You know what I strongly dislike?

I really really strongly dislike when men pull the sneaky surprise date move. Allow me to illustrate (although I'm sure the explanation is unnecessary, as it's happened to almost everyone who dates men. This shit is epidemic):

I met a man at work last week. My mentor and I stopped downstairs for coffee and ran into this guy, an employee of our agency and casual friend of hers. We made small talk, discovered we knew some of the same people (not uncommon in this incestuous field of mine) and that we had both earned our masters degrees from the same program (albeit about 20 years apart). I gave him my card . . . which is what you do when you're a few months into your new career and making new professional acquaintances.

Nothing about this interaction said "romance" -- he's a coworker, and he's significantly older (like, 25 years). It literally never crossed my mind that this was anything but a new work connection. He emailed me a short time later and suggested that we go out to lunch sometime this week. Again, nothing unusual. In fact, he went out of his way to explain that he always takes new employees out, and that he wanted to pick my brain about the suitability of a girlfriend of a mutual acquaintance.

Okay, as I'm typing this, I'm beginning to feel like a fool, like perhaps it was screamingly obvious where this was headed. . . but I'd sooner assume that my stupid, beer-guzzling, racist uncle was coming on to me than this dude. Suffice it to say that it was not on my radar.

So we go to lunch, and it's creepily date-ish. Over the top. He wants to take my arm walking to and from the restaurant. Insists on opening all of the doors. Helping me with my coat. Paying for the meal. And so on. Talks about the two of us going out this weekend with that acquaintance and said girlfriend. But here's the thing: STILL postures about giving me Agency advice and making professional connections, never comes right out and says that he's got lovin' on his mind. Which leaves me in that awkward awkward limbo. I feel like a self-involved bimbo for presuming that he's interested when he's not explicitly said so and when there are totally reasonable, plausible explanations for his every move.

And yet. . .

Yet I'm also totally on edge, uncomfortable, creeped out, and not enjoying myself in the slightest little bit.

Anyway, that's probably where it would have remained, except that my mentor came into my office this afternoon, closed the door, and tried to gauge the temperature. (She's a god-send, that one!) Turns out that he called her right after we met to ask all kinds of questions about me and happened to mention how attractive he found me. She wasn't about to meddle, but I think that she wanted to give me a heads-up, particularly when she heard that he'd taken me to lunch.

So, I recognize that I should just laugh this off -- not a big deal, right? But it infuriates me. Men seem to do this all the time: orchestrate one-on-one meetings which they bend over backward to set up as Not Dates, and then expect you to just fall into their arms once the two of you are alone. (These men, incidentally, often seem to be the ones who make up the Nice Guys Finish Last chorus, which fact perhaps helps explain my irrational anger. That cliché annoys the ever-loving piss out of me).

How difficult would it have been to call me up and ask me on a date straight away? I could have politely declined, and no one would be the worse for wear. It's still not the end of the world -- I'm just going to have to *gulp* be a grownup and have one of those dread uncomfortable conversations. But the whole scenario has left me a bit creeped out, inexplicably angry, and unfortunately wanting zero contact with someone who could and should be a lovely work friend.


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Now I'm just going to be bitchy. When did it become socially acceptable for a man old enough to have sired me (at a respectable age, no less) to make a play? I mean, dude is RETIRING this week. For the love. . .

I've felt like journaling again lately. And if you think I have fidelity issues with a blog, you should see what kind of commitment-wary wretch I wrap myself into when there's a paper journal at stake. Self-exploration (in the metaphysical, rather than the "Our Bodies, Ourselves" sense) is terrifying, even for someone who spends as much time as I with her head lodged firmly in her own (again, metaphysical) rectum. So it's back to my poor, sparse blog.

I'm sitting here at my kitchen table, allegedly getting some work done at home before I head back to campus, but really just waiting for the effing Fed Ex truck to arrive. I finally caved and ordered RAM for my poor, much-maligned Macbook Pro. The poor thing is so dreadfully slow, and these days it gets hung up trying to do ANYTHING. Load a webpage? hope you don't mind waiting 2 and a half minutes. Lord be with you if you want to open a sizable .pdf or (heaven forfend!) run too many programs at once. Anyway, it finally sunk in that I've been stalling with the whole, "oh, I'm buying a new laptop when X" line of reasoning for over a year now - so many iterations of X have come and gone that I've made a liar and fool of myself ten times over. And memory is cheap (now THERE's a line worth exploring further) and will presumably make a huge difference. It had better! I'm going from 1GB to 2GB, and just to be safe I moved about half of the contents of my hard drive to external storage. Yes, I know that that shouldn't make a difference, but a superstitious gal like myself doesn't like seeing "5MB available" or whatever ridiculous amount I was down to in the clear space department.

But that's not what I came to talk about. I came to talk about the draft.

Hehe

No, really. Fucking Fed Ex. Nevermind that they're viciously non-union. I've sort of lost a lot of my street cred when it comes to that brand of stridency anyway. Here's what's galling me: my fucking RAM arrived in Ann Arbor at 7:30 am on Saturday. SATURDAY! And now it's nearly 3 on Monday and I'm still waiting. Fucking Ann Arbor isn't that big. The U.S. Goddamned Postal Service would have had it here by now, with a smile. Why do they even bother with online package tracking when their service is so shit-ass appalling? I'd be happier if I didn't know that my personal salvation was sitting in some stupid hangar within a 5 square mile radius of my home for the last 60 hours or so. Seriously, when you think about the amount of time I spend wedded to my computer (by necessity, mind you) and then figure out how much more speedy this is going to make everything, Fed Ex has likely cost me a couple of hours off my life this weekend. This is what I get when I pay extra for expedited shipping?

If you're thinking that this is maybe an excessive reaction to one of Life's Little Annoyances, well, then you've anticipated my next move. Which is that I am So. Fucking. Moody these days. Like, for no good reason. And don't even suggest that this is a menstrual cycle thing, a) because you'd be wrong, b) because there are only two people who ever even dream of reading this, and they're both badass women who'd kick your butt for going there, and c) because have I mentioned that I'm moody? and really, I'm as likely to bare my teeth and snarl as look at you anyway.

I don't know what my emotional mega-responses are all about, but they're growing tiresome. I spent the whole weekend past being weepy and lethargic and melancholic and misanthropic. Thank god my dogs don't judge me.

* Okay, really they're just masturbation references, and then only in the negative. Got you reading though, right?!