Gee, you're unique!" -- meaning that of Match's millions and millions of people who've filled out that profile, I match with approximately 0.3% of them, personality-wise. And that's not even counting geography, preferences, or looks. Nice. The computer program is telling me I'm doomed to be single before I even start looking.
Next thing that happens is I get a whole lot of "winks" (people letting me know they looked at my profile and are interested, but who didn't want to write me an email for whatever reason) from people. Makes me feel great, like "wow, people like me!" or "hey maybe this will be easier than I thought!" Real ego-booster, for a while. But then you start combing through them and notice that some of them are from Florida, or Nebraska, or North Carolina - just a tad outside the "within 50 miles of Chicago, IL" I'd specified in my preferences. So they're out. Then there's a bunch of people who reallllly don't fit the bill in some fundamental way not related to looks. They're out too. And that left me with people who either couldn't write well or weren't what I would consider attractive (I hesitate to say that since "attractive" is extremely subjective and consists of so much more than looks, but I had to make a decision, and I decided not to pursue these guys based on looks. Sorry.) In other words, no real winners. So I went from thinking I'm way popular and hot to thinking "This is IT?". So much for the ego boost, short-lived as it was. At this point I'm back to thinking I'll either be alone forever, or can only attract losers.
After a while, I get into email conversations with one or two people on there, and those seem to go realllly well. Hopes - back up, bigtime. Pictures looked okay, even got to the point of meeting for a sort of first date. Exciting, since each time I think I'm about to meet the man of my dreams. And then I show up, each time, and realize within the span of the first 10 seconds that it's not gonna work. Sigh. Back to being lost and hopeless.
And really, really busy right then with karate, Dad's surgery, Thanksgiving, Mom's birthday, you name it. Some poor soul winked at me during that time and I never even looked at his profile for like 3 weeks afterward. But then when I had a moment to breathe and decided not to give up on Match just yet, I pulled up his profile and saw something interesting. The guy could write. And he had cats. And he'd winked at me, so he wasn't turned off by my profile either.
On a whim, I write him back and apologize for the extremely long delay in responding to him, and explain about being busy and not having had a chance to log into Match lately, and ask him about his cats. Miraculously, he writes back, and we get started on this long and fruitful email conversation. (Miraculously, because he was about to cancel his Match account and wasn't going to reply to my email at all, he said, except I had asked about his cats... the magic words, I guess!) Emails turn to a first phone call, which lasts a little less than 4 hours. Followed by a 3-hour call the next night. And plans to go out the coming weekend at my beloved Chicago Wolves hockey game (HV couldn't make it so I had a spare ticket). And as you may have figured out by now, the date went well! So did the next one, and the one after that, and three weeks later, here we are. It feels like it's been SO much longer.
So here's the thing with Match - on Date 2 or so, I asked Kenyon "hey did you do the Personality Profile on Match?" (I wasn't able to look it up before he cancelled his account, and didn't know how compatible we were). He paused and said "...Yeah." I then asked him if it had told him (like me, but I didn't say so) that he had a unique personality. Another pause, and another "...Yeah."
[Quick side note - when you go to look at someone's profile and they've taken the personality quiz thing, it shows you how compatible you supposedly are with each other. It's a 5-star rating system, and for unique little me, 99% of the people show up as 1- or 2-star matches, and it tells me that our personality match is "unclear". Polite way of saying "no way in hell do you two get along" I guess.]
So Kenyon then goes on to say that Match told him he was compatible with 0.3% of the population (sound familiar?), and when he'd checked on our compatibilty... 5 stars. Yep. Not like I hadn't already figured that out from 2 dates, but it's a little unsettling that a computer program can predict who will get along. Freaky.
And that, boys and girls, is how we met and how we ended up starting to see each other. As of this writing, it's going very, very well. And I hope it continues to do so. I've made bold predictions to some of you, and we'll just see how that all works out. I'm not dumb enough to jinx it by saying it publicly. :) And Dad, thanks for the article on the upcoming bridal show. I don't think I'll be needing it just yet, but I'm glad you think it might either be funny enough to joke about it, or perhaps you were serious, but either way, thanks. :) I would NEVER have thought it was you who left it for me! (Mom & Mrs. Karch, sure, but not YOU! Tee hee).
OK folks, time for Joanie to go get lunch. Have a happy new year, all!
-Joan
Plus, some of you might not want to know some of the details, and I respect that. So for now I will keep it fairly generic and "safe".
Besides, I couldn't come up with a nickname I liked. Do I go for the cutesy theme of everyone else I've named in here, or do I do something like Tallulah and refer to this person by first initial? Argh. I guess I can always change it later, but I wouldn't want to confuse any of my 5 or 6 loyal readers.
Gonna bite the bullet here. Bear with me.
The person I'm in the middle of trying to introduce will (for the time being anyway) now be referred to as "Kenyon", or perhaps "Ken" if I'm feeling shorthandy, or maybe even "Kenny" if I'm trying to be comedic, sarcastic, affectionate, or any of a bunch of other things. Let's just agree that if I write anything about "Kenyon" or a variation thereof, that's who I mean. Deal?
Kenyon's the new guy in my life. Yes folks, not like the 6 of you didn't know already, but maybe there's someone out there I missed who's reading it on here for the first time, there is a new guy in my life. Looks weird in print. Like it's real. It doesn't feel real, yet. We've been dating for oh, almost 3 whole weeks now, and I still feel like I'm making it up. (I think that's a good thing? Part of the "I can't believe life really works this way" or "things like this don't happen to me" vibe.) I'll be driving somewhere, alone in my car, thinking that surely I'm dreaming all of this and I'll wake up soon and get really upset that it wasn't all real. Except, three weeks later, I haven't woken up yet. I might start getting used to this. Anyway, he's the lacrosse player, and that's why lacrosse featured so prominently in the previous posts.
One of the things that makes it unreal is that it's all above-board, and normal, and Kenyon isn't someone I know from a past 6-year period of my life involving a certain fairly small community of people. (This community includes people I love dearly and who have profoundly affected my life like Dhavid and Tallulah, but most of the people I've dated in the last decade have been from this community and I had decided a long time ago to try to branch out. I just never really succeeded.) So now I can say I'm dating someone and I don't have to be wary of the "Oh so how did you meet?" question.
How did we meet, you ask? On Match.com. Yeah, I'm not ashamed to admit it. Beats having to explain how I met Dhavid and Tallulah. (Who also don't like explaining to strangers how we all know each other. :) Surprisingly, Match actually seems to work. I was totally surprised. I'd been on there for a few months after it became clear that I was not going to be moving on with my life in any other way, and after KarateKat goaded me into trying it. What the hell, right? So I signed up, filled out the little personality profile, and was told "Gee, you're unique!" -- meaning that of Match's millions and millions of people who've filled out that profile, I match with approximately 0.3% of them, personality-wise. And that's not even counting geography, preferences, or looks. Nice. The computer program is telling me I'm doomed to be single before I even start looking.
Next thing that happens is I get a whole lot of "winks" (people letting me know they looked at my profile and are interested, but who didn't want to write me an email for whatever reason) from people. Makes me feel great, like "wow, people like me!" or "hey maybe this will be easier than I thought!" Real ego-booster, for a while. But then you start combing through them and notice that some of them are from Florida, or Nebraska, or North Carolina - just a tad outside the "within 50 miles of Chicago, IL" I'd specified in my preferences. So they're out. Then there's a bunch of people who reallllly don't fit the bill in some fundamental way not related to looks. They're out too. And that left me with people who either couldn't write well or weren't what I would consider attractive (I hesitate to say that since "attractive" is extremely subjective and consists of so much more than looks, but I had to make a decision, and I decided not to pursue these guys based on looks. Sorry.) In other words, no real winners. So I went from thinking I'm way popular and hot to thinking "This is IT?". So much for the ego boost, short-lived as it was. At this point I'm back to thinking I'll either be alone forever, or can only attract losers.
After a while, I get into email conversations with one or two people on there, and those seem to go realllly well. Hopes - back up, bigtime. Pictures looked okay, even got to the point of meeting for a sort of first date. Exciting, since each time I think I'm about to meet the man of my dreams. And then I show up, each time, and realize within the span of the first 10 seconds that it's not gonna work. Sigh. Back to being lost and hopeless.
And really, really busy right then with karate, Dad's surgery, Thanksgiving, Mom's birthday, you name it. Some poor soul winked at me during that time and I never even looked at his profile for like 3 weeks afterward. But then when I had a moment to breathe and decided not to give up on Match just yet, I pulled up his profile and saw something interesting. The guy could write. And he had cats. And he'd winked at me, so he wasn't turned off by my profile either.
On a whim, I write him back and apologize for the extremely long delay in responding to him, and explain about being busy and not having had a chance to log into Match lately, and ask him about his cats. Miraculously, he writes back, and we get started on this long and fruitful email conversation. (Miraculously, because he was about to cancel his Match account and wasn't going to reply to my email at all, he said, except I had asked about his cats... the magic words, I guess!) Emails turn to a first phone call, which lasts a little less than 4 hours. Followed by a 3-hour call the next night. And plans to go out the coming weekend at my beloved Chicago Wolves hockey game (HV couldn't make it so I had a spare ticket). And as you may have figured out by now, the date went well! So did the next one, and the one after that, and three weeks later, here we are. It feels like it's been SO much longer.
So here's the thing with Match - on Date 2 or so, I asked Kenyon "hey did you do the Personality Profile on Match?" (I wasn't able to look it up before he cancelled his account, and didn't know how compatible we were). He paused and said "...Yeah." I then asked him if it had told him (like me, but I didn't say so) that he had a unique personality. Another pause, and another "...Yeah."
[Quick side note - when you go to look at someone's profile and they've taken the personality quiz thing, it shows you how compatible you supposedly are with each other. It's a 5-star rating system, and for unique little me, 99% of the people show up as 1- or 2-star matches, and it tells me that our personality match is "unclear". Polite way of saying "no way in hell do you two get along" I guess.]
So Kenyon then goes on to say that Match told him he was compatible with 0.3% of the population (sound familiar?), and when he'd checked on our compatibilty... 5 stars. Yep. Not like I hadn't already figured that out from 2 dates, but it's a little unsettling that a computer program can predict who will get along. Freaky.
And that, boys and girls, is how we met and how we ended up starting to see each other. As of this writing, it's going very, very well. And I hope it continues to do so. I've made bold predictions to some of you, and we'll just see how that all works out. I'm not dumb enough to jinx it by saying it publicly. :) And Dad, thanks for the article on the upcoming bridal show. I don't think I'll be needing it just yet, but I'm glad you think it might either be funny enough to joke about it, or perhaps you were serious, but either way, thanks. :) I would NEVER have thought it was you who left it for me! (Mom & Mrs. Karch, sure, but not YOU! Tee hee).
OK folks, time for Joanie to go get lunch. Have a happy new year, all!
-Joan
posted by Call Me Joan @ 1:25 PM
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