at it again

my experiences with match.com inspired the name for this blog, and now i'm at it again, this time with eHarmony. i took a little detour on okcupid.com, but i don't think that's my crowd. for example, either it attracts people looking for poly relationships, or 10% of the population is into that and i just didn't realize it. i went on 1 1/2 okcupid dates (with the same guy, the 1/2 came first), and that was enough. though he did inspire me to go back to a paid site (he actually told me i'm more of a match or eHarmony girl).

i've been on eHarmony for 6 days and so far what i find most amusing is the web site. first, there's the choice of advertisements. take, for example, this pairing with a "why isn't there anyone out there for me?" FAQ:



yesterday i noticed that when i go to eharmony.com, it redirects me to the URL www.eharmony.com/return/female:



huh, i thought, i wonder what the guys see? well, this:



there's so clearly a psychologist or sociologist behind this. and i like the 3-to-2 ratio, "you do the math" part. uh, 1.5? or am i missing some subtext here?

for those that don't know anything about eHarmony, there's this notion of "guided communication" where first you ask some canned questions and answer some, then send a list of can't stands/must haves and read theirs (a vacuous step, if you ask me, it's just a long list of near-universal bad and good traits), then ask some open-ended questions and answer some. then you finally get to the point where you can (gasp) send the person a message. from the way they approach it, you would think this communicating-on-the-interweb thing was a new and scary technology:



i read Dr. Warren's message and it amounted to a tutorial on e-mail etiquette and tips for protecting your privacy and security. you have to check a box if you don't want kindly Dr. Warren reminding you how to behave every time you send a message.

anyway, so far i've had canned conversations with some attractive, reasonable-sounding people. we'll see where it goes.

actually

have you noticed that we all say "actually" way too much? i wouldn't go so far as to say the word is content-free, but it's almost always extraneous. it's actually a little cruel to point this out because once you are made aware of it, it becomes horribly distracting. where did this come from? why do we all do it? and why did me and a close friend independently discover this a week apart? are we getting worse?

i see the makings of a great drinking game for 30-somethings. it seems like we spend a lot of time sitting around sharing semi-factual tidbits where "actually" is liberally applied for emphasis to make our stories sound more interesting. if we had to drink every time we said it, our parties might actually get a bit more crazy.

seven bars

this has been one pretty cool week. big achievement at work (can't talk about it now, but i'll e-mail out info when it's public) and now T-Mobile has put a new cell tower in my neighborhood! my reception at home has been crap since i moved into this apartment. you all know the joy of me asking "what was that again?" about every other minute. what you didn't see was me with my head pressed against my living room window trying to cling to my last bar. now i can even walk into my kitchen.

of course, if T-Mobile doesn't carry the GPhone when it comes out, they're out of my life.

why i hate smooth jazz

some mornings the shuttle driver turns on the radio, and invariably when one of them does, they tune it to a smooth jazz station, or as i loathingly call it, "smooov jazz". which has got me to thinking, why do i hate it so much? i know some perfectly reasonable people, some of which i share genetic material with, that enjoy smooov jazz. this morning i think i finally put my finger on it. there are three ingredients:

#1: it is catchy enough to intrude upon other thoughts you might be trying to have. this alone shouldn't make me hate it, i like lots of catchy music.
#2: it has a distinctive style. again, not enough for me to hate a form of music.

critical is #3: almost every time i'm listening to it, i'm captive. in someone else's car, on an elevator, on the shuttle, in the supermarket.

so, maybe if i actually listened to it by choice once in a while i wouldn't hate it so much.

too bad that's not going to happen.

new lows in life maintenance

i'm not home much. i work long days, commute 2-3 hours round-trip, and spend my weekends catching up with people and squeezing in some quality time with my boyfriend. as a result, many life maintenance tasks slip through the cracks. my hard drive isn't backed up, my mail from the last month is in a heap on my kitchen table, my Quicken is horribly out-of-date, and there are usually unclean dishes on the counter (not dirty, mind you, i did rinse them because, come on, i'm not disgusting). and my car is horribly neglected. not only have i not taken it in for a much-needed tune-up for a few years, it's dusty on the inside and crusty on the outside. this morning i was putting gas in my car ($3.999/gallon!) on the way to catch the shuttle. i decided, hey, maybe it's time to wash those songbird gifts off my driver-side window. so i grabbed the washing-squeegy thing, and scrubbed. and scrubbed, and scrubbed. then i went back into the car and emerged with my ice scraper, and i scraped. and scraped, and scraped. by the time my tank was full i was down to one diamond-hard chunk which i decided to leave as a reminder to get my damn car washed. to tell you the truth, i didn't know bird crap could do that, i'm starting to worry about my paint job. too bad you can't leave a car to soak.

one upside, though: i finally got some use out of the ice scraper.

iTragedy

it was a sad weekend for the old, dear electronics in my life. Saturday morning i was wrenched from sleep at 7am by my iBook's swan song. it sounded like electronic gasps, each rising in pitch from the last. i knew the end was near. we only had a couple more hours together, and it was fading in and out, but i used our time the best i could. (read: the hard drive kept locking up and i spent two hours rebooting, copying as many files as i could, shutting it down, and repeating.)

r.i.p. 2003-2008 (that's, like, 75 or 80 in laptop years)

then there was the incident with my cell phone. i got my little Nokia 6610 around 2002 and it has put up admirably with my abuse, including my bar trick where i (1) get a little punchy, (2) throw it across the room, and then (3) reassemble it and make a phone call. i had a premonition that it will ultimately be lost to a toilet bowl (it has a bad habit of popping out of my jeans pocket at inopportune moments, but it's always missed), so when i couldn't find it anywhere Sunday night i still had faith we would be reunited. i stepped back through my day, and came up with the only place that it could be: the ball pit. Sam and i had swung by Google on Sunday so i could show him the playground where i work. on the tour, i jumped into the ball pit. i had the presence of mind to check for my car keys when i got out, but hadn't thought to take inventory before i jumped in. this morning when i got to work i borrowed a friend's cell phone, and headed for the ball pit. i heard its muffled chirping the first time i called. i stood thigh-deep in plastic balls, calling my cell phone over and over, digging furiously to uncover it. even with it ringing, lighting up, and vibrating, it still took me 15 minutes to recover it. i got to it just in the nick of time; it had one battery bar left when i pulled it from the pit, just before the walls of the ball-hole i'd dug caved in. it's home now, recovering from the ordeal (i.e., charging). it's a good thing, i don't think i could have handled losing both in one weekend.

shopping in Paris

two weeks ago today i was in Paris for the sales, popping in and out of the boutiques and trolling the department stores with my aunt Linda and a good friend of mine (call her "T"). it was an amazing trip, and one i meant to write about over a week ago (slippery little suckers, still). any amazing trip must have an element of self-discovery, and i learned that even in Paris and even with the best company along for the fun, i am not much of a shopper. throw a little jetlag into the mix, and it becomes an epic struggle. but i prevailed! with T's unwaivering help, i bought a lovely designer leather purse-bag-thing that was wildly marked down. (strangely, my mood took a dramatic turn for the better just after i plunked down my credit card.) this is my first real purse. between that an my new pea coat (with sleeves! my friend Mike noted), i feel like it's my true entry into womanhood. (though i still wear a vest and carry my cell phone and wallet in my back pockets most of the time.)

what i did love about the shopping was where it took us. we explored the small alleys on the left and right banks of the Siene, and i must have walked through the courtyard of the Louvre at least five times. we went into some of the high-end boutiques where we had no business shopping, like Yves St. Laurent and Louis Vuitton (Golddigger kept going through my head the whole time we were in there). those stores were pretty intense---the doorman at the Louis Vuitton store had an ear piece like a secret service agent. but while i'm sure they could size us up in a split-second, the sales people were still very pleasant, offering a sing-song "bonjour!" when we entered. and then there was, of course, the food. amazing macaroons, amazing chocolates, amazing baguette and pate, amazing cafe au laits, and a couple meals that knocked my socks off. it did rain one day, but even that was a blessing because Notre Dame is so much more dramatic in the rain, and i got to see the gargoyles spitting rainwater.

i've been to Paris a couple times before, but this is the first time i felt a deep appreciation for it, and now i can't wait to get back. still, i was so delighted to stumble back into my apartment after the 10 hour flight and half a day at work. Paris is wonderful, but there's no place like home. (p.s., i also bought a pair of shoes.)