Constructive use of time

It’s Sunday and I’ve done most of my weekend jobs that have gone abandoned for the past few weeks – room cleaning, baking, healthy food shopping, general life arranging and sorted – it’s all been ticked off the list. So, feeling smug and ever so slightly bored, I figured today was a good time to do something more constructive with my time.

By constructive, I mean stalky, so I’m planning to spend a good few hours working my way through MySingleFriend, picking out the pretty boys and trying to think of something (anything) to say to them by way of introduction. Kind of wish it would be appropriate to have a glass of wine to help me along.

An actual single friend

On my very first My Single Friend stalking session, when a girl is allowed (without any shame, apparently) to scroll through pages and pages of picture of boys faces, ‘bookmarking’ the pretty ones to follow up with later if you can think of fun and exciting things to share, I stumbled across a slightly familiar face.

            It took a full stalk through his photos (combined with some cross-referencing with Facebook) to realise that this pretty face with lots of blond curls was the same boy that The Life Long brought along to brunch one day a couple of years ago.

A single hottie with a motorbike and good hair – aren’t your friends supposed to pick these ones out and shamelessly introduce you to each other in flirting-appropriate situations? Now I either have to message him and pretend not to recognise him, message him and shamelessly recognise him, or sit quietly and instruct The Life Long to try harder.

            Hmm, tricky to know which way to approach this one. Maybe I’ll have a swift glass of wine and a little think. I seem to do all my very best thinking with a wine in hand. Funny that!

Signing off

I’ve had enough of Guardian Soulmates on every level. The boys are nice enough, but have little-to-no spark, they are slightly tedious and mostly boarder on the autistic spectrum, so the time has come – I’ve pulled the plug.

            Not only did I skip the date with The Personality Twin to bring that one to an end, I’ve also phased out The Crazy Swimmer and I have officially deleted (inalterably) my profile. That’s it GSM – our relationship is now 100% over.

            That said, treating this ‘relationship’ as I apparently treat most of my others, I have now lined up a replacement so I am just waiting for Miss Fifi to complete my profile intro and I will be up and running on MySingleFriend.

She’s promised me greatness with this one (both the intro and the site) so she better not let me down on either count. The pressure's on Fifi!

Out with the old

It’s been over two months now, and I have to say GuardianSoulmates has treated me a little bit randomly. I have met some lovely boys and some mental boys, all of whom are super intelligent and have many ‘interesting and varied’ topics to be discussed.

            I’ve had fun, it’s been enjoyable, but the time has come to delete my account, hide my profile from strangers and get myself live on MySingleFriend. The waters look a little clearer over there, and hopefully I won’t be expected to know who the Vice President of the States is, or the name of that really famous composer who wrote that ‘truly inspirational operetta’ that I have no idea about. Bring on the pretty-but-dim boys. It feels like it’s about time.  

Third date territory

Seeing as you meet people online for the very first time ever when you go on your first date, I am struggling to work out how many dates it is acceptable to organise, just to see if you’re going to get along?

Obviously, if you go on the first date and it’s vile (may I draw your attention to my experiences with The Word Smith) then that’s one thing, but what if the chap is nice enough, fairly entertaining, not vile looking and maybe a potential…but maybe not? They obviously require further investigation – but how much more?

            This week I’ve got a third attempt lined up with The Personality Twin and a second meeting in the making with The Crazy Swimmer but I can’t work out if these ought to be the last meetings if there aren’t any sparks flying.

            Having spoken to Tits McGee about this last night, it seems that I ought to be able to make a decision about this in 2-3 dates tops…I have to admit though, I’m struggling. I hate to cut things short when you’re not sure what the results might be, but as everyone keeps telling me, these boys aren’t on the site to make friends, so I need to make a firm decision either way, and probably sooner rather than later. Tricky, very tricky.  Maybe dim sum with The Personality Twin this evening will help shed some more light on it.

Battling a full diary

Having cancelled on the (rather unfortunately) short boy for this Monday - he sent a really sweet message back to my cancellation email and I am honestly really rather upset that he’s barely tall enough to graze my elbow (if only boys could wear heels…and it be acceptable), I found myself with a free day to fill in an otherwise jam packed few weeks.

            I don’t really take things as being ‘a sign’ but considering I cancelled on the short boy around five minutes before I received a message from a boy that shall now be known as The Biking Engineer (he does the same job as my sister’s husband – digging big holes and tunnels and things and rides motorbikes around Europe in his free time) asking if I would be around for a drink on Monday, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to brave a first meeting.

            It also looks as though (despite my continued best efforts to finally finish Dracula ahead of this Thursday, I am actually going to have to opt out of Wine (Book) Club in favour of a date with The Choral Business Man – that’s right, I am braving a date with the boy that sings in the St Martin’s choir.

            I’m not sure how it happened, but it looks as though, just one week since our last Slutty Suppers dinner, I will already have hit the monthly target of two dates, and I’ve definitely already emailed about to my required six strangers. Obviously, I’m pleased to have hit the target, but slightly less excitingly, this means I have to deal with two first dates in one week. Good God, I hope there’s going to be enough gin in London to get me through to the weekend!

Short notice

Right, I’ve done it; I’ve pulled the plug on potential Date Night 2. I just couldn’t bring myself to go on a date with a boy that was going to be a whole head (if not head and shoulders) shorter than me, no matter how good he looked on paper. Well, on paper when you miss read a couple of vital pieces of information, obviously!

            I’ve had a couple of days to worry about this, and failed consistently to come up with a good get out clause. You can’t tell someone that they’re too short to date – it might be true, but I’m too proud to admit to being that shallow to stranger. You can’t tell a person you’ve met through an online dating site that you’re no longer looking for someone to date, because everyone can see how regularly you’re online, so if he checked back and saw that I’m still checking messages each day, he will know that I’m a dirty rotten liar. What a pickle!

            In the end, I went with a combination of two different lies; I told him that I had been on a couple of dates with one person that I had met online (LIE – I’ve been on one date with a boy that made me want to dig my own eyes out with a spoon – never again) and that I wasn’t really comfortable dating someone else at the same time (again, LIE, I know for a fact that boys go in for multiple dates until they’ve ‘had the chat’ about whether that’s against the rules or not, so I’ll be buggered if I’m not planning to play according to the male rule book rather than the female one).

Still, sometimes you need a good lie to cover your back, and whilst I haven’t had a reply just yet, I’m hoping that this one will help me through without too much backlash. Fingers crossed!

Date developments

Um, I seem to have gotten myself signed up for a coffee date with The Word Smith tomorrow. How the bloody hell did this happen?

            There a bit of a crazy Australian who’s also building up for a date when he’s back from his trip home, and the posh sailor who I was in touch with before has mentioned meeting for a drink next week.

            Is it wrong that I’m starting to panic a bit about the whole thing?

Words of wisdom

A fabulous friend from home recently sent me the below email to offer me inspiration in my online hunt. I have to say, this suggests that I ought to completely abandon all conversations with The Word Smith, and maybe take advantage of the slightly more simplistic ‘hot chav’ “Your face is nice and that innit” messages…I’m sort of inclined to agree with her:

Resimay

To hoom it may consern,

I want to apply for the job what I saw in the paper.

I can Type realey kwik with one finger and do sum a-counting…

I think I am good on the phone and I no I am a people people, People really seam to respond to me well. Certain men and all the ladies.

I no my spelling in not two good but find that I can Offen can get a job thru my personalety.

My celery is open so we can discus wat you want to pay me and wat you think that I am werth.

I can start mediatley. Thank you in advance fore youre anser.

Hopifuly yoyre bestest aplicant so far.

Cinserely,

BRYAN

Pee Ess: Cause my resimay is a bit short – below is a pikture of me

Employers response:

Dear Bryan,

We’ve got spell check.

See you TOMORROW!

OkCupid developments

I’ve been a silent member of OkCupid (my free dating site of choice) for a couple of weeks now, and I still haven’t yet been moved to break the silence. When compared with Guardian Soulmates, the site isn’t really as great to use and search through, I don’t like the layout and the fact that they insist on your answering ridiculous questions about whether you would allow your 13 year old children to watch films with full nudity in them, plus the boys on there are all a little bit…well, not really my bag.

            I assumed that this was because, as a free service, you get an awful lot of people on there (a bit like POF, although considerably less offensive, and with less of what Tit’s McGee and Miss Fifi refer to as ‘hot chavs’ – men with lots of tattoos and their shirts off) so your searching has to be more intensive.

            Apparently not. According to the email that I received from OkCupid this morning, it’s not that the calibre of people on there are lower, it’s just that they have only just opened my profile up to what they refer to as ‘more attractive people’. I kid you not – this was waiting for me when I logged in this morning:

“Hey Miss P,

We just detected that you’re now amongst the most attractive people on OkCupid. We learned this from clicks to your profile and reactions to you in Quickmatch and Quiver. Did you get a new haircut or something? Well, it’s working.

            To celebrate, we’ve adjusted your OkCupid experience. This won’t affect your match percentages, which are still based purely on your answers and desired match’s answers. But we’ll recommend more attractive people to you. You’ll also appear more often to other attractive people.”

Are you kidding me? I really hope that this is a somewhat desperate attempt on their part to make me engage with the site more and help them build advertising revenue by getting me addicted to clicking through multiple pages (wah-oh – work chat, I’ll stop now, I promise), because otherwise, I find this all a little bit wrong, and if nothing else, it’s making me even more inclined to bid farewell to yet another site for the general weird feeling of wrongness that they give me.

            Well, maybe I’ll just wait and see how outrageously hot the people they send my way are going to be from now on in. I’m not going to lie, they better have something pretty darn impressive to pull out of the bag here…

Breaking down targets

Right, I’ve done it – I’ve emailed my target of six boys for the month. It was a bit scary, but not as scary as the mountain of work that I was expected to do last night when I got home, so I thought I would embrace procrastination for a while and try to feel like I was being at least slightly constructive at the same time.

            Having spent a while working through the endless list of potential boys (pretty much ignoring all the site suggestions or who I might like and who would be a perfect match), I selected my six victims, and I have to admit, they all look pretty much exactly the same. Well, apart from the potentially gay Personality Twin, but I actually had things I wanted to ask him, so that’s different.

            I can tell you now, a fair few hours since my email flurry, four of the six messages have been read and two of the four have responded, one of them complaining about technology and asking me out for a drink. Interesting developments in the world of fairly hesitant online dating. It looks like I might have just caught my first proper fish. 

NEWS FLASH

Having actually branched out and finally paid to join Guardian Soulmates whilst also signing up to freebie OkCupid - just on the off chance that there might be more / better people lurking over there, I have realised that people can actually see how well liked you are and how you use your online account.

This takes stalking and responding to people to a whole new level because you are therefore forced to wear your popularity and politeness on your sleeve – as if it wasn’t bad enough that you have a photo dominated profile with ridiculous questions that are supposed to help the site match you to a suitable partner.

            On Guardian Soulmates you can see who’s looked at or liked your profile, and if you then choose to send them a message, a decision that will no doubt be influenced by the “match” score you receive on account of the types of food you like and whether you want to spend your retirement writing a novel or sailing the seven seas (this is one of their non-compulsory-but-strongly-advised multiple choice questions that they use to match you with other ‘potential soulmates’) then you can even see if the recipient has read the message. I can tell you, when that little pink envelope turns grey and there is no reply the next day, the temptation to send a follow up email to ask where abouts you went wrong in profile presentation and message construction is almost too much to rein in.

            As for OkCupid, that’s even worse – the calibre of question that they think you need to answer to be successfully matched astounded me – Do you agree or disagree that in the right light, nuclear war might be kind of exciting? Really? Nothing is quite so shaming as the little tabs that appear under your name when people are running generic profile searches. Each profile has a little box that either says: “Replies regularly”, “Replies selectively” or “No one has contacted them this week”. People can see when you’ve had absolutely no interest all week! Good God, this thing is horrific!

Miss Fifi Update 1

Having cast my rod into the "plenty of fish" pool (the potential for POF related puns is apparently limitless!), I've now survived one whole week playing this internet dating game. Despite strictly adhering to The Sausage Hunter's warnings to militantly screen potential messengers, I've had the anticipated mix of the mildly humorous, quite sweet and downright disturbing emails. However, the most horrifying aspect of the whole thing, was undoubtedly creating THE PROFILE.

Hmm, the profile - the million dollar question being what you write without sounding like a massive douche?! From mine you'll discover I live in Clapham, like seeing my friends and have been travelling. How very novel! When at my house for an almost daily pondering of "wtf are we doing?" Sugar M persuaded me to show her my profile and reacted with absolute horror.

"What is that photo about?!" she demanded, pointing at the main picture depicting me standing in a pretty mountain scene (New Zealand, actually!).

"I think it tells people that I'm outdoorsy and not too precious to go outside!" I said a bit huffily, desperately trying to defend my picture choice...and lets be honest, my assertion of myself as outdoorsy.

            With one eyebrow raised at my pathetic justification, she whipped the lap-top out of my hands and switched the offending mountain photo for a super close-up shot where I'm wearing more make up than the entire cast of TOWIE put together.

            "You'll get more messages if you look a bit more slutty!", she explained as she worked her dating magic. As she is officially the most successful of the SSC so far having one date under her belt, who was I to argue?  

Well, it worked. Within a day, I was sitting on my sofa reading about 30 messages (99% total weirdos) - from nice young lads in pink shirts, to scary looking boxers and men bedecked in baseball caps and all things Burberry. Beginning to fear I was treating the whole experience like some sort of correspondence club, where I only email rather than actually date any dapper young men, I panic-bought and asked two of them out for drinks. 

            My victims sounded like down to earth lads with a sense of humour. What more does a girl want?

Lets see what happens next - I think I'm rather getting the swing of this now!

Biting the bullet

Right, enough is enough. I’ve moped about, hating pretty much everything about the idea of online dating for long enough – it’s time to bite the bullet, pay the subscription fee to open up the final part of my profile and actually get involved in this vile game.

            I had a slight wobble about doing this when I walked past the worlds most attractive solider on my way to work this morning and thought for a split second that maybe I ought to be one of those awful girls that sign up to Uniform Dating despite the fact that I often wear jeans to work, but I just can’t bring myself to do it.          

            So, I’ve paid my fee, finished my profile, and sent out three, yes three (check me out) messages to strangers. Admittedly, they all look pretty much the same (to be honest, they all look a bit like the solider I saw earlier), but regardless, I feel like I’ve jumped in now, and seeing as I’ve paid and everything there is surely only one thing for it – doing it whole heartedly. I hate wasting experiences, so I suppose that I might as well get my hands well and truly dirty and see how I do.

            That said, I do have to admit that I only signed up for one month rather than one of their bargain 3 or 6 month deals. Regardless of what happens, I am pretty sure this is going to last me through February and then I’ll be on my own again for Mad March. I love Mad March!

Boy shopping

I hate shopping nearly all of the time – every so often I will have a burst of enthusiasm that will lead me to spend a months wages in one afternoon, but that’s pretty much the best I can do, so I’m finding the whole online dating this a little weird.

            Aside from the fact that I am now spending my time scrolling through pictures of boys on the internet (something I have a little bit of experience in – thank you Facebook stalking skills), I can now ‘like’ them, which effectively files them away into a nice little shopping basket for me to refer back to and scan occasionally when I think that maybe it’s worth sending out some random generic email to hundreds of people all at one.

            Not loving this game so far chaps, I can’t lie to you!

Pick of the bunch

I’ve been trying to create a profile for my chosen dating site – Guardian Soulmates (ooooh, check me out, trying to find a hot single intellectual – apparently) and I am having an absolute mare with it (yes, I said mare - just because they are all intellectuals, that doesn’t mean I have to be!).

How the bloody hell are you supposed to whack a summary of your personality down in a couple of lines and then be confident that you can bag a nice pretty, but not too pretty boy with it? I can just about hold back the ‘crazy’ for a few hours when I first meet people, but to try and paraphrase my craziness into a short paragraph, whilst also attempting to portray at least an ounce of personality and not sound like an utter arse is something of a challenge!

            I assumed that the best approach to this challenge was to research – that’s what I do best after all (ok, fine, I do cyber stalking best, but that’s essentially a form of slightly creepy research, so shh). However, this just confused me even more. It seems that guys have a fairly solid idea of how to do this – you get a mix of the super creative types, who write mini witty essays that present a perfect little bundle of dateability potential wrapped up with questionable hair, skinny fits and black framed glasses, or you get the slightly less highbrow rugby types, with photos of them out drinking and traveling around Thailand, followed by a list of favourite foods and “must like rugby and beer’ in their “Looking For” box.

I think we all know which side of the fence I am going to fall on with this one, but there is just no way that I can include “beer is best, rugby is my life” in my summary section and not sound like I bat for the other team. Plus, it would be a lie, and then I would have to explain on date one (or two, depending on whether I can brush up on my lying skills) that actually beer makes my stomach hurt and I love rugby, but it’s an enjoyment factor that’s based purely on the shorts.  Well, shorts and thighs.

So, stalking boys was no help at all, do you think the girls section was any better though? Nope. Once I had gotten over how many insanely hot single girls there are in London (honestly men, what’s wrong with you all!), I then found myself facing some truly terrifying Personal Statement style profiles.  “I am a genuine blend of true intellect, sophistication and style, wrapped up in a professional coat of designer clothing and immaculate style.” Wowza, even if that was true for me there is absolutely no way that I would be able to bring myself to write this – she’s shamelessly waving the Crazy Flag with pride. Mine would be more like: “I am a total and utter klutz, I can’t eat a meal without spilling, red wine and white carpets don’t mix well in my company and I slip up on nothing more times that I can count in a single day. I still wear clothes that I’ve had since first year of University because I can’t bring myself to throw them away and I hate shopping for anything other than books, wine or food.” Yeah, maybe not.

I’m going to work on trying to find a vague middle ground for this, but in the meantime, I’ve come across another conundrum- what about photos?  Do I just use ones that show me drunk with my girls (which are pretty much all the snaps I have, other than me being a bridesmaid, and I don’t think that this is really the time or the place, is it!)? Do I go for ones that paint some sort of a personality picture (this is me on a boat, this is me with a book, this is me with a wine and gin cocktail that tasted amazing but broke me the next day)? Or just opt for the ones where I am skinniest, hottest and look as little like my actual self as possible?

The fear of actually have to go on a date where the person arrives and knows instantly that I deliberately picked lying photos would just be too much for me to deal with, but the chances of actually getting a date are surely increased considerably by using the hotter photos.     

I’m not even started, and this game is already starting to prove a fair bit more stressful than I was really anticipating!

Baby steps

According to The Slut Rules, we don’t have to be fully live online until Valentines Day, which means that we have a good few weeks to mentally plan our approach to this game, and to work out ‘how’ we want to look on our profiles.

            Scarily, Sugar M has powered ahead and is already live and fishing on PlentyOfFish (or was we like to see it, she’s already live and ‘poffing’).

            It’s getting to be about that time then I guess. Maybe I’ll sit and go through my Facebook profile album to work out which pictures I might use – that’s a good solid starting point, right?

The time has come - Meeting One

The time has come - the first few weeks of January have passed in a blur of healthy eating, self-improvement and minimal alcohol (I say minimal because to be honest, I failed at remaining dry for the month, but let’s not dwell on that!) and we have now found ourselves looking at the back end of January and the start of a shared resolution for the year. We’re taking the plunge, we’re creating profiles, and we’re going fishing for men online. Bold.

            Last night marked the first of our monthly Slutty Suppers Club meetings, a dinner party arrangement with a difference; it’s sort of like a book club, but sluttier, and with less books and more online dating sites providing the main stream of our conversations.

            As our first meeting, last night was less about the disastrous experiences we had (those details are still to come), and more about talking ourselves into the game again (now that it’s time to poop or get off the pot, as I believe the expression goes), with the very necessary aid of wine (yeah, yeah, yeah, I drank. Again!) So with a laptop to hand, and with all the key dating sites bookmarked, and ready for investigation, we made our plans.

            First up, names. In normal blog world, nicknames or personal details are more than enough to describe the participants in my sad old life, but with the freedom to chose their own character names, we have come up with the following: Philaperve, T-Bag, Tits McGee, The Sausage Hunter and Sugarminge. I’m a little sad that I don’t get to come up with my own utterly bizarre name, but seeing as wine is back in my life again now, I think that’s probably for the best – it would only end up being entirely inappropriate, and that wouldn’t be good for any of us…just don’t tell Sugarminge that I said that.

            So, we’ve got the names sorted, what about the game rules? You might have assumed that this was just a moral support group for those a little but wary of trying out online dating for the first time, and you’d partly be right. But also, partly wrong, because everything I do has to have a competitive edge, and so we have to come up with a couple of goals for us all to aspire to reach each month.

            Month one – from now until Valentines Day, we have set ourselves a fairly relaxed introductory target of getting profiles up and running, just to start the process off. Valentines Day evening will then be spent at some sort of vile Singles Night, where gin will inevitably be required by the bucket load, before we will be onto the first proper month of activity. Not only do we each have to have gone on two dates (only from people we have found online – any random arrangements are just for bonus points), but we also have to have taken the initiative and actively sent out emails to at least six hotties who we have not spoken to before – backdated follow ups and familiar faces are not allowed.

            It’s all in the name of fun, but anyone who fails to achieve the targets has to suffer the forfeit. Initially, we were going to make this a drink related challenge, but after further consideration, we decided that if you’re not using your profiles to the best of you abilities, someone else should do it for you. Therefore, failures will be required to hand over control of their profiles to the other Sluts to make some decisions on your behalf. This might only be for the length of time that we are still at dinner, but I think we will be able to have enough of an influence by then to get the ball rolling properly.

            It’s full steam ahead for the six of us now – I think it’s likely that we will all be spending the odd hour here and there searching through photos of ourselves and scanning other peoples profiles to get a better feel of how exactly we want to be viewed by the online dating world. When you look at other people’s profiles, it’s very easy to make snap judgements about who the crazies are, which boys are clearly lying about their life, and those who look fairly normal and are just having a bit of fun with their online searches, testing out the waters. Getting the balance right will be a bit tricky, but I’m just glad we’ve set ourselves nearly a full month to get this sorted, as I might need to arrange some sort of Photoshop and creative writing lessons to get myself ready for this. Darn, I knew I should have started planning sooner!

It takes a little mental preparation

No one has the time or energy to start online dating in the festive period – let’s face it, keeping up with work events and family arrangements is more than enough to be concentrating on, without throwing crazy random men that you found on obscure dating sites into the mix.

                   So December is going to be devoted to mentally preparing ourselves for January when we’re each going to be taking our first steps into the mucky waters of online dating.

                   We’ll gorge ourselves on Christmas pudding and mulled wine, try to rectify all the bad behaviour with hard work for a week or so in the New Year, and then it’ll be time to bite the bullet. Be sure to check back in January to see how we’re getting on – as a general warning, it’s not going to be pretty!