Adventures in the Dating Internetz

So, I have been on dating sites on and off for a few years, mostly off, because cheebus wept, even my amazing limits for laughing at the fail of others can get overstretched.  I have met a few initially decent guys in my internetz wanderings, but they turned out to be closet assholes.  Hey, that can happen no matter where I meet someone so I can't blame the internet for that. 

For your entertainment, I thought I'd review some basic guidelines about how to turn me off, and then I'll go into some specific examples.  (Having forced myself into a largely science/math education, I have been trained to show my work and give examples.)

Basic Guidelines

• Take your shirt off for your main picture/majority of your pictures.  If I want to see you with your shirt off, I will ask you to take it off.  If you're just trying to show that you don't have moobs, that can still be accomplished with a t-shirt on.  
• Your main picture is your car.  Or your motorcycle.  All I hear when I see this kind of picture is CHECK MY SWEET RIDE!  MESSAGE ME NOW AND MY OTHER RIDE CAN BE YOU!!! 
• Replacing "you" and "your" and "I'm" with "u", "ur" and "Im" respectively.  If you made your profile on a cell phone, you shouldn't have.  If you didn't make your profile on a cell phone, there is no excuse for not typing the TWO EXTRA LETTERS in "you" and if you really want to get crazy up in here, SPELL-CHECK.  Do you people send out resumes that look so god-awful?  Because you are trying to make a good first impression and be noticed positively in either situation, no?
• In your first message, send some variation of "GIRL U R SEXY WANNA GET WITH YOU NOW HIT ME UP K".  You know, props for being honest and straightforward, but I am not interested in providing the orifice that you drop your tackle into this week. Or any other.
• Born during /before the Eisenhower Administration or during/after the Reagan Administration.  AND have nothing in common with me.  
• Your basic heinous fuckery including:
• Sexist or racist jokes in your profile or messages to me. 
• Being married or otherwise committed but "Available" and looking for some side action.

Specific Examples

• The guy whose only picture was of himself sitting at a table with an Asian woman (her arms around him) and a vase of red roses next to them.  Of course he specifies Asian women only in his profile.  Take-home message: IF YOU GET HERE FAST ENOUGH, I CAN REUSE THE FLOWERS I GAVE THIS ONE
• Fringe benefit on this one - Holy Sweet Mullets, Batman.
• The guy whose profile was a long-winded explanation of why he needed a quiet little lady to care for his house and later, children.  Also, numerous examples of why American society (which apparently is entirely comprised of beer and unworthy sports like football) is beneath him.  AMERICA, FUCK NO!
• The guy who wrote "OMG THOSE FUNBAGS ARE HUGE FOR AN ASIAN WOMAN.  IM me at racistsexistdickbag@yahoo.com, k???"  No, I cannot make this shit up.  Well ok, the email address I made up.  But unfortunately the rest of it is verbatim.
• More shit I cannot make up - the guy who messaged me "ME LOVE YOU LONG TIME, SUCKY SUCKY FIVE DOLLAH???"  But apparently that incident got him kicked off match.com.  Woot!
• As referenced in another blog post, the guy who was into "intelictual pursuits".  SPELL-CHECK.  ALSO, IRONY-CHECK.
• The guy who was 17 yrs younger than me and had nothing in common with me.  Conversely, the guy who was 22 yrs older than me and again, had nothing in common with me. 
• The guy whose pictures looked strongly Chester Molester-ish and who sent me demands to give him a chance interspersed with long rambling screeds of philosophy and mayhem.  This was after I'd sent two polite indications of my lack of interest.  I shouldn't have blocked him before I got some more good fictional character ideas from him but you know, I gotta get through the day sane somehow. 
• The guy who has been told he resembles an actor.  So his only profile picture is actually a picture of that actor.  Proof, right?
• The guy who was not only nearly 20 yrs older than me, but one of his pictures was taken specifically at an angle and distance to let you know that yes, he has a penis, and yes, it is ready for your orifice.  No, it was not an accident.  He specifically stated in the picture caption that this was the look he was going for.  

There are more examples but I've probably rendered all 7 of my readers catatonic with this list already.

What's Cookin'

Me! Or I've been trying to cook a bit, lately. I don't like cooking that much but eh, I can do it ok and certainly well enough to support my curves and then some.

Last week I remembered a fairly healthy snack that I used to like to make and probably got tired of at some point, but I decided to resurrect it: roasted chickpeas.



These are a bit burnt/overdone.  I used:

• 2 cans of garbanzo beans, drained
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• garlic pepper, garlic powder, and a bit of splenda for grins

Mix and dump onto a baking sheet and roast at 400 deg F for 30 minutes (I left them longer than that and I probably shouldn't have.)  Then turn off the oven and leave them overnight to get crunchy.  I am trying it again now but I've doubled the recipe and added more pepper, some tabasco, and a couple of tbsp of brown sugar splenda mix.  Oh and a couple dashes of vinegar.  My cooking is always heavy on the experimentation (and consequently sometimes heavy on the fail.)

I also made a double batch of these Baked Oatmeal Squares to grab for breakfast during the week.  I used applesauce instead of the oil and brown sugar splenda instead of the sugar.  I wouldn't substitute 1:1 with the sugar vs. splenda next time, they're a little sweet for my liking.

Also got a bulk shipment of quinoa from Amazon Grocery because it's good and good for you.  I have heard of people being allergic to it which makes me sad because I think it's pretty delicious.  I cook it in the rice cooker, 1 cup quinoa to 1 cup chicken broth + 1 cup water.  Awesome rice substitute and makes a yummy salad with black beans, corn, onion, and a hit of olive oil and vinegar.

In other news, I got to see my friend Kimmy yesterday and one of the best dogs in the world, Jamberoo


Isn't she adorable??? Such a little spazz too. I love dogs so much but in most cases, I am happy to play with them and then go home to my lower-maintenance kitties. Who are sadly also much snobbier than dogs. But life's a trade-off, yes?

We also cruised the cute little shops on Southport and I picked up this piece after much dithering and first-world whining over which necklace was prettier.



This week, I wasn't able to make it to class with Christina King :( and my other teachers are on SPRING BREAK luckyawesome vacations.  I am getting down to Naperville on Tuesday night to catch one of my most favorite authors, Christopher Moore, at a signing for his new book, Bite Me.  SO EXCITED!!!  AND I have the day off Friday and will do some much-needed cleaning.  And sleeping.  Let's be honest, more sleeping.

Cheers,
D

Light at the End of the Tunnel

This project at work is coming to a close, for which yea verily, thanks be to all higher powers and celebrations throughout the land.  Or throughout my wineglass anyway.

I started the FIRM cardioweights routine again - I think this routine right now is best for my body (getting old SUCKS) and my schedule.  I wanted to stick with Jillian Michaels 30 Day Shred but my knee swelled up like a balloon after 3 workouts.  F-

I want to know what the hell this is about and who had the time to do it.

I received a message on a dating site from a guy who claimed to be into intellectual pursuits.  Only he spelled it "intelictual".  That word, I do not think it means what you think it means.

I am watching a dvr'ed episode of Barefoot Contessa on Food Network.  This woman is nearly as unrelatable to the general public as Martha Stewart (excuse me while I go cut some rosemary from my FUCKENORMOUS garden in the Hamptons) but I still like watching her cook.  She uses the best ingredients she can get in fairly unfussy recipes, which I think is a concept any cook can use. 

Time to watch another mediocre episode of Project Runway, pussycats.  Check ya later.

So Grand in My Brain, So Little in Reality

Daylight Savings Time apparently gets harder the older I get because I could not get enough sleep this week.  I was able to catch a couple of bellydance haflas this weekend, which both inspire me and make me think OMGIWILLNEVERBEGOODDANCER.  Yes, I think in all caps a lot.  The lovely Zafirah and I hit IKEA today for some cheeeep mirrors that I am going to put in my home office so I can get my dance practice on right.  However, at the moment, they are leaning against the wall outside that room.  :-s  Honest, I am going to spring clean as soon as this project at work is launched and get that set up and get my shimmy working correctly.  I feel oftentimes that it's brokedown and busted.

For now, my latest two uploads to 365 Project, my baby girl (erm, as much as a 6 yr old cat can be a baby) Molly and a beautiful veil bellydance routine from Saturday night.

365 Project

This is a fun idea - take a picture a day and upload them to this site.  Here's mine: http://365project.org/loredona/365.  Feel free to follow me :)

In other news, work is a little stressful but nothing too bad.  Today was so gorgeous, and typical Midwest springtime means it will snow on Saturday.  No, seriously.  F-  But right now I'm warm and my baby girl kitty is asleep behind my head.  Life is pretty good.

Mixed Bag

For your pleasure today, a couple of repeat postings (repeat if you are my friend on Facebook)

Really sweet story of a new cross-species family.

Today on a street corner near the office, we were accosted by people giving out FREE ART. BOXES OF FREE ART. I refused to have it foisted upon me, but a couple of my friends accepted the boxes. Which turned out to be this inexplicable mess. I peered briefly at the book and found it dull. I listened briefly to the cd and laughed my ass off for the whole minute that I could tolerate it. I can best describe it as the musings of an angry person living in his parents' basement trying to express his views of the world via Casio keyboard. The super-cheap model Casio keyboard.

In bellydance news, class tonight with Nilaja was great and I also picked up some fun Skittles-colored skirts from her Calico Garden stash. So far I've picked sultry/angry music for my solos (all two of them!) and I know I need practice emoting in different ways in my dancing. Enter Harry Belafonte's Jump in the Line, which makes me ridiculously happy to listen to so I expect it will make me happier to dance to it. So this is my tentative pick to perform at Zafirah's fundraiser hafla in May. Ergo, my new candy-colored skirts will be awesome for a calypso-ish theme :) And I need to work on my shimmy something fierce!

Must stretch a bit before hitting the hay. Night, y'all!

Stop and Start

Recovering from an emotional blow is something you have to take one day at a time. And I think that while it's true at the beginning that every day is a bit better than the day before, it's also true that some days you slide and fall backwards in the progress you've made. For me, this is because the blow has had sort of a ripple effect in making me think about other things and about the future, and sometimes that thinking is pretty negative.

That's when I have to turn on the tunes and dance.


So, sometimes I slide. But I've been getting back up every time.

Classes with Christina King have been going superawesome, and I'm still attending classes with one of my all-time favorite teachers and people (Nilaja of Calico Garden, see sidebar link) and started a bellydance/Zumba class last week. Good times! I also pulled the trigger on signing up for the full weekend of Tribal Revolution. Waiting to save up a bit more cash money before registering for Northern Lights happening later this year.

A lot of bellydancers use stage names for privacy reasons, and I think I am going to start doing this, and I think I've settled on "Loredona" as my name. I will be dancing at Jeannette and Shelby Daft's Tim Burton hafla (as the Corpse Bride!) on April 24 in West Allis, WI, and in Zafirah's fundraiser hafla on May 22 at Edith's Place in Mt. Prospect, IL. Possibly somewhere in there if I can get my act together I will also try to perform at my original bellydance mama Zayna's Sphinx hafla at Mango in Niles, IL.

And because I am super-scattered and overly enthusiastic at the beginning of any project/endeavor/whatnot I also picked up a pair of spinning poi in the hopes that someday I can do stuff like this:


So far I've just been really good at smacking myself with the poi. But I am not giving up! Yet. Ok just jokes I'm not giving up. Yet.

In non-bellydance related stuff, I am engaged in a love-hate relationship with the Travel Channel. I have a morbid fascination with Man vs. Food because a) there's delicious-looking food that gets profiled on the show but b) then he eats a revolting amount of it. And now I see they're starting some show about the World's Worst Drivers. Seriously? Operating a motor vehicle in a completely dipshit and irresponsible manner is something we're going to put on tv for grins? Unless the end of every episode involved the drivers being slapped senseless with dead fish, I'm not interested.

The Lady GaGa/Beyonce video for Telephone makes me so befuddled. OK GAGA. LET'S MAKE A SANDWICH. OF POISON. But I love the song and the fact that OMFG THAT BITCH IS CRAZY.

I don't know how I'd get through sometimes without my kitties smooshing their faces into mine.

Thanks to the time change, I'm getting to bed kind of late. But yay for darkness falling later! Check y'all next time.

Resurrection comes not with a bang, more of a sigh and a groan

So after a break of almost two years, I am coming back to blogging. I might stick to it, I might not.

Resurrection is probably considered an event and not an ongoing process. But, I'm resurrecting this blog as part of a recovery process so I'm going to treat it as both.

I am doing what I can these days to remember and improve my self-worth. I feel many people and maybe especially many women can't seem to remember their self-worth and how truly higher it is and can be than what they think it is, or how they allow themselves to be treated. And I know that it's so hard to do. It's much easier to believe the bad things about yourself. So again, this is going to be a process, not an event.

Part of my journey is based in something very fun and dear to me, which is bellydancing. I have now been taking classes and workshops on and off since summer 2007. (with a 9 month-break in there after my surgery). The dancing a good activity and a great way to express myself, but more importantly it's introduced me to this great community of people (largely women) who are encouraging and empowering and fun. I've already needed to call on my closer friends in the community to help get me through things and they plain kick ass. I am making it my goal to dance at more haflas (Arabic for dance party) this year and to practice consistently because I'll never be a good dancer without that.

Enough serious for today.

A purring cat up in your biz is at least a temporary antidote to almost anything. Except actual poison and disease of course. Or gunshot wounds. Or stabbing. You know what? Just enjoy a purring cat if you can.

I am taking my first real bellydance classes this evening with Christina King, who is an amazing bellydancer and dance event organizer. I am thrilled to finally be in her classes!

This also means I won't watching the Oscars tonight, which is fine by me as the only thing I care about this year is that Avatar not win Best Picture, lest I explosively vomit. It was visually stunning and all, but otherwise Dances with Smurfs did not do it for me.

VH1 is apparently paying Jessica Simpson to do a tv show. People don't learn.

I think I am going to make some pumpkin beer bread. Or pound cake. Or both. Later, taters.