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To begin with, I titled this “Online Dating Sucks” because…well…it does. Sucks like a big ‘ol freaking Hoover.

One of my biggest beefs with the whole process is that I feel that the online venue allows for people who might otherwise lack the social skills to enter into a dating relationship in the normal course of life. This is not to say that it always attracts socially inept individuals (case in point, myself) but it does seem to cater to them. After all, how easy is it to meet women from your hiding place behind a computer? You don’t even have to be yourself if you don’t want. No one’s going to make you be honest. No one’s going to call you out on not being true to who you really are. No one’s even going to know that the picture you posted is a 10-year-old glamor shot from the mall and doesn’t even remotely look like the non-airbrushed you who, incidentally, weighs an additional 40 pounds and no longer has hair. I’m just saying.

Again, I understand that the online thing works and has worked for a lot of people. For me however, it has yielded less-than-favorable results.

In addition to the “protection” that online dating provides, I also feel like it lends to microwaving something that really ought to be slow-cooked. You may or may not like someone within the first few seconds of meeting, but that doesn’t mean the jury should immediately render a verdict. Most recently I discovered I had an attraction to someone that I had known for months and would never have thought I’d be interested in…but getting to actually know him was what changed that. Online dating doesn’t allow for this. Instead, I think we lean towards calling the jury back prematurely rather than looking to maybe begin a friendship. Seriously, where’s the fire people? Stop running around with your hose! (No dirty pun intended) Why not calm down, relax, and enjoy the ride!

But that is not what happens.

Allow me to elaborate by sharing with you my typical online match-up experience which has gone something like this…

• In a fit of optimism, I join eHarmony (or match.com or the like, but for the sake of this example and the fact that I’m on eHarmony right now, I’ll stick with that).
• I see a lot of profiles and a few of which I actually like.
• One of us reaches out through eHarmony’s “Guided Communication” process.
• We take a few days to work our way through all of the Q&A sessions and end up finally going back and forth through site-handled email.
• We exchange phone numbers, and then someone makes the first call.
• We talk. It usually goes well because, let’s face it, it’s hard for a standard small-talk discussion to go badly.
• We decide to meet up (usually sooner rather than later) for dinner/coffee/what-have-you.
• The night of the “big date” arrives with little (if any) fanfare.
• Afterwards, the guy typically proceeds to fall off the face of the planet…or at least they seem to.

The End.

Sometimes I’m disappointed when this happens. Most of the time I expect it. This last time out was no different. Experience has taught me not to get hopes up. That if you must be optimistic, do it with caution signs. “Danger: Potential Flaky Guy Ahead”. Yeah, you ain’t just whistling Dixie.

As I said in my previous post, I was cautiously optimistic about this last guy. On paper, he seemed great. Said all the right things, did all the right things…with gusto, I might add. In our conversations he even implied that, while we may not be each others “perfect match,” that was no reason to think that we wouldn’t still be friends, at the very least. It seemed to fit… Our interests were similar. As were our personalities. And, while I really don’t think that ending up with someone just like me would be a good idea (how would anything ever get done??), I definitely thought there was friend potential. My mistake.

We had our date last Friday night. I didn’t sense a true click (read: chemistry) like you do when you meet someone you think you could see yourself with, I still finished the night thinking, “Gee, that was fun. He’s pretty cool. I definitely see friendship” only to find after the weekend was through that he didn’t feel the same way…or at least, that’s what I assume. See, after receieving dozens of text messages and spending hours on the phone, since our outing, he has barely seen fit to respond to any communication from me. Well, whatever.

The thing that pisses me off really is that interested or not, to disappear on someone is just rude. It goes against everything your mother (hopefully) taught you about basic, polite social behavior. How about a little respect fellas? Why not at least say, “Hey, didn’t really feel a connection, but I still had a nice time hanging out with you”? What’s so difficult about that? I mean unless your dinner/coffee companion threw a drink in your face and called your mother ugly, there’s really no excuse to not at least manage a pleasant “Adios” after the date is done for the sake of closure if nothing else.

But the sad thing is that this is what I’ve come to expect because this is what happens again and again and again. If it weren’t for the fact that I have solid friends who would tell me if there was something I was doing that provoked this behavior, I might be tempted to think that it is somehow about me. Something I’m doing or not doing that’s screams “It’s okay to blow me off” to these guys.

Thankfully, I’ve also had relationships in the past that have lasted (none of which were begun online, I might add) and so I know I’m capable of being in a relationship and being a good girlfriend. I am. Promise.

Even so, since the only common denominator in these stories is me, it’s difficult to not feel like somehow I’m bringing this on myself…but how can you really know? That’s where you come in.

I’m really hoping that this post finds its way onto the computer screens of not just my extended circle of family and friends, but that some other women out there who have maybe had similar or otherwise frustrating experiences with the online dating scene and may find my thoughts resonating with them.

So please forward the link to anyone single women you know, or if you are one, I’d love to get some feedback or hear other people’s stories…and not the ones that are all about someone you know who met their husband/wife online. I’ve had enough of those. Right now I just need to know that I’m not alone…and/or crazy.

I’ve done enough venting, but thanks for listening. Now it’s time for you guys to weigh-in…please! And while you do, I’m going to sit back in a chair on my fabulous patio in the warmth of late Spring, enjoy a beer, and be thankful that I have such a great life even though there’s no man in it (online or otherwise)…yet.

“When you’re young, your whole life is about the pursuit of fun.  Then, you grow up and learn to be cautious.  You could break a bone or a heart.  You look before you leap and sometimes you don’t leap at all because there’s not always someone there to catch you.  And in life, there’s no safety net.  When did it stop being fun and start being scary?” – Carrie Bradshaw, Sex & the City

Okay, so I wanted to do a little…well…talking, I suppose.  And I didn’t want to put it out on the blog without a password because I’m not entirely sure that the guy I’m talking about hasn’t discovered this blog yet.  My plan originally was not to tell him about it, but alas I sent an email that had a link to it at the bottom (oops) and so I’m not certain that he didn’t see it and click on it thereby rendering all things posted as potentially unsafe.

[UPDATE:  Since we are now several months past this whole event, I have removed the password and changed the names to protect the innocent so I feel there's no longer any danger in making this visible to the world.]

I should probably begin by explaining how, around my birthday I had a moment of pure optimism and rejoined eHarmony for the first time in over 2 years.  I’m sure I just made Cbo’s head explode or at the very least, her skin crawl with that statement.  Honestly, I can’t say that I disagree with either of those responses.  In fact the first couple of days, the only matches I received were balding men in their late-40′s who looked for the most part like they either had a bunch of bodies hidden in the freezer, still live at home with mom & dad, or some combination of both.  However, now 3 weeks later, there have been a few thrown across my match page which actually managed to catch my attention.

Only two of them have I actually gotten all the way to emailing with so far.  One of them is 2 months out of a 4 year relationship and while I know that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s not ready for another one, he did bring up his ex twice in the first phone conversation we had prompting me to ask how long the relationship had been over for.  That doesn’t bode well and I can’t ignore the little robot inside me screaming “Danger, Will Robinson!” while waving red flags.

The other one of the two is who really intrigued me.

For the sake of privacy, I’ll just call him H.  H is 39, lives in Massachusetts, and has lived a very VERY interesting existence up to this point.  In our conversation last night (which lasted over 2 hours) I found myself shocked that this guy was still single.  He doesn’t seem to be emotionally stunted.  Nor does he appear to be socially inept.  He doesn’t spend his weekends LARPing.  He’s not a closet serial killer, and he assured me that he’s not gay (although I’m not sure why he felt the need to assure me of that) and has never before been married.

But…I can’t help think there’s got to be SOMETHING.  Something about this guy has got to be off…  He’s good-looking (or at least that’s what I pick up from his photos and just some other in-between-the-lines indicators), he’s got a family he loves, he’s insanely upfront and open, and by all counts appears to be just one of those “good guys” you always read about.  So…where’s that other shoe that surely about to drop right on my head?  I have no idea…at least not yet.

Now I’m not typically this skeptical…  In fact, more often than not, I’m the glass-is-half-full girl, however in the realm of dating (ESPECIALLY online dating), I tend towards being cautious.  I can’t help it.  I think anyone would who’s been burned as often as I have would be.  I’ve actually lost count of how many guys I’ve had great phone conversations with, but who turned out to be total duds in person.  I also have had others seem as great in person as they were on the phone only to never be heard from again after our meet-and-greet.  One even was amazing on email, practically proposing to me on the phone, but then when it came time to meet up in person, he completely freaked out and couldn’t go through with it.  Still others were not even interested enough to venture into a phone conversation.

That’s just a taste of my experiences in this arena – can you blame me therefore if I look at these new guys a little sideways?  The wounds are no longer raw from these other idiots in my past, but the scars are still there.

H’s story, as best I can summarize, is that he’s spent the majority of his life living and/or traveling all over the world (sound like anyone you know?)  He was in the Air Force working as a photojournalist.  About a year or so ago he was struck by a drunk driver and suffered a near-broken back.  The last year he’s spent in physical therapy getting back to himself.  He was unfortunately forced to give up his job since he couldn’t lift a can of coke let alone a camera bag, and so he ended up taking a job with a company in Mass. which focuses on technology program management (which sounds very similar to what I do with project management).

From what else I can gather, he’s smart, very articulate, extremely trusting, and doesn’t appear to have any unabomber tendencies.  Even though I don’t see any glaring red flags as yet, I think there is a potential yellow or orange one.  One of the questions he posed to me before we got into the whole open-emailing phase was centered around how I felt about opposite gender close friends.  We discussed this a little further last night since I had a hard time answering that question with the multiple choice selection, and I was sure there must be some driving force behind him asking it in the first place.  Turns out one of his best friends is a woman.  We didn’t discuss at length since it’s nothing I felt needed to be talked over in an initial phone conversation.  Neither would I care unless we became seriously involved.  Essentially I feel that if I were to end up in a serious relationship/marriage with any guy, I would expect that the most intimate relationship in my and his life would be ours.  I would think it strange if I got married and my best friend continued to be some guy I knew that wasn’t my husband…and I would hope my husband would think that would be strange as well!  Call me crazy, but I’ve seen relationships torn apart over less.  I’m not saying it would be an issue, but just that it could be.  However, it’s also not something I’m particularly concerned with right now – just one more reason for caution.

So that’s all the news…at least for now.  Looks like I may actually get to meet him as early as May.  I was going up to Boston anyway to hang w/S and the girls over that weekend so H might come and take me out for dinner.  I’ll be sure to keep you guys posted.

Oh the post title?  Yeah, that was just a reminder to myself to remain cautious, but not be timid.  Cross the road, just make sure you look both ways.

XOXO

Janelle’s thoughts on this were the most encouraging. I think she said that, in all the time she’s known me, she’s never seen me have this good of a relationship with a guy I wasn’t dating. We’re just friends…and good friends at that, at least I think we are. I feel incredibly comfortable with him, and I think he feels the same with me. We’re alike enough to have things to talk about, but different enough to be interesting. He makes me laugh – and vice versa (always good to find someone who appreciates my sometimes-insane sense of humor). I feel like I could say just about anything to him, and again vice versa (I think).

The agony is two-fold.

On the one hand, as I said, we most likely have no future. I also have horrible luck with men. The ones I like usually don’t like me back – or if they do, chances are there’s something terribly wrong with them that only time will reveal. The ones that do like me are usually desperados who mistake my being nice for romantic interest (the LARPer springs to mind). There is a part of me that REALLY wants to know whether there is any interest on his side or not…although I’m not sure which response would be worse.

Allow me to explain.

If the answer is that he likes me too, well then I’m faced with what to do with that when getting involved with him would be a potentially slippery slope into a place I don’t know if I really want to be. At the same time, this would be a nice ego boost – everyone wants to be wanted, after all.

If the answer is that no, he isn’t interested in me as anything more than a friend, then I think I would be more hurt than I have been in a long, long time. I mean, what could be worse than someone who knows you incredibly well then decides that they don’t have any interest in who you really are. It’s one thing to have someone reject you who doesn’t really know you. It’s another matter altogether to be rejected by someone who does. Call me crazy, but THAT is not something I particularly want to face.

Where do I go from here? I have no idea. I love what Jel had to say when we spoke last night – she’s so encouraging. But at the end of the day, caring about someone only seems to amplify feelings of loneliness and my desire to share my life and experiences with someone which I’m otherwise pretty much able to ignore.

Talk about a rock & a hard place.

So…now what?

But the real reason I’ve been spurred to write this morning is due to a story I just saw on Good Morning America.

I’m not normally a morning show watcher (GMA or any others), but they caught my interest this morning when they previewed a piece on Twitter they were going to do. Being a big fan of Twitter, I naturally was interested to hear what they were going to say (they think Twitter’s great, by the way).

But then Twitter wasn’t all that attracted my attention. They went on to discuss a dating compatibility tool that uses – get this – DNA.

That’s right my fellow singletons – for just $99 you can give GenePartner a swab of DNA from your cheek and have them run their tests to provide you with your given genetic compatibility with others looking for that “special someone”.

Hm.

GMA went and followed a couple on their first date where they had them do their DNA testing before having dinner. The results were then revealed on GMA this morning with the couple sitting in the studio. This particular couple came out with a 90% match which only seemed to solidify what they had already discovered from their date. So they already knew they liked each other. If this couple had been doing this on their own, this means that they’d have spent $99 to find out what they already knew.

A few things about this make me uneasy, but I’ll just share a couple of them.

First, what if it had gone the other way? What if they’d be out on the date, liked each other, but then the DNA results came back to say that they weren’t genetically compatible. That alone may not have been enough for them call it quits right away, but I can’t help but feel like knowing that in the back of their minds wouldn’t undermine their possible relationship. Think about it – what if you were married, engaged, or even seriously dating someone and you and your partner decided to do this DNA compatibility testing for kicks and it came back that you weren’t genetically compatible. How much would that suck?

Another thing that troubles me about this is it further shows what I see as a burgeoning trend among our single society to run after so-called scientific methods of finding your “perfect match.” While I’m far more inclined to listen to what a psychologist would say about the kind of man who would be good for me, I still would rather leave it up to my friends, family, and God to bring me the right guy across my path.

And maybe that’s the difference. Maybe in the absence of a belief and trust in God to hook me up with the man I should be with, scientific methods work as a substitute. They certainly seem far more concrete than what many see as an ambiguous God who surely has far more important matters to attend to than finding me a date for the weekend, right? Or maybe some of the motivation stems from the GenX-ers fear of divorce. We are the first real generation of divorce, after all… Perhaps as a result of that, we’re searching for new ways of making sure the one we pick is the right one for us – after all, who really goes into a relationship wanting to divorce? Perhaps those from broken homes think that they can avoid this fate if they have enough unbiased, third-party input into selecting their mate. I’m totally speculating here, but there might be something to that…

I’m not trying to say that some of these scientific approaches couldn’t help…God is the master scientist, after all. At the very least these types of tests and things can probably teach you something about yourself that you may not have already known which is certainly valuable.

eharmony, for example, has an interesting personality test that it uses to find your matches for you. So while eHarmony failed to match me up successfully with anyone in the 6 years (and hundreds of dollars) I spent with them, I still found the personality test output interesting. And, while some of the matches they sent me were dogs, there were some good guys as well. Of course the ones I liked never called me back… If we’d had a DNA test in hand that said we were genetically compatible, would that have changed anything? I doubt it. We had eHarmony’s endorsement that we were compatible from a personality standpoint and clearly that wasn’t enough.

The fact is, you either feel it or you don’t and no amount of scientific testing or results can change that. All it can really do is potentially affirm a choice you’ve already made, but I don’t think it can make you try against your gut reaction. I speak from experience on this one.

So maybe this makes me naive, but after all the online dating I’ve done over the past decade, I’ve come to the conclusion that at the end of the day, I would rather put my faith and trust in the God of the universe to take care of my needs – emotional or otherwise.

Sometimes I think a real date with someone I like would be a nice way to spend a Saturday night.  I’m just saying.

And at that moment, I would have said that tonight might have been a good night to test out that theory. But that was then…and it wasn’t snowing.

As most of you are aware, I have a few shows which I would consider to be lifetime favorites.  One is most certainly The Gilmore Girls.  Brilliant writing and storyline aside, one of the reasons I love Gilmore Girls is due to the many ways in which I could relate to Lorelai – for example, her relationship (read: obsession) with coffee.  Another would be her love affair with snow.

Everyone knows how much I love coffee – and I would venture to say that much of the population can relate on those terms as well.  However, I’ve found the snow thing tends to illicit rather negative responses from people.  Phrases filled with hatred, swearing, and even fear pour from people’s mouths at the very mention of it on the news.  And then there are always those who try to hide their dislike of it by saying, “Oh, I think it’s pretty and all, but only if I don’t have to go out in it.”

Well, I love snow.  I love when it falls.  I get sad when it stops.  Blizzards are awesome.  I don’t mind shoveling it.  I don’t mind being out in it.  I don’t mind driving in it.  In fact, I am never so happy inside as when it’s snowing.  Snow makes me smile.  I love how it looks, sounds, smells…  I love it all.  Snow is one of the reasons I sometimes consider relocating back to Alaska.  I get just about as defensive of snow as I do of New York.  And so, to all those who act so put out when it snows, to them I say that perhaps they should consider moving to the tropics.  Incidentally, these are probably the same group of people who, when I used to say that I lived in New York, I would have gotten a response like, “Wow – New York!  I could never live there.”  Couple that with a negative comment about the snow and you might as well pull my hair, kick me somewhere unpleasant, call me fat, and tell me I could only have ugly children.  (I know my fellow New Yorkers will understand this).

So, at this moment I have to admit that sitting here only a few weeks before my favorite holiday, cozy in my house in the glow of the Christmas tree watching a marathon of holiday films while snow is falling softly outside is the best way I can think of to spend a Saturday night…by far.

All I need now is some coffee.

Today I’d like to share a guest post from Deb. Deb lives in the Philadelphia suburbs, blogs at The Writer Bee and is part of The Well community. At the bottom of the post, I’ve linked to a few of my favorite posts she has shared on her blog. I hope you enjoy this as much as I have… Read the rest of this entry.

Anyway, “Ralph” (as I refer to him when writing publicly-accessible blog entries) has been…shall we say…challenging to get rid of.  After dating him for nearly 2 years in Alaska, he had wanted to continue seeing me, but also wanted to see this other girl that he’d met at some bar.  Naturally that was going to fly with me so we broke up.  He married the other chick, they had a kid, and then proceeded to get divorced all within just a few years.  I had continued to hear from Ralph periodically after our break-up (we had, after all, remained “friends”) until just before they separated.  I had been back to Alaska for a visit and had told him in no uncertain terms that I did NOT want to hear from him again.  My request essentially went unacknowledged as I continued to receive regular emails from him.

About a year ago, I wrote back.  I had let 5 years go by without so much as a “howdy-do” from me, yet Ralph had been undeterred.  My thinking was that perhaps it was the challenge of it all for him.  Maybe if I just responded and didn’t give him much more than the time of day, he’d get bored and disappear.  That didn’t work either.

Now one might wonder why I didn’t just block his emails.  Well, a couple of issues with that.  First off, I did block his emails at first, but he would change email addresses periodically so they would continue to slip through.  Then, in an attempt to run away from spam, I changed my primary email address and made sure he never had that.  He also had my work email which had been the same for the last 10 years and there wasn’t much I could do about that – we didn’t have any blocking capabilities there, and I obviously couldn’t change my work email.

But then came the merger.  When my division merged with the new company, my work email changed.  However, the deal was that they would forward anything that came into our previous work email addresses through December 2007.  During that time was when I heard from Ralph again (an email was forwarded through).  This was when I had responded, but I responded through my old personal email account so that he wouldn’t find out what my new work email was – the last thing I wanted him to know was that I had changed companies.  After December, our emails stopped being forwarded, but sending an email to my old work account would return and “undeliverable” response with a message indicating what my new address was.  This month, they turned that feature off as well.

Finally, the time had come and I saw my chance to escape.

Keeping Ralph emailing only to my personal account seemed like the safer thing to do to ensure that he would never find out more about me than I wanted him to know.  To that end, for a year I managed to keep him from ever sending a message to my work.  Now that the forwarding and messaging was no longer being done through our work servers, I went in and closed my old personal email account.

If Ralph emails me at the old address, he’ll get an “undeliverable”.  If he then tries my work address, he’ll get an “undeliverable”.  I’ve cut off his only two known ways of contacting me.  He doesn’t know where I work.  He doesn’t know where I live.  He doesn’t even know what I do.  Granted, he is in law enforcement, so I suppose if he wanted to find another way to hunt me down, he technically could.  I did buy a house, after all, which means my name is listed in public record databases, etc. but I still don’t think it would be that easy.  I’m also on Facebook, but my profile is protected and I don’t think he’s on there anyhow. I look for him periodically, but have only found his brother to-date.

So this time I may actually have done it.  I may actually have gotten rid of him!  This has been a long time coming…  I’m a little afraid of him tracking me down anyway, but maybe you guys could just pray a circle of protection around me so that, even if he looks, he won’t be able to find me.  Please understand that it’s not as though I hate him or think he’s dangerous in any way.  I don’t.  Nor do I wish him ill.  It’s just at this point I’m so sick and tired of him that I really REALLY want him gone from my life.

My hope and prayer is that he finally is.

The final proverbial straw that landed on this camel’s back was that my Windows Media Center PC (which has been acting as my DVR) does not support HD.  I have an HD television and therefore would like to be able to record HD.  As we are nearing the start of a new season of LOST, the last thing I wanted was to not be able to watch it in HD if I happen to not be home some evening when it’s on.

To remedy this, I temporarily switched over to the Comcast HD-DVR by Motorola to see if that would be enough to tide me over, but alas.  Not that there’s anything wrong with the Motorola DVR, that is when it’s working.  However, if (or rather when) it stops working, that’s it.  You and all of your shows that you’ve recorded are toast.  Comcast will come and replace it, but you’re out everything that was on the hard drive.  This happened to me a couple of times with the Motorola DVR I had in NYC through Time Warner and it had already happened to me once in only 3 months with Comcast.  Someone I work with said it’d happened to them 3 times in the past year.

Tivo seemed like the best solution by far.  Plus they were having a $200 rebate by mail deal going on, so the timing seemed perfect.  So just before Christmas I bit the bullet and ordered my Tivo and I may never look back.

It has been a little under a month now, and as stated in the title of this entry, I do indeed “heart” Tivo.  My Tivo is smart, fun, and a quick study.  I love navigating him.  I love checking out the “Tivo Suggestions” folder to see what new things he may have found for me to watch.  I love creating Wish Lists that get automatically recorded so that I am pleasantly surprised by movies that show up under ”Now Playing” that I didn’t even know where going to be on.  I love that he is connected to my wireless network so that I can give him instructions from anywhere. 

Tivo has so completely changed the way I view television that I may never watch it live again.  Just as an example, I was home with migraine-wannabe headache on Sunday.  My head felt like someone was using a jackhammer or wrecking ball or some other heavy machinery to try and break out of my skull.  So I spent the bulk of the day sitting on the couch, popping Advil, and watching TV…or rather, Tivo.  I began by perusing my “Now Playing” list to see if there was anything I had intentionally recorded but had not yet watched.  There wasn’t, so I moved onto the “Tivo Suggestions” folder where I found all sorts of treats that Tivo thought I might like including an old Marilyn Monroe film called Niagara, Bonfire of the Vanities, a Hitchcock film I hadn’t seen called The Paradine Case, and a few others.  Tivo was right – I enjoyed them all.  Bonfire of the Vanities surprised me in the beginning as I watched Bruce Willis in the Winter Garden of the World Financial Center (for those who don’t know, that is where I used to work).  I didn’t flip to live TV once.

Let me close by saying that, with Valentine’s Day fast approaching, I feel fairly confident that if Mr. Right-For-Me has not appeared in my life by then, I will most likely be spending the evening with Tivo instead.

What has brought on these thoughts?  My 23-year-old roommate.  In some ways having her around makes me feel younger…but then in other ways having her around makes me feel incredibly old.  I wouldn’t have necessarily thought that would be the case because she’s only a year younger than my sister Kristin, and yet it seems that there are things that come out in our conversations that make me take a step back and go “wow.”

Just so we’re clear, this isn’t about me feeling “old” and wishing I was younger.  I don’t.  Really.  I love being in my 30′s.  In fact, so far I think my 30′s are waaaaay better than my 20′s.  Even with as much fun as I had in my 20′s (moving to Alaska, living in NYC, traveling around Europe, getting the lowest salary known to man and learning how to live happily on it, etc.) I would never want to go back and repeat my 20′s.  No way.  Not in a million.  You couldn’t pay me.

While my 20′s were fun, they were also full of self-discovery and struggling to find answers to questions about my place in the world.  On the other hand, my 30′s have so far been more about having figured out a lot of that stuff and relaxing into life.  My 30′s have (so far) seen great leaps in my career including a job I really enjoy and a salary which allowed me to purchase a home as well as a puppy.  They have also brought with them the best trips I have taken to date and I have no doubt there are greater things yet to come…

Just to give you a taste, some of my pre-40 goals include:

• Become completely debt-free
• Move to another part of the country (or perhaps another country altogether…I’m flexible)
• Travel to Antarctica, Africa, Australia & New Zealand, the Arctic, China, and Patagonia

It’s crazy to me that I can look at that list and know that there’s nothing unobtainable there.  I could never have imagined being able to say that about a list like this in my 20′s – for most of my 20′s, it was all I could do to pay for food!

I still have my moments (as do we all) where I’m frustrated at being unclear in my purpose or lonely (for instance, I was in tears the other night fearing that I might not find someone to share my life with while I still look good naked).  But at the end of [most] days, I rest secure in knowing that God has a purpose for me whether I can readily recognize it or not.  When I look at how He’s provided for me so far, how can I doubt that He won’t continue to blow my mind with His plans and provisioning for my future?

As many of you know, I have been on eHarmony off and on (more on than off) for the past 5 years. Since the site has yielded no more than a few decent dates and absolutely zero long-term relationships in that period of time, I decided about 2 months ago to call it quits on eHarmony altogether. I steered clear of anything date-related (online or otherwise) for about a month before signing up with Match.com in a fit of optimism.

And why not? You might say. Just because eHarmony was a pit with no possibilities, Match might be different. And hey, anything that Dr. Phil attaches his name to can’t be all bad, right? Hm.

It didn’t take long for me to start receiving messages and getting notifications from Match whenever I was “winked” at…and can someone tell me, what the heck is “winking” about anyway? What is the point of sending a virtual “wink” when hardly anyone even does that in real life anymore? Who are these winkers, and why do they feel compelled to “wink” instead of sending a real message?

Anyway, a couple of weeks and dozens of winks later, I had come across a guy who didn’t seem half-bad. He was from Philly, a Christian, and intelligent. We spoke on the phone a couple of times and arranged that we would get together for coffee and then see where the day would lead.

Saturday I got to the Starbucks a little early and waited for him to show. He was right on time so therefore off to a good start in my book. He was a little shorter than myself, but I tried not to let that bother me. I also had to make a point not to concern myself with physical characteristics that I might not find so appealing, per se. This is a danger I often find with meeting people in person who I’ve previously only “met” online – it’s difficult sometimes to reconcile the real thing with the image you’ve designed in your head. Photos don’t even help with this sometimes – people might be incredibly photogenic and so the real thing doesn’t live up to the picture… And on the other side of that spectrum live people who are not photogenic at all, but are gorgeous in real life. In any case, I’m typically able to overcome this upon meeting an online-originating date within the first few minutes.

As for him, I’m not sure what the problem was. I don’t know if he found my nail polish color offensive, or maybe the style shirt I had on bothered him in some way, or perhaps I had something grotesque sticking out of my teeth that sneered at him when I spoke, but whatever it was, he lasted for about an hour before announcing that he had a “headache” and felt that he needed to “just go home”.

A headache?! Was this guy serious?! I mean c’mon! The LEAST he could do was be a little more creative and say he had a brain tumor or something, but a headache? You’ve got to be kidding me. “It’s just as well,” I felt like saying to him, “I’ve gotta get home and wash my hair anyway.”

To be fair, I didn’t disbelieve him right away (although I did think it was kind of strange). Afterall, I myself suffer from the occasional migraine. If he really did have a bad headache that was interfering with his ability to have a good time, then by all means, he should have gone home and far be it from me to stand in his way. However, WERE that the case, I also would have expected that I would hear from him when his head was feeling better – or at least within the next day or so – to apologize and maybe set up some sort rain check since we had barely been out for 60 minutes. But my phone hasn’t rung once. Nor have I had anything come in through email. Nada.

And so I’m left to believe that this seemingly-nice guy was really anything but, and I am again questioning the purpose of continuing to subject myself to this kind of torture through places such as eHarmony & Match – I’m also now feeling like I just traded one hopeless site for another. What really gets me is the fact that not only do I have to endure pathetic guys in their 30′s or above who are quite clearly still single for a reason, but I’m actually PAYING to do this!

So I guess if you look at it that way, maybe it is really I who is pathetic…? Something to consider.

This was not my first trip to Niagara Falls, nor do I suspect it will be my last. My parents brought me here when I was little (I think I was 8 or 9) and I have definite memories of the trip and particularly the Falls, but needless to say it has changed a bit over the last 25+ years. Not so much the Falls themselves as I don’t imagine they’ve really changed all that much in the last few thousand years, but the surrounding area definitely has. The addition of buildings, hotels, and neon-casinos have probably also meant the addition of more tourists making it all-but-impossible to imagine what the Falls must have looked like to the first human eyes that took them in when they were surrounded by nothing but wilderness. I thought about that a lot while I was there. What must that have been like to “stumble” across something this immense and magnificent for the first time? Surely they would have heard the Falls long before first seeing them… Did they wonder what that endless thundering sound was? I would think the sound alone would be a little frightening without knowing the source. Could they have fathomed the sight they were to encounter?

Well, before launching head-long into my weekend, let me save you some of the suspense and say that no, I did not go on the Maid of the Mist or the Journey Behind the Falls. It is not so much that I wasn’t interested in doing these things, but that I did do them when I was little (and I still remember it), and it was also a rather cold weekend and I just didn’t much care for the idea of spending part of a windy and chilly Saturday drenched to the core. Like I said, I highly doubt that this will be my last trip to Niagara and I’ll just work those in then.

Now for the weekend play-by-play…

Friday started early. I met up with the group I was going with to Niagara in the Church of the Savior parking lot in Wayne, PA at 7:30 a.m. – Starbucks firmly in hand. We boarded the minibus and were on our way around 8 or so. 7 hours and 3 pit-stops later, we arrived at the Rodeway Inn Fallsview on the Canadian side of the Niagara River. I’m not going to bore you with all of the thoughts I had on the lodging situation, but I think you’ll get the idea when you hear that the best thing I can say about the Rodeway is that at least it had four walls. I’m not trying to be a snob because I’m sure it was economical and all, and those of you that know me know how much I love roughing it…but I feel very strongly that “roughing it” is a phrase that should only be used in association with camping, NOT hotels. I don’t feel that I relax as well or have nearly as much fun when staying in a place where I’m afraid to take my shoes off. Sure, camping is dirty and all, but let’s just say that if I dropped a hotdog on the ground while camping, I would be far more inclined to brush it off and eat it anyway where as there is absolutely no way I would eat anything that hit the floor at the Rodeway.

So as you might imagine after we checked in, I left the room as quickly as I could and headed down with a group of people to take in The Falls.

Wow. And allow me to say again, wow.

They were big and loud (but not in a bad way) and gorgeous. I couldn’t stop staring at them. The path along the road was speckled with viewfinders (you know, the kind you stick a quarter in – or dollar in this case – and look through the holes) which made me wonder if people really had that much trouble seeing them with the naked eye? The Falls also amazed me at the way they would change size based on where you were standing. For example, from the top of Murray Street, the American Falls look like towering giants – as if you would get down to the bottom of the street and have to be looking up at the Falls. From the Niagara Parkway which runs alongside the river, the Falls still look big, but definitely on an equal parallel. Then, from the US side (which we visited yesterday afternoon), the Falls look even larger up-close than they did from the landscape vantage point on the Candanian side (which I kinda preferred, but more on that later).

Friday night we all went out to dinner to a place called Cocoa’s on Murray Street. We sat outside which turned out to be a rather chilly decision, and ended up huddling around the heat lamps that were strategically placed on the patio area. Afterwards, some of us headed back to the hotel and layered-up (it was REALLY cold…I even toyed with the idea of strapping one of the heat lamps to my back to carry around all evening, but in the end I decided it wouldn’t have been very practical, and I might have even caught fire). We were back down to view the Falls by 9 when they were lit up by both spotlights and fireworks. I managed to get some relatively decent pictures considering I’m still trying to figure out my camera and am pretty far from mastering night scenes.

Saturday I was up by 9-ish and out hunting for Starbucks by 10. I managed to find one with some nice outdoor seating where I chilled (literally – it was still cold) and enjoyed my latte before beginning my 7-hour self-guided walking tour of Niagara Falls.

I wandered down to the Falls, walked North along Niagara Parkway until it became River Road and ran right up to Rainbow Bridge. I followed the sidewalk under the bridge where there was an exotic bird aviary. I like birds so I bought a ticket and walked through. It was fun to see all the birds and, even though it doesn’t compare to seeing Red Macaws in the wilds of the Amazon, I still enjoyed myself.

I came out and walked back down and, despite how windy and even chilly it still was, I found that all the walking was quite a workout – especially in the sun – so I decided that a stop at the hotel was in order. I changed and headed back out to the IMAX theater where they were showing a film about the Falls covering its history and some of the raving lunatics…er, I mean BRAVE SOULS…who have launched themselves off of the Falls inside “barrels” made of everything from wood to home insulation.

After the movie I walked for another couple of hours, taking pictures all the while. I stopped to find a tacky souvenir toothpick holder for Es and pick up a Niagara Falls Starbucks mug to add to my collection at home. Finally I decided that I’d had enough alone time (somehow I managed to not run into anyone from the group all day) and went back to the hotel to see if anyone else was contemplating dinner.

About half of us ended up eating at The Keg inside the Embassy Suites (good steak, EXCELLENT mushrooms stuffed with crab and cream cheese) and then one of the women who I’d become friends with (Julie) and I walked down to the hip-and-happening Clifton Hill area. We found a sports bar, had a couple of drinks and dessert, and closed out the night taking some photos in front of the Casino on Fallsview.

Sunday was a long day. It started out even colder than Saturday with a sky that threatened rain all day long (eventually making good on that threat). We had to get up and have the minibus loaded by 9, however we weren’t actually shoving off for brunch at the Skylon until 10, so Julie and I decided to walk over to the Tower after we handed over our suitcases. We made a quick souvenir shop stop and met the group in the lobby.

Brunch was good and we had a beautiful view of the Falls from our seats. FYI – if you ever go, be sure you ask to be seated in the main dining room which is a revolving restaurant. Wherever it was that they seated us didn’t move an inch.

After brunch we spent 2 hours (give or take) waiting to cross the border back to the U.S. (which was exhausting and subsequently made us about 2 hours late getting home). Anyhow, once we got back into the good ol’ U.S. of A., we stopped for awhile in Niagara Falls State Park for some photos and a completely different (and in some ways better) view of the Falls.

I say “better” because as beautiful as the Falls were from the Canadian vantage point, and as nice as it was to be able to stand in one spot and view them all at once, there was just something really majestic about being right next to them – thundering water cascading down 22 stories at the tune of 600,000 gallons per second – in other words, one-half of the Mediterranean Sea. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it.

I think some of the pictures I took Sunday afternoon are still pretty, but it would’ve been nice if it hadn’t been so overcast. You can judge for yourself. I’ve of course included my fave pics in this entry, but if you want to view all of my shots from the trip, visit my Niagara Falls album.

All-in-all, it was a nice weekend. I got some sun (a little more than I would’ve liked, actually – I’m still feeling it on my face and upper arms), I walked probably close to 20 miles, and got to spend some quality time with one of the natural wonders of the world.

I will leave you with a couple of quotes. One from Charles Dickens in which he described his Niagara Falls encounter during his visit there in 1842. He certainly puts it far more eloquently than I. And, because I like to keep things fun, the final quote is from Mark Twain upon his visit to the Falls:

When we were seated in the little ferry-boat, and were crossing the swollen river immediately before both cataracts, I began to feel what it was: but I was in a manner stunned, and unable to comprehend the vastness of the scene. It was not until I came on Table Rock, and looked – Great Heaven, on what a fall of bright-green water! – that it came upon me in its full might and majesty.

Then, when I felt how near to my Creator I was standing, the first effect, and the enduring one – instant and lasting – of the tremendous spectacle, was Peace. Peace of Mind, tranquility, calm recollections of the Dead, great thoughts of Eternal Rest and Happiness: nothing of gloom or terror. Niagara was at once stamped upon my heart, an Image of Beauty; to remain there, changeless and indelible, until its pulses cease to beat, for ever.
– Charles Dickens, American Notes for General Circulation, 1842

Although it was wonderful to see all that water tumbling down, it would be even more wonderful to see all that water tumbling up.
– Mark Twain

This certainly isn’t the first time I’ve thought about this, but this year is a real milestone year in many ways which have really been bringing my marital status to the forefront of my thinking.

The Chinese calendar says that 2004 is the “Year of the Monkey” but I think if I could choose, I would call it the “Year of the Tasmanian Devil”. This is shaping up to be a crazy and confusing year – I turn 30, my sister is getting married, and my best friend is having a baby. None of these things in and of themselves are enough to make me do serious evaluation of my current state, but lumped together, the three have had a profound affect on me.

To begin with, my 30th birthday came and went in March. Sigh. I had planned to be away for the big day itself – I was scheduled to go on a hiking trip in the Andes Mountains of Peru. Unfortunately, I had to undergo some unexpected surgery which prevented me from traveling so instead the day was spent at home with my roommate doing a 24 – Season 2 marathon which was its own brand of fun. Now my sister’s wedding and the birth of my best friend’s first baby are events that are both taking place this July. I’m happy for both of them – truly, but it has been a lot to handle all at once. Allow me to explain.

You must first understand that my sister is 23 years old – quite a bit younger than I – and while I don’t think I ever would have verbalized this before (because I don’t think I consciously thought it), I realized through my tears after hearing of her engagement, that I had just never in a million years thought that she would beat me to the alter. If she were only a year or two younger I probably wouldn’t have been so shocked, but here I sit on the cusp of what feels like my last season before spinsterhood while she’s now picking out china patterns, bridesmaid dresses, and flower arrangements.

Add onto that my best friend and the baby that’s on its way. Why should this be a difficult thing, you ask? Naturally I have many friends who already have kids – in fact, 3 of my closest friends have had babies already this year. But this one is different…this is the baby of my best friend in the whole world. We met when we were about five and have been closer than close throughout the majority of our days since. Married eight years ago, I knew they were going to wait to have kids – her husband was going to grad school and there were some additional things that they wanted to accomplish before beginning a family. Eight years ago as I stood in the bridal party for their wedding, I thought that surely this would work out perfectly – that by the time they got around to starting to have kids I would be married and probably ready to start a family as well. Our children would most likely be close in age and then wouldn’t that be just perfect?! But now, eight years later, and I’m no closer to getting married than I was at 22 and she’s starting without me. Happy as I am for them, and honestly cannot wait to meet that bundle of joy, I can’t help but feel a little left behind.

What these three things together have done is make me see how even though I never sat down and wrote out what I thought my “life plan” was, I had one nonetheless, even if it was subconscious. And since my life has not turned out the way I subconsciously planned, I have to deal with that fact and turn my unspoken plans over to God. His planning is surely far better than anything my finite human mind could come up with. After all, if someone had come up to me at my high school graduation and told me that by the time I was 30, I would have lived in Alaska, New York City, and England, I would have thought they were crazy. But God had plans for me that I hadn’t even imagined and I’d much rather be on His timetable.

So for now I’m heavily involved in my sister’s wedding (bridesmaid and all that) so I’m having to show her my joy, and save my tears for my nights when I cry to God. I’m seeing Him more and more as my great comforter (2 Corinthians 1:3-4). I also managed to pick up a wonderful book called “God’s Promises for Singles” which really could be for anyone. It lists specific promises God gives in His Word based on the needs you might have for the moment, so if you’re in need of comfort, see page 11. Feeling dissatisfied? Page 40. Want a reminder of how Jesus is our companion? Page 82. And the list goes on. It’s a great little book that I’ve yet to really use to its fullest capacity, but I plan to keep it out in easy reach – especially this year.