Date & Dish

So in my last post, I shared how things went south with Data Guy. Well, I suppose he and I have fallen into the land of being “chat buddies”…he continues to IM me almost every day but still hasn’t asked me out again. Whatever. As I mentioned before, I decided to set up some dates with new people, and I’ve been out with two guys since I gave up on Data Guy.

The first guy I went out with was Music Guy. We met for coffee one evening last week and had a great time talking about music. We have very, very similar taste in music and were actually at a lot of the exact same shows in college (we were at the same university over the same five-year period). He was super-nice and cute, and we got along great. He’s in the process of getting divorced after being separated for nearly a year, so he’s interested in taking things slowly and starting out as friends, which is totally fine with me. At the very least, we discussed being concert buddies. I haven’t spoken to him since then and will probably wait for him to contact me. That’s what I’m supposed to do, right? Let him “pursue” me?

Sigh. I’m not very good at playing the game.

Anyway, I went out with someone new tonight. I’ll call him Small World Guy, and you’ll see why in a bit. We first started communicating a few months ago, and then I never heard back from him. Before totally writing him off, I sent him a fairly direct e-mail that basically said “I was just curious whether you were still interested in communicating with me or not. If not, that’s totally cool, I’m just trying to simplify things a bit and would rather close out our communication than keep it open if you’ve found someone you’re interested in, taking a break, changed your mind, etc. So could you let me know? I appreciate it!” He wrote back immediately and suggested we get together, citing business at work and in his personal life and apologizing for not responding earlier.

We exchanged a few e-mails and he was going to send me an e-mail last night with a suggestion on where to meet. Well, I never got any e-mail, and last night came and went. I thought maybe I would get one today, but no. Finally, around 5:30 or so, I figured I was getting stood up tonight. Can you believe it? But just as I was going to give up, I got an e-mail from him asking if we were still on and saying he hadn’t heard from me yet about tonight. I called him and learned that he had indeed sent me an e-mail the night before, but I hadn’t received the mystery message. We made plans to meet a little later at a local café, and I was just glad I wasn’t being stood up.

We actually had a great time tonight! I expected to have a pretty quick first date, but we ended up talking for nearly four hours and could have talked longer if it wasn’t getting so late. It turns out that we actually have a lot in common, including some common friends. It turns out that one of my friends from my last job is Small World Guy’s next door neighbor. I kid you not. And one of his very good friends is someone I worked with a few years ago at another job. How crazy is that? It’s such a small world.

Anyway, Small World Guy and I agreed to get together again this weekend. He’s really an interesting guy. He likes to read all sorts of books, which I find fascinating since I feel like I have so little time to read these days. He also writes fiction and is considering going back to school to get an English degree just for fun. I could appreciate that since I have an English degree — I thought it was pretty cool.

Meanwhile, good old HH and I keep in touch and will likely get together again at some point to hang out. German Guy wants to get together again sometime. Data Guy added me as a MySpace friend. And do you remember the guy who suggested we split the bill on our first date? We have continued to chat via IM almost every day since then. I’ve made a nice new Internet friend.

So that’s where I am, folks. Not much exciting to report, I suppose, but hey…who knows? I’m open to possibilities!