Yenta.com = identity crisis

It never would have occurred to me that the hardest part of setting myself up on the new matchmaking site, now being called yenta.com, would be picking a user name. That process took me a good 15 minutes!

You have all, I'm sure, run into this same scenario. It says "sign up, it's free/easy/non-fattening/etc.!" so you think why not? Take a couple of minutes, they're only asking for a few pieces of information to get started, and I have a little time... And then everything that you want to use as your user name is already used! (winner of "using the word use, or a variation of same, most times in a sentence!" use, use, use...) Of course the helpful robots on the other side of the process always have the same stupid helpful suggestion:

"Hey, we're real sorry and all that someone else already had that witty, clever idea, so why don't you do that, but add the numbers 659 to the end?" Where do they get the numbers that they suggest? When other people have usernames with numbers are they just using the helpful robot suggestion? It's the main reason that I can't use an identity with numbers -- I will fixate about what the hell the numbers mean! Is JessicaRabbit467 someone who has seen Who Framed Roger Rabbit 467 times? Was HeavyHitter22 really the 22nd person who wanted to use that name? And Bettyboo69? Do I have to ask the question? People?

And that's not the only "deep and meaningful" problems I had with the selection of username. Because let's face it, the thing you use as a title on some websites really don't matter. Who cares if you go by the name of your favorite muppet or your uncle's nickname or your embarrassing college nickname, so dubbed after the night where you threw up in the bed of your roomate's girlfriend and then let her pass out in it. (you use it because you're taking it back, trying to free it and yourself of the embarrassing stigma. Which, by the way, will never happen. Because Pukenap will always be embarrassing. Always. Move on. Moving on!)

But one has to keep reminding oneself that this username is going to reflect on those who may come by to peek at your profile. (oh yeah, I should tell you guys that this time through we're doing one of those date-centric sites, where you wander through aisle after aisle of boxed dude and pick the ones you want to sample. Blame The Queen -- it was her idea.) What I'm saying is that while Sweetums is a perfectly fine username for some places, it says something really specific on a dating site! As does Femtastic, as does DownandDirty. Many perfectly good usernames never got past the vetting process.

Here are some other surprising discoveries from my registration process:

• Way more people are fans of The Jungle Book then I would have expected.
• Or the Muppet Movie
• Or Bugsy Malone
• The Sting
• Mercer Mayer books
• Esoteric comic book characters
• and spam.
  
• People who were born before 1920 don't deserve to fall in love. (probably concerned that they'd break a hip and sue.)
• I'd like to leave my body type empty, except that I know from my own initial browsing that such a blank answer screams "massive! I'm massive! When you come to pick me up for our first date please BYOC - Bring Your Own Crane!"
• Apparently I can start introducing myself with the phrase "hi, I'm femtastic and I have a strategically place tattoo!" Makes me seem edgy, no?
• You could hack up your whole family and store them in your chest freezer, taking out a hunk here or there to slow cook for dinner and I'd be willing to hear your story, but if you so much as light up one cigarette while you're telling your sob story and I'll boot your ass elsewhere.
• Apparently no dating sites will list "painfully, nerdishly white" as an ethnicity. I thought maybe it was just a wove.com thing.
  

I only went through to add the basics, as The Queen is going to help me fill out the deep, meaningful questions. This is either a brilliant way for me to make sure my profile this time around is well-rounded and truly reflects both who I am to myself as well as how others see me OR I'm going to end up dating Queenie's dream dude. Here's what I know so far: she likes 'em pseudo-troll-short!

Adios, Wove.com

Hey, Wove.com. We need to talk. Could you sit?

Look, I don't think this is a surprise to either of us at this point. I think you and I have both been doing our best here, I really do. We've been trying really hard, but it's just not working out. I think we need to start seeing others.

I don't want you to beat yourself up about this. I know you really wanted this to work, I know it. And I could see by the different things that you tried; you were thinking outside the box and I appreciate that. (unfortunately you were also thinking outside, oh so far outside, of my geographical boundaries, but we won't talk about that now...) But even with your "flexible matching" and my sending out questions after questions after questions, we're still no closer then when we started! And I'm just tired of the yelling and the smashing on the keyboard and the calling of names... (That was all me, I know. I'm still sick of it.)

It isn't you, Wove.com, it's not. It's me! I'm just really hard to match! I'm pushy and opinionated and have you seen how big the feet, how large the eyebrows, how wide the caboose? So many challenges! You, you're a great online relationship site and I know, I KNOW that somewhere out there is a great girl - or guy! - who's just dying for you to fix them up. You're gonna get past this, I know you will.

Don't say that! You will find someone else to match! No, I won't sit here and listen to you bad mouth yourself, just because you were never able to find anyone for me to talk to and the few that you did find never wrote back and nobody ever had pictures and you tried to get me to date people living over 5 driving hours away AND you charged an arm and a leg for all of this! It's not about all of that! (no it's not. I'm not sure why, I just know it isn't. Now shut up, you're breaking my flow.) Where was I? Oh right, I was telling you that you ARE a great site, and you can't give up just because you completely failed with me. Completely. (man, that really was one hell of a swing and a miss, eh?)

Look, I really hope that there's no hard feelings about this? I really want us to stay in touch. And when I say that I mean I hope to hell that I don't get spammed by you constantly from this point forward in a stupid and desperate attempt to get me to come back. I want us to both look back at this as a valuable time spent, but it's over and I won't be coming back. You should move on to the next match and I will too.

Hmm? What? Who, that website behind me? Oh, that's Yenta.com. Yeah, we just met today. I don't know where it's going; it's so new and everything. But I really have a good feeling about this. Oh, don't do that! Don't be that website! You're better then that! Just let it go, ok?



Oh, and hey? Take care of yourself.

Have you learned nothing from our time together?

So I take it from the distinct lack of comments; from the wind whipping through the comments ghost town, carrying with it the occasional tumble-comment-weed; from the black, desolate comment solitude pouring forth in the comment space... I take it from these things that you guys think I'm the one who should decide what should happen next? Really? Seriously? Have you reviewed the decisions I've made so far? Just look at the ones covered on this blog alone, not counting the countless (because we're not counting them) ones I've been allowed to make in real life. What are you guys basing this mis-placed confidence on? (OK, I'm starting with the first stage of being ignored, which we all know is astonishment.)

Maybe it's not confidence in me -- maybe it's apathy on your part! (here I move to the second stage of being ignored: resentment) Yeah, I can see you now. Sitting at your desk with your pants partially undone (the better to let your soda-belly spread out), a big bag of the puffy cheetos behind your keyboard for easy access leaving each key covered with a thick layer of orange imitation cheesy-flavored chemical powder. You pop from blog to blog, reading but never stepping up to participate. You chuckle and frown and judge from your ergonomically-enhanced desk-throne but never put your fingers where your thoughts are. I at least hope, for the love of all that is wholey, that you're not in an office!

On the other hand, this may be an issue of confidence in yourselves. Do you, perhaps, feel that you're not qualified to chime in? That you're not smart enough, or experienced enough, or worldly enough? (You recognize where we are now, right? Yep, stage three of being ignored: sympathy) Do you think you have to be much more intelligent or impressive to share your thoughts on the matter? Do you think that you're just too, too dang something and not enough other things? Oh, my sweet baboo-a-plenties! Come to me, I will give you all a big, squooshy E-hug and pat your e-head and tell you what my great aunt Fernidad told me when I was very little and plagued with such fears:

"OK, now you're just bein' stupid. I tell ya this, you didn't get that
stupidiosity from our side of the family! Now stop bein' stupid and get me
my Marlboro's and a light beer."

...Memories... (hold on, I'm caught up in the emotion of the moment. Because "reminiscing" is the fourth stage of being ignored.)

I'm giving folks until tonight to give me the help I clearly, clearly need! (at last, the fifth and final stage of being ignored: ultimatums.) You absolutely must come through and provide me the feedback that can save me from myself! But by tonight I'll have to do something, so stay tuned for the second half of this nail-biting cliff hanger...

WILL our heroin sign up for another 3 months of "anything new from wove.com? Sigh." or "Hey, a match? Oh dang, he's a heroin-sniffing spider-breeder from Taiwan. Again."

WILL she, instead, create a new identity on "lip-mashing.com," a website who's snappy marketing slogan is "haven't had your tonsils polished this week? Come to us!" (dirty!) and who's selling points include that their stringent 3-point screening process (where 2 points are "can they prove that they're human?" and "do they have a credit card?")?

OR WILL Femtastic give up on this pursuit of wove and turn her attentions to the noble goals of cultivating her nosehair and creating the first all-cat circus?

TO BE CONTINUED...

What next, people?

I write you from the sick bed (sick desk) but I decided today I was well enough to do two things: Bathe and Blog. We won't cover which I'm doing first.

so my super-productive membership w/ wove.com will automatically renew for one month (at the highway robbery price of $30!) next Thursday, the 25th. And I need you guys to help me figure out what I should do next. As I see it, here are the possible options:

1. renew with wove.com and give them another chance. I could either just give them another month (which seems a little fruitless really, given the last three months) or do another three months, almost like a "do-over" on the assumption that Mr. Right was just not lonely at the end of 2006. Mayhaps he was in a relationship, or fighting a possibly fatal disease, or deep under cover spying on the Swiss. (damned Swiss...)

2.Find another online relationship website and give them a try. This would be if we thought that Mr. Right is out there, but just not signed up on wove.com. After all, if you figure there are only so many Mr.s that could be called "Right" in this town, and only so many of them signed up online at all, then if you focus on only one of the possible online databases you're gonna make the statisticians nuts! Personally I don't like to make crazy those controlling the stats.

3. Try an online dating site instead of a relationship site. I see pros and cons to this idea. The pro is that those sites go much faster (you're often emailing people right away) and therefore could generate much more fodder for blogging right away. The cons is that I'm not looking to 'hook up' with someone, so I know I wouldn't be able to take the endeavor seriously on a personal standpoint. Which actually leads us quite nicely to the last option...

4... call this an experiment well attempted, but in the words of George Bush the first, "na ga do it." Of course that would then force us (yes, I am sharing the presure here with you guys!) to decide what the new mission would be. Because what you do NOT want is for me to revert this blog to one where I tell you about my daily schtuff. "dear blog, today I spent 21.5 hours lying on the couch with kitties lying on me, broken up with occassional coughing. Good times. Good times..."

So according to the stats website I've been employing (it's true, I'm checking up on you guys) there are some 30 people a day who stop by this blog and read. I'm looking for you all to find your voice, people! Tell me what you want to do next here at UIL. I'll be taking SOME kind of step by Wednesday so speak now or forever yadda yadda yadda.

accidentally naughty

I just now noticed that the title to the last post has the word "sex" in it. And then, of course, I giggled.

Excedrin, Sexschmedrin...

I get the occassional migraine headache. I've also found the occassional treatment that will work, but only for a little while.

Tangent: my last miracle cure was Excedrin Migraine, and it worked so very well! Right up to the day that The Queen got all smart and pointed out to me that the ingredients for regular Excedrin (which had never had much luck w/ the evil migraine headache) and the ingredients for Excedrin Migraine (and remember, that stuff worked faboo!) were EXACTLY THE SAME. Same stuff, same amounts... No reason that one would work different then the other. She thought she was being helpful -- "now you don't have to buy 2 kinds of Excedrin" -- but sadly what she did was shatter the fragile-but-beautiful crystal palace of 'fooling myself' which I'd built entirely on the foundation of "Excedrin Migraine? Well it has Migraine in the title so it MUST be special!" In other words: now I don't have to buy Excedrin Migraine because it promptly stopped working on my migraines. Sigh.

Anyway, at last, after 15+ years of being laid low by these mysterious demons of horrendous head-hurting I think I've found the best cure of all!

Happy Wove, Thursday everyone -- I hope you all have wove therapy available for what ails ya!

*The poster takes no responsibility for any adverse reactions the reader may have to exposure of such overwhelming cuteness. If you get busted for going "aaaawwwwww!" at work you are on your own!

Always good to have a fall-back...

Some of you have noticed, I'm sure, the general lack of progress on the mission. and of that group I'm certain that a subset are beginning to fret. "What if she doesn't succeed?" this group is asking. "What if she completes the search and is still single? What then?" Well I don't want you, this subset of fretters, or the fret subset (as you shall hence be known; FSS for short) to worry your little heads any further, because I've already set up my back up plan, if you will. I have a fallback all in place.

I have new cats.

Call it cliche, call it classic, but I figure if all of this pursuit of wove comes to nothing I can always become one of those crazy ladies with cats! Heck, I'm already part-way there, what with my being a lady and being crazy. And I've heard some folks say that being a blogger is only about 6 steps away from "crazy cat lady" in the sad and geeky spectrum. So I figured that I'd better cover my bets, and I essentially completed the "crazy cat lady" starter kit in my home.

Regular readers (aka "my favorites") know that my previous roomate did that kitty shuffle a few months ago and I've been doing that required 'being sad' thing for a while. But right before the happiest time of the year I shuffled myself over to the animal shelter for which I've been volunteering and said to them, I said "hey ho, oh caretakers for all things soft and cuddly! I would to relieve you of not just one, but of two of your best felines, please oh please!" And they said "surely!" but in animal shelter language, which translates to english like this:

"OK, go and pick out the kitties that you want." (I did this -- there's way more to this then "I did this" but that story is kind of long. So do me a favor: craft your own version of that story int he comments, 'kay? For now we'll just say "I did this.")

"Now fill out this really long application which, you'll notice, is cleverly devised to ferrett out all people who are both bad and stupid enough not to know what answer will make them look bad as they are." (For instance, one question was "how much money a year will you budget for food, vets, etc." The answer is either a large number (say, a meeelleeeon dollars!) or "whatever it takes" but if someone is dumb enough to say "$6 a year" or "vet visits? Puh-leese! They'd just better not get sick!" this is where they get caught.)

"Now we're going to call your landlord and get the OK for you to have cats" (which I'm very glad I already knew was coming, because most of the time this is the heartbreaking part. Hardly any landlords are sitting around by their phones waiting for someone to call and get permission for tenant happiness, so most folks here have to put a hold on the animal and come back in a day, or a few days, or (in my case if I'd not have known) weeks and weeks until they can make contact w/ that landlord. But I'd planned ahead here. Yay for me!)

"Now have a seat at this desk while our "counselors" make you read and sign or initial things promising that you're not a bastard or a serial killer or an evil genius bent on world domination." (I have no idea how binding these kinds of forms are, but it's possible that all my ambitions of becoming an evil genius bent on world domination may be screwed now. Dammit.)

"Now wait..." (means the same thing in english and animal shelter language, so we waited. Man oh man, we waited.)

...all of this is to say that it took a couple of hours, no joke, but finally I had me to cardboard boxes that had these little furry arms that would flash out of their holes and try to snag and/or kill whatever they got their claws into!

Tangent: I had to decide if I would give the actual names of the kitties here. So far I've been protecting both myself and also the innocent w/ nicknames (no, I'm not one of the innocent. Ask Risky or the Queen) and I had to decide if these new kitties needed such protection. And I decided yes -- they're getting nicknames too. This is as much to protect me from accidental discovery as to protect them, but who knows - they may be on the lam from the law, completely unbeknownst to moi!

So now (finally! Man, this woman can drag out directions to the end of the block!) let me introduce my two new roomates!

First is the adolescent, at a tender 18 months (making her about 10 or so in cat years). She is a very lovely calico with these faded colors, like someone washed her a bunch and then left her sitting in the window. (something she'd have been totally cool with. The "in the window" I mean, not the washing a bunch.) She's old enough to be mellow most of the time and one can reason with her usually, which is nice. Bit she's still young enough to play with toys, flop on the floor as landmine kitty or rampage through the house with her adopted little brother (it's coming) She's SO MUCH BIGGER then my last roomate and she's thick with kitty goodness -- a sturdy, stable, wall of a kitty she is. We'll call her Lulu. I'd been bonding with Lulu while doing my volunteer shifts at Greenhill but I'd been thinking that I really should take home an older cat (somewhere between 3-6 years) because they have often a harder time getting adopted. But then the fates conspired (another long story better off skipped) and suddenly all of the older kitties with whom I'd bonded had gone home with other people. This cleared the way (and my conscience) to take Lulu home!


This then brings us to the little terror. I knew I wanted to bring home a kitten, it having been 15+ years since I've been able to enjoy that kind of craziness. (Remind me later that the kitten was totally my idea when I'm plotting to mail it to South America!) However in shelters kittens are like comfy-but-sexy black pumps; they fly off the shelves way too fast to spend any time bonding with them. So I'd known all along that the kitten choice was going to depend entirely on what kittens there were waiting for homes when I came. Turns out there were only a couple, but I got lucky. I met Mr. Man (as we're calling him here -- Mrman or Manny for short) and he totally fascinated me. He's totally black (although in good light you realize his black is a black/brown/red swirling mix, and I'm pretty sure that it swirls constantly, like fancy stirred soup.) and he was completely zonked in a kitten pile. With his eyes closed you couldn't figure out where he started or ended! I've never had an all-black cat before, and it was a lovely surprise when he finally opened his eyes to see the dark gold, HUGE eyes that peer out of the deep black. He's all kitten -- it's a challenge just to get shoes tied in my house now. Can't move my feet in the middle of the night (too tempting) and he LOVES to jump on his adopted big sister when she's 'doin' her bidnez.' (and I encourage him with the giggling, I'm afraid.)

My new roomates, my new challenge, the thing that forces me out of bed on the weekends (besides my bladder, of course) and if all else fails, my fall back. Oh, and I've started knitting too. Look how prepared I am!

She's one of THOSE people...

We all have these people in our lives. Here is mine:

She's an artist. She can paint, draw, quilt (and I'm talking those quilts where you'd never put it on a bed for fear that someone might EVER put their nasty old pooper on it!); she makes art books, art dolls, jewelry, funky scarves and hats and a million other things, and most of these talents she discovered when she just decided to try it one day and "oh hey, look at that: I'm fantastic at this as well..."

She's a writer. She has a blog of her own (it's partially her fault that I'm even doing this, so here's someone you could blame.) which I won't link to (protecting the innocent and, in this case, the fabulous!) but she can add in the comments if she so chooses. She also writes poetry (or did when we were younger, and it was, by the way, good poetry even though she was a young lady who should have been writing about gloom and doom and how hard it is to be young and beautiful) and clever quotes that poor Bartleby.com will never get their hands on.

She's insane-smart. She'll tell you flat out that she's been clocked doing genius tph (thoughts per hour), and that's on city streets -- imagine her highway smarts! And once you meet her that seems like a ridiculously obvious thing to say, because Well Duh!, she's that smart!

She's 'totally-unfair-to-the-rest-of-us' beautiful. This is now as it has ever, ever been. In the time I've known her (some 30+ years, by the way, so I know of what I speak.) she's always had people (note the lack of gender label here -- EVERYONE finds her foxy!) falling out of the sky for the priviledge of watching her walk by. An old memory for me was all the times that I went out with her and the Queen and got digits, digits, digits. Of course these phone numbers were to pass along to the wonder twins!

She's 'when-I-wet-my-pants-from-the-laughing-you'd-better-help-hide-it!' funny, especially when she, her highness and I all get together. We bring out the best/worst of each other, which is just what old, old friends are supposed to do, right? So we've got clearance there, but we should probably wear a large warning label for those sitting within earshot, because they're really the innocent ones. They don't know to bring the change of underwear!

I know what you're saying now: "why the hell would you know such a person? These people, who are throwing off the curve for the rest of us, should at LEAST be alone and lonely and miserable and such, right?" And in theory I agree with you. But here's the problem: I've known this woman for... wait, how long is a coon's age? Whatever, I'm sure it's been at least 4 or 5 coon's ages. Since we were that age where they used to say folks were in knee pants! And here's what that means, which makes it all the more unfair:

-she knows me backwards and forwards and STILL admits to being affiliated when we're in public.

-we totally end each other's sentences and complete each other's movie quotes and harmonize on each other's humming.

-she used to dress me pretty when I thought someone cute might be somewhere cool and I wanted to matter! (I've never been able to dress me pretty. And she knows how to make pretty much anything pretty.)

-she's constantly making and gifting these amazing mixed CDs which have just the right mix of "woah, this is so cool, who IS this?" and "oh cool, I haven't heard this song in so dang long!" You can't ask me to give up on the music fixes, people. Not cold turkey!

-she's been responsible for introducing me to countless other fabulous people in my universe, including her brother (The King -- you'll meet him later), The Queen and many more. She's like one of those gifts that just keep on giving.

...I hate to admit this, but I could go on and on here. Basically, she's one of those people. And yet wove her still? Yes, I'm afraid I do -- I'll Risk it. So happy Wove, Thursday people, to my Risky and all of those people and we who love them, even though they're far too, too, too...

I swore I wouldn't do this...

But apparently you can't call yourself a blogger if you don't meme. It's a rule. Or by-law. Possibly a statute? I will have to verify with the blogging governing body (which is a high-larious statement if you blog at all!) but in the meantime I'm gonna try to comply with the requirement. I found this one which seemed pretty harmless. I hope, when I'm finished, that you feel like you know me oh so much better then before.

A- Available or single?

Either you know the answer to this already, you're new (welcome! the only seat we have left is the furry beanbag chair. Sorry about that) or you're our very special friend whom we will eventually have to protect from the bullies who pick on special friends. How fast do you run?

B- Best Friend?
All hail that dang Queen!

C- Cake or Pie?
In the words of Roy Blount, Jr., by way of the movie Michael:
"Pie, pie. Me oh my.
Nothing tastes sweet,
Wet, salty and dry
All at once so well as pie.
Apple and pumpkin and mince and black bottom,
I'll come to your place every day if you've got 'em.
(official disclaimer: don't like pumpkin OR mince, but it does fill out the stanza nicely...)

D- Drink of Choice?
Pepsi, preferably from a glass bottle, but alternatively an aluminum can. From plastic? Feh! I've been known to place a pretty cold can of Pepsi into a freezer for up to an hour in order to reach that mythic level of cold where the soda pseudo-freezes upon hitting the air, and you get those perfect little ice crystals floating amongst the bubbles. There ain't nothin' better.

E- Essential Item?
Oxygen? Gravity? What kind of a question is this? Food? (I was gonna say water, but I can't stand the stuff.) chocolate-covered mint Oreos? (so NOT the same as just food!)

F- Favorite Color?
Why must we always reduce everything to color? CAN'T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG, PEOPLE? (but don't get me started on orange -- shudder...)

G- Gummi Bears or Worms?
OK, let me answer this question with a question for any/all readers: has anyone out there actually choked down a gummy rat? I swear the dang things can't really be consumable!

H- Hometown?
OK, I started to answer this and then remembered that I'm all secret-y. So I'll just say this: your hometown is that place where you drive past a city garbage can and turn to your buddy to say "remember that night that we walked home from peeing off the fountain with those garbage can lids on our heads? Good times..."

I- Indulgence?
Yes, please.

J- January or February?
This, for me, is very simple: I get 2 days off from work in January, and I get no days off from work in February. Add to that the confusing "every 7 years we are going to ADD A DAY to this month" craziness and February can go screw itself! (wow, I had no idea there were such swirling, submerged feelings about the month pushed way down deep within me!)

K- Kids and names?
I'm in favor of kids, and I think it's a really good idea to give them names. Without names you get such confusion, ya know? You can only go with "hey, you, kid!" so many times. Could you imagine the chaos during recess? Yeah, I say kids should include names.

(minor tangent: I do feel, however, that all celebrities should be
prevented from naming their own children going forward. Some have done
pretty well (nice job Afflecks, kudos to you Quaid and Ryan) but overall they've
abused the priviledge (Banjo? Apple? Pilot Inspektor? Come on, people!) and
should have that priviledge revoked.)

L- Life is incomplete without?
A good goddamn laugh! (I so wanted to answer "the letters L, I, F and/or E." You owe me.)

M- Marriage Date?
Well obviously this would be parking the cart miles and miles in front of any kind of horse or pack animal...

N- Number of Siblings?
I've got one sister five years my senior. She's got one husband (of something like 17, 18 years), three kids (each as brilliant and gifted as the others) and a job that would close up their massive corporate shop if she dared to ever leave them. It has been just FAN-F*CKING-TASTIC following in her footsteps!

O- Oranges or apples?
Two things that you're not supposed to compare to each other? Like Volkswagons and vibrators?

P- Phobias/Fears?
I have few fears but several phobias. I'm severely dental-phobic, don't deal well with heights or large bodies of deep water and though I can deal with them when prepared, there are strict turf rules in my house for spiders, especially that they're NOT supposed to surprise me! (I bet you were all waiting for a commitment joke here, right? Too easy.)

Q- Favorite Quote?
"Peanut-butter Egg Dirt!"

R- Reason to Smile?
Because the only thing freakier then coming to work wearing a sword is coming to work wearing a sword and a smile...

S- Season?
...to taste...

T- Tag three people!
Dick Cheney, Oprah Winfrey and Prince Albert of Monaco -- go! (wow, would it not be cool if any of them actually DID THIS? A girl can dream...)

U- Unknown Fact About Me?
I once killed a man just to see him die... (crap, I wasn't supposed to tell anybody that. Curse you, damned meme! Curse you and your probing questions!)

V- Vegetable you hate?
Seriously, the list of ones I don't hate would be much, much easier. But I'll hit some biggies: peas (so dang nasty that everyone in my family believes I'm allergic because it's easier then constantly explaining how I could hate peas) and tomatoes (I'm fairly sure that this is not really a food, but actually the larval stage of a massive alien invasion. You remember where you heard it first when you're worshipping your red, slimy overlords...)

W- Worst habit?
Well NOW I'd have to say "posting meme's on my blog" but as of yesterday I'd say it's my habit of trying to make absolutely everything into a joke. (hear the one about the massive genocide in Darfur?)

X- X-Rays you've had?
foot or ankle, elbow and many, many dental shots. And is it just me, or is there some kind of rule that the technician has to find the (sorry, meant to say THE) most painful position for you to have to hold while they snap the shot? Sadistic bastards.

Y- Your favorite food?
Just one? Come now! I'll compromise: one from each of the classic food groups. Dairy: 2% milk, ice cold. Fruits and veggies: baby corns in a really tasty chinese food or thai sauce. Breads and cereals: tie between asiago bagel and Cap'n Crunch w/ Crunch Berries. Meats: Salmon. Junkfood: cheese fries!

Z- Zodiac?
OK, I'll answer this but I DON'T want to get a bunch of emails or comments from folks who are so very not surprised to find that I'm a Taurus. I know I'm the epitomy of this sign. I was also born in the year of the dog, so apparently that makes me a bull/dog. So very odd that guys aren't lined up outside my door, eh?

...so there you are. I did it, I added a meme. I wish I could promise it's the only one you'll ever see here, but I don't want to lie to you. And after all, I'm weak at heart. Forgive me.

Wove.dumb...

OK, one day was cute and all. But at this point I'm being mocked by wove.com. Every day I get more and more matches, and from more and more remote spots within my "geographical region." I'm closing them all for the same reason -- I still don't live in any of those other places because I live in MY place! -- but take the hint they do not. The next day: 6 more matches from far and wide.

So then, in addition to "no thanks!ing" the matches, I go into my settings and reselect my distance limitations. And they show me that they are, indeed, listening by sending me 7 matches from places I'll never live.

Today? 8 new, craptastic matches. (and if I'm not mistaken there was a little E-snicker this time.) But I finally figured out what I had to do. I had to "reset" my priorities. I apparently told the folks a wove.com that physical distance is not the most important thing to me -- I called it "7 out of 9" -- so I went in and changed that priority to "very important." But just as I was making the change I realized that if I take "distance" out of the flexible matching option the brain trust behind wove.com could start throwing matches at me that are less attentative to some of my other less-critical match priorities, and I thought I should take a look at what those other things might be.

And now I'm nervous.

The things I set as least important to me were:
Height
Education
Income and Age

So now that I've taken 'distance' off the table, here's what I fear I'm getting next:

-"Wove.com wants you, Femtastic, to meet Milton. Milton lives in , is 87 years young and is the extremely comfortable with his stature of 3 ft. 4. Luckily this height helps him to fit right in with the rest of his classmates in the 6th grade of Lonely Elementary. (If you two make a match please be aware that he'll need to borrow a little cash for that first date.)"

Yes, when the Online Dating Website you've hooked up to starts sending you folks from distant lands it sure begins to feel like their way of saying "Psssst: you are unmatchable. You've frightened away all the dudes." Now that would be freaky to many folks, but I'm so proud of my independence I'm seeing this as independent confirmation from a neutral source that it don't matter where I go or what I do, because no dude can handle me. Hah! (you're beginning to see just where this is going, right? Welcome to the ride.)

Mea Culpa and all such things.

I'm sorry.

I'm just plain sorry.

As I geared up to return to the mission here I considered how best to address this, my first post in weeks. I could give you all sorts of excuses, but I'm not gonna. I thought about just telling you everything I was doing when I wasn't doing this, but we're not about that. No, we're about one thing:

The mission.

We're about the mission! In all the time we've known each other we've been, more or less, about the mission. I've tried very hard to keep from being a diary blog or a "cute tangent" blog or a blog all about my inner demons. (by the way, you can jump in and disagree with any of this via the comments at any old time!) So I'm not gonna take you guys down any tangent roads. I was doing non-mission things and so the mission was back-burnered.

Conveniently enough, during this time of back-burnering the mission it seems that the mission took a break too. In other words, one of the reasons that I wrote of nothing was that nothing was happening to write about.

You know how nobody really hires new employees at the end of the year? Because there's too much other stuff going on, and because everyone's really thinking about the holidays, and because you just don't know what's gonna be what come the new year? I think the dating universe does the same thing. "Well, I have been hoping to bring a new person on to take care of things like eating out, movies, possibly to handle some, if not all, of the various sex to be had, but really I can't focus on that right now. I'm gonna go back to filling the position again after the new year. Hey, hand me some more eggnog, eh?"

But the new year is here (oh hey, happy new year everybody!) and so it's time to get back to the mission. And like magic my good friends at Wove.com seemed to just know it was true, as I was met this morning by FOUR MATCHES! I was pretty jazzed until I started looking at them. Apparently Wove.com had forgotten where I live? Or that I wasn't particularly interested in moving to Salt Lake City, UT or Las Vegas? In other words, What the F*ck?

As is the case with most e-things, once I poked around a bit I found the teeny, tiny explanation. They call it "Flexible Matching." I call it "OK, you're wrecking our curve -- are you sure you won't move hundreds of miles away for this elusive treasure we call wove? Pwease? Pwetty pwease? Come on, you're totally making us look bad! You shut up! No, you! No you! No, you're a whiny bag of cr*p!!" (you can see why they went with "Flexible Matching" instead.)

Apparently if you can't be matched for long enough they get desperate and forget what your settings are. Of course they describe it a little differently. Here's how they spin it:

"Flexible Matching is a means by which we can offer more matches for your consideration - and hopefully help you find your special someone all that much sooner."

(No, I'm not kidding. But wait, they go on...)

"With Flexible Matching we temporarily relax the Match Selection criteria which you indicated are least important to you. This often allows us to find you more matches."

(Of course they could also let one shop for men OR women -- that would increase the possible matches too. But that, of course, would be wrong. And not, apparently, in the good way.)

"Rest assured, we never relax our compatibility criteria because we know these deep dimensions of compatibility are a crucial foundation for a happy, lasting relationship."

...which begs from me the question "then why are you doing it now?" Within an hour one of the guys had done what I'm fully planning to do: reject the matches due to "what the hell were you morons thinking? I DON'T LIVE THERE." And then we're back to square less-then-two. But it's all worth it -- for the mission! Happy new dang year everybody!