Withdrawal

Our Internet connection at work has been down since about 11:00 this morning, so I haven’t been able to e-mail or blog or surf the Web. I had posted the previous entry but hadn’t yet published it when our connection died. I’ve been going nuts all day, suffering from Internet withdrawal, and I’ve actually been doing work. Finally, though, I decided to walk over to the Rutgers Law Library to see if they had a computer lab and if I needed to be a Rutgers student to access it. Well, they do, and you have to be, but I managed to get on anyway. Hee hee.

I’d forgotten how much fun it is to cruise guys in a university computer lab. Mmmm.

This morning, when I was getting dressed and looking at myself in the mirror, I thought, oh my God, the details of my wardrobe today could be blogged out to millions of people tomorrow. Okay, hundreds. Dozens, at least. What a strange feeling.

Anyway, I should get back to my office. See you tonight, RJ!

I’ve played a variation of e-mail tennis before… but in this variation, you actually never wind up meeting the person you’re e-mailing. This happens with online personal ads. Someone will respond to my ad, saying, “Liked your ad… here’s my profile… if you’re interested in finding out more, drop me a line!” I check out the profile and if I’m interested in finding out more, I write him. A few days later I get a response. This might happen once more. Maybe even twice. Then, usually, one of two things happens:

a) I forget to write back, because Yahoo! Mail has no way to flag the messages I want to respond to. The romance fizzles before the pot has been placed on the pilot light.

b) I write back, we somehow maneuver into having a phone conversation, we meet up for coffee. After talking for a long time, one of us says, “Well, give me a call, okay?” I can never figure out if “give me a call” really means “because I sure won’t be calling you” or “because I like you but I’m insecure and I don’t want to be the one who has to call.” And I don’t call the guy back, because:

1) I don’t want to give him the impression that I want to date him.

2) I like him but I’m insecure and I don’t want to be the one who has to call.

Okay, I know. That’s all very pithy, and the outline format is a nice touch, slightly David Foster Wallace-ish. Aren’t I witty? But the more complicated version is that when you’ve met someone through an online personal ad, there are expectations. I don’t mean expectations of sex, but expectations for something greater. And there’s some threshhold that has to be met in order for there to be a second date. But the threshhold is higher than it needs to be, for some reason. Because if you can decide after one date that you don’t want to see the guy further, that’s one thing. But if it takes two dates to decide it — then the reasons are usually more complicated. So in order for there to be a second date… I don’t know.

That’s why I don’t go on dates through personal ads anymore.

Or at least I don’t call them dates.

Anyway, I think I was talking about e-mail tennis.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow I get to meet up with RJ, the “East Coast” in East Coast/West Coast! We’re going to meet up for food after work. In preparation for my first real-life encounter with someone whom I met through a blog, I’ve spent most of the last hour and a half reading all of East/West from the very beginning, in November 2000. It’s put me in a very loopy mood.

You know what else is weird? You know how sometimes the most random things get stuck in your head? Well, a few days ago, Flip (“West Coast”) wrote something and for the last few days, at random times, the words have popped into my head. “I wish I could sell out like that. I wish we could sell out like that RJ.” I have no idea why it keeps popping into my head. There was just something so wacky and cool about the sentence structure, the lack of a comma before “RJ,” the sentiments being expressed, and so forth.

Okay, I’m officially loopy.