Strongly Worded

UpDATE #501,208

Despite his small stature (5'5 with good posture) and shaved/bald head, I found Mr. Public Health (last night's date) rather hot. He successfully executed a fashionable outfit. He has astonishing eyes. He rocks a tough and sardonic persona, plus he is funny. Seriously funny. After he finishes his Ph.D in public health, he wants to address various social causes, including world hunger, "because someone should have taken care of this shit by now." He also ragged (at length) on the (apparently ubiquitous) online daters whose profiles convey that they "like to stay in and like to go out, and love spending time with family and friends." Some of them even mention wearing sweatpants while watching TV on the couch. For Mr. PH, sweatpants are deal-breakers, as is an affinity for Grey's Anatomy.

I like going out and staying in and also spending time with family and friends. I (very) occasionally conduct these activities while clothed in fleece/sweatpants. But because I've never seen Grey's, and did not mention these things in my newly edgy match profile, Mr. PH claims I'm in a cohort of about two women in Greater Boston, and he already dated the other one, who is not as hot as me. The fact that he used the word cohort filled me with joy.

Our convo was pretty balanced but limited mainly to banter. The problem with dating edgy brilliant guys is that it's hard to know whether they have a heart/soul underneath all the hilarity. We shall see, but luckily hilarity is lots of fun for now.

Posted by Dori at 12:05 PM 7 comments

UpDATE #501,207

Lately, I’ve been teetering over the divide between happily stimulated and overwhelmed. In my world, there’s a tiny sweet spot between the two. Until recently, I’ve been on the slower end of the continuum, in which I mope and lie around and take naps and read the same books over and over again and wait for Things To Happen.

Right now, many things are happening. Work has become busy and stressful despite the fact that my procrastination is at an all-time high. I have 16 people registered for the on-line class I am teaching at the State University in May. I have to figure out how to get books and course packets in my and the students’ hot little hands. I have to figure out how to use the surprisingly complex “virtual classroom” software. And I have to figure out how to get to the campus next week and deal with assorted paperwork.

There are also several match guys in the mix, including Banter Boy, Mr. Biotech (the former doctor), and Mr. Public Health (the other former doctor). Last night I met up with Mr. Cognitive Psychologist, who responded to my “Sweet But Not Cloying” headline with a message entitled “Never Treacly”.

Mr. Cognitive Psychologist (who we’ll call Mr. Psych) demurred at my suggestion that we meet for coffee. He was coming straight from work and anticipated being ravenous. He emailed a promise that the meal would be free of awkwardness: “You won’t wish we had met for coffee instead.” This was charming/funny, not cocky, and I agreed. Mr. Psych was neither hot nor unattractive, but he had studied my profile very carefully and asked specific, relevant questions. He was actually impressed by my scholarly achievements (very unusual in Greater Boston, in which everyone seems to have advanced degrees from prestigious schools). He told me about his really interesting work (evaluating patients with early symptoms of Alzheimer’s). We had a truly interesting conversation in which he demonstrated self-awareness, insight, and intelligence. When elaborating on an opinion, he paused afterwards to ask for my perspective.

This is incredibly rare and I went home in a kind of daze. Not a zoned-out-crush-development daze, but a kind of vague, exhausted satisfaction. This morning, I encountered no follow-up email, but the day is young. The thing is: if he doesn’t follow up, I’ll be a little surprised and a little miffed, but not heartbroken. That’s the thing with multiple balls in the air.

As I vow to do everyday, I am going to step away from the Internet now and accomplish some of the tasks I am paid to complete. Tonight I meet Mr. Biotech. More upDATEs forthcoming.

Posted by Dori at 10:44 AM 4 comments

More Matchy Matchy

So if JDate is a barren wilderness, then Match is a forest populated by lush flora and birds with colorful plumage. I trolled JDate for ages, often alone, and often in shame. I had to suck up my pride, and defend my self-esteem, and write to people, many of whom responded (by which I mean they failed to respond) with indifference. On Match, however, I am sought after. Without any effort on my part, my stunning beauty and astonishing wit has attracted the attention of 99 guys over the last 6 days. True, that includes an exceptionally unattractive 59-year-old guy from Yonkers, several inarticulate "winkers" from the Midwest, and a guy whose primary photo features him in a Spiderman outfit. But still.

Here's the thing. Match is confusing. You can correspond through the site, but Match also forwards messages to your inbox. So during a day of obsessive email checking, I may receive several messages or "winks" (which I despise). But I don't want to respond until I've checked out the prospective suitor's profile. I resist doing this at work because I suspect that my co-worker may have caught on to my plummeting productivity. So I end up logging in really quickly (like when he's at lunch or something), and then I write back (or not), and clear browser history and everything. And yet my regular Yahoo inbox still contains an ostensibly unanswered message. Then I get all confused. It doesn't help that I'm corresponding with two former doctors (without beepers!) who are both named Bill (for our purposes).

The other thing that sucks about Match is that there is no way to hide that you are a) online and/or b) stalking other "members". On JDate, no one is the wiser if you check out people over and over, and no one has to know that you're actually online scoping people out, like now.
With Match, I'm extremely self-conscious and log in and log out really quickly, which adds to my anxiety of mixing up people and responses.

I'm sure that soon I'll have funny-but-disappointing upDATES to share with you guys, and the the novelty will wear off, and then I'll sulk around my apartment feeling back at Square 1, unable even to distract myself with a healing infusion of Cable TV.

But in the mean time, this is pretty fun.

Posted by Dori at 5:41 PM 3 comments

Matchy Matchy

So my foray onto match hasn't sucked so far. I've heard from two Jewish doctors, to whom I'm drawn like a moth to a flame. BUT! One of them is a researcher--so (presumably) no on-call misery/drama--and the other one stopped the insanity and now does biotech or something. (I take this with some salt, because the last former doctor I dated was actually barred from the AMA for his addicition to prescription sedatives.) They are both cute and the biotech guy also has edgy glasses which I find enchanting. So we'll see.

I also got winked at from some guy in MN, and a few other dudes who will get no love from me because--please--winking (even virtual winking) is so 1988 frat party. I also got a very lovely message from a non-Jewish guy who works at a Jewish Day School, and I'm on the fence about him.

That's it for now.

P.S. Many of you mentioned Flickr. How does it work? Now that I have a digital camera and everything, I welcome your insight. I'm not a good photographer like some fellow bloggers (aka Jen), so does it make sense?

Posted by Dori at 9:48 AM 6 comments

Labor, and a Labor of Love

Right: my cube, where I labor (and occasionally blog)
during the work week.

Below is a labor of love, the lemon tart with raspberries that A. made for my birthday. Making this dessert required two days and multiple calls to Upstate New York, putting A. on the shortlist for the Pullitzer Prize for Friendship.

Posted by Dori at 11:23 PM 4 comments

Let's Get Digital

My family birthday celebration occurred this weekend, in my hometown.

My brother noted at the celebratory dinner (4-course Italian feast) that he hadn't yet given me a present. He asked if I wanted a potato masher. The suggestion was actually quite thoughtful, because my brother makes incredible mashed potatoes. He made them at my house once, and shared my own dismay at my wimpy, hard-to-clean masher. I told him to bring on the gift, since before my moratorium on shopping, I'd been looking to replace the sucker myself.

The next day my brother went out. Upon his return, he presented me with a bulky mailing envelope. He apologized for the "wrapping". I opened the envelope and saw a plain black camera carrying case. I felt a wave of awkward disappointment, not just because my mashing abilities would remain compromised, but because I assumed that the camera case was meant to be an iPod case, which I already have (I have a real one). But the envelope also contained all kinds of manuals and batteries and such. I was trying to figure out a tactful way to say that I already have an iPod and don't need or want a generic MP3 player in a fake MP3 case. But then my brother told me to open the case and--hazza--! A digital camera winked back at me. It was the floor model, which is why it didn't come in some more obvious package.

Now you may recall that I've been lusting after one of these for a long time.

"All the mashers were plastic," my brother said. "And I remembered a while back you were wishing you had a digital camera ... so I thought maybe you'd like this one."

I was SO happy. First, because this redeems him, big-time, in the thoughtfulness and generosity
department. And secondly, because now this blog will include fascinating footage. Check out the first installment ...

Posted by Dori at 10:56 PM 3 comments

Prep, Part II

So my non-crunchy co-worker, “Bob”, has a daughter, “Perfecta”, who walks on water. She’s an A+ student, talented performer, sports maven, popular. She attends a decent public middle school in a decent city suburb, where she is a superstar. This year, she unwillingly took the SSAT (secondary school admissions test), and interviewed at three private schools. She stressed out about the test, stressed out about the interviews, and my co-worker stressed out about how the family would afford the $30,000 per year tuition.

Perfecta was accepted at prestigious “Prep Academy”, and Bob and his wife decided to send her. Perfecta cried. She was intimidated by the intense curriculum and the spiral-eyed current uber-students. At the open house, the kids talked about how they found Prep Academy much, much harder than their public schools. One of the 17 guidance counselors talked about all the support and counseling the kids get and how successful they are in getting into top-flight colleges. Then a 9th grader performed a one-woman show that she had written. Perfecta was cowed. She wanted to stay with her public-school friends. They also cried when she shared the news.

Bob feels bad about this. He keeps insisting that Perfecta has great social skills and will make new friends. I’m sure he’s right. But I cannot get past my strong feeling that it’s misguided to mess with a well-adjusted, thriving 13-ye-old. She has her whole life to be stressed and overwhelmed and competitive. She’ll have 4 years of college, at the very least, and then probably an MBA program or law school where only three people per class can get an A. Why start the insanity? Why strip her of her superstar status so early in life?

The situation vexes me because I wish I could retroactively trade places with Perfecta. I earned excellent grades at an excellent public school, but I was profoundly unhappy and wanted more than anything to go somewhere else, somewhere quiet and quaint with wood paneling and ivy on the buildings and a kinder, gentler environment. My parents took me to see two schools and decided that my problems could be better (and perhaps more cheaply?) addressed with therapy. I stayed in public school and it sucked a great deal, although by senior year my mini eating disorder was somewhat offset by being voted most talkative and dating a college freshman.

I still resent my parents’ decision, but I can’t argue that a lot of my unhappiness was personal/chemical/developmental. Maybe it would have been a waste of money to send me somewhere else, and maybe I would have cracked under the more intense academic pressure.

I doubt it, though, and I guess I wish both my parents’ and Perfecta’s would understand that teenagers often do know what’s best for themselves.

Posted by Dori at 5:55 PM 1 comments

Back in the Saddle?

A friend of mine just started online dating on Match. I'm hearing stories of interesting encounters and the self-esteem boost that comes with being "fresh meat". I may in fact try Match. Having done 3-4 stints on JDate over the last five years, it may be time for me to paint on a bigger canvas.

Anyway. My current profile (or "portrait" as they call it on Match) is very 2002. My username reflects the earnestness that I possessed at the time. And I need to spiff up all of it so that it better conveys my enigmatic personality; I'm all "Betty Crocker meets Betty Friedan", but I suspect that any mention of 1950s feminist icons would be poorly received.

My beloved friend D.M. suggested that I ask for your input. She threw out some ideas for an anti-profile.

Username: kittensquisher
Headline: Needy Girl ISO Commitment-ready Provider

or ... "Wanna be blog-fodder?"

We also explored riffs on "bon appetit" (aka bonapp) for the username, but D.M. thought it sounded uncharacteristically sexual. I thought about "alacrity", which is one of my favorite words because it means "cheerful readiness, willingness, or promptitude; joyous activity; briskness; sprightliness". But that may reflect the earnestness I'm trying to get away from.

Another idea was "lemonlover", reflecting my love of, well, lemon flavors. The headline could be "pucker up" and then a line like "when life gives me lemons I make lemon mousse, lemon souffle ..." I suspect that's too cute, however.

I'm really stuck here--needing to express that I'm full of edge and yet an aspiring wife eager to ply the man of my dreams with fluffed pillows and comfort food. Help, please!

Posted by Dori at 4:30 PM 15 comments

Intellectual Lethargy

I may have mentioned a few billion times that my job is easy lately (and has been for some time). My latest projects? Snoozefests. Seriously. My day consists of bursts of work interspersed with guilt, snack breaks, obsessive email/voicemail checking, self-loathing, and bloggish activities. While sitting at my desk, I'm conscious of how little brain power my tasks require. I feel ashamed (so many of my friends have comprehensive knowledge of computers/genetics/ autism/public health/education--what's wrong with me?) and also enraged (I've worked too hard academically/professionally to be doing this).

But then last week I engaged in some e-banter with a friend of a friend (FOF). Said e-banter was witty and pithy and lovely and clever. The conversation with the FOF (who, I should note, is an extraordinarily successful scientist-cum-business-mogul) made me smile and wonder what hilarity I'd spout next. I realized how rarely I get to feel clever during the work day.

Now. As you know, it has been seven days since I last watched cable television, and I already feel much smarter. I went to the library today and filled my Jay McCarroll Project Runway tote bag to the brim with books. Afterwards I came home and did some desk re-org, and I came across some of my grad school papers. One of them was quite brilliant. It included the phrase "mining for pathology", which the professor called "very nice". He also liked the part where I asserted that "inappropriate application of clinical knowledge serves to incorrectly define social problems as individual mental health problems." (Wow. I never thought that sentence would see the light of day.) I used the word "bellicosity", probably for the last time.

I sat on the floor and re-read this paper as if it were written in another language, one that I could understand but no longer speak. I felt proud of myself and also deeply sad that my day-to-day life neither requires or builds on whatever brain power I have left. I totally get that it's unusual for people in non-academic jobs to think as much and as hard as we all do in school. And I don't think I'd be happy working in a think tank or in an environment where people were calling me on inconsistencies in my logic or citations.

Still. I've always thought about my dream job in terms of the environment (physically lovely and fast-paced), the people (emotionally lovely, diverse, supportive, and plentiful), and the tasks (managing, organizing, and communicating). I never really thought too much about wanting a job to be hard. But I wish my job were harder. And thus I'm trying to supplement it with brain-fortifying extra curriculars. The blog. Hopefully teaching a class. And I'm trying to recycle a grad school paper for submission into a professional journal (with extraordinarily limited circulation). If my abstract is chosen, I get $150.

That would pay for almost two months of cable, you see.

Posted by Dori at 9:00 PM 3 comments

Life in the 30s

So 30 has been fun so far. My actual birthday fell on the first night of Passover, which is cool because it’s been exactly 30 years since the holiday fell on April 2nd.

On the day I was born, people interrupted their matzo-ball making to visit my mom and my newborn self in the hospital. My dad showed up at the seder wearing a new pink shirt in honor of my being a girl. He gave my mom a garnet ring (which is now one of my prized possessions). And, on my birthday every year, he gives her roses (he always says it’s absurd that the kid gets all the attention for being born, when it’s the mom that does all the work). This is a romantic notion, and should be widespread.

At this year’s seder I enjoyed a Dayenu-Happy Birthday medley, and then guests serenaded me with some songs that incorporate joy (because that’s what I’m into), namely “Jeremiah was a Bullfrog (the refrain is “Joy … to the World”), and that ‘80s ditty by Rob Bass (“Joy … and Pain … and Sunshine, and Rain”). I’d been looking forward to the evening for ages, and I had a great time.

On the actual day of Passover, I vegged out. I watched The Holiday on Netflix. It is an insipid flick with Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet, both of whom should have known better. I cleaned up my house, napped, and had a massage in the evening.

Then yesterday I went to work and realized that I’d completely forgotten about a meeting with our State Senator. I scheduled this meeting ages ago, in some kind of haze. I raced into the office and tried frantically to drum up some coherent evidence of why he should support funding for foreclosure prevention. It was snowing (yes, snowing on April 4!) and I couldn’t find my subway card, and I threw on some Grown up Clothes and raced to the State House, allowing oodles of extra time since they have strict security over there and I’ve only visited House members in the past and thought that Senators might work in a different building.

I was so unnecessarily stressed. There no one in the security line, and the senators are really close to everything. Then it turned out that our local boys’ HS basketball team just won the State finals. The players were invited to the State house and the Senator’s office was in shambles (pizza boxes everywhere). I was relegated to talking with the 21-year-old-iced-coffee-toting aide.

Then I returned to the office and found that my co-worker had (at my request) purchased a shredder. It cost $120. When I blanched, he said gleefully: "it can shred a small child".

Posted by Dori at 10:53 AM 5 comments

My Life in Numbers

So my days of being 29 are numbered. In fact, if 30 is the new 20 (and I'd argue that 12 is the new 19--at least in terms of fashion), then I'm turning 20 in one day. I've been pretty much dreading this event since I turned 26 (the point at which one enters one's "late twenties"), and I really dreaded it for most of this year, because, as I've mentioned at least six zillion times, I'd hoped to enter this decade with a husband, kick-ass job, and a house (that's in order of importance).

I hope extremely much that I will acquire these things extremely soon, but I have been doing some math lately that indicates that my life adds up quite nicely thus far. I'm still at zero on the husband and real estate scoreboards ... but check out progress in the following categories.

BIOLOGY

• Number of days I've been alive: 10,949
• Number of menstrual cycles I've endured: 228
  
• Number of waffles consumed: 10,920 (give or take)
• Number of hours of sleep: 87,592 (assuming 8 hrs a night, which is typical for me, and yes I know I slept way more as a baby)

GEOGRAPHY

• Number of U.S. States visited: 17 (I'm only counting states where I've spent 12 hours or more)
• Number of Foreign Countries visited: 23 (I'm counting Vatican City. I'm not counting Gibraltar because that's technically part of the UK (which is #19 on the list), or Egypt (even though I've been in Egyptian waters on a snorkeling trip, and had my passport stamped and everything.)
• Number of addresses (which I'm defining as a place I received mail): 12. This includes my hometown, camp, college, Chicago (summer internship). During my two years in Spain, I lived in a boarding house, apartment, and duplex. I've lived in three apartments in my current city, and I also lived in Costa Rica and Israel for a year each (as a kid).
  

ECONOMICS

• Estimated number of dollars spent on rent: $73,440
• Estimated number of dollars spent/owed on higher education: $155,000
• Estimated number of dollars spent on health care (post-college): $12,400 (I'm counting insurance and co-payments. I'm not counting alternative therapies, vision, or dental care.)
  
• Number of jobs held: 12 (I'm counting babysitting, but I'm not counting jobs-within-jobs like different temp assignments)
• Estimated number of dollars earned: less than the total of the above

RELATIONSHIPS

• Number of boys kissed (kissed!): 18 (This astonished me at first. But I had my first kiss when I was 14, so that's a little more than 1 guy every year, which is actually reasonable. I'm counting this guy from Cornell who came to my college as part of a Glee Club tour and kissed me once in the dorm living room and then gave me a fake email address and vanished forever. I am not counting anyone I may have kissed in elementary or nursery school.)
• Number of broken hearts: 6 (I'm counting only heartbreak that brought on real long-term despair, and snotty crying and full-fledged drama. I'm not counting disappointing dating outcomes that may have resulted in tears and prolonged unhappiness.)
• Number of people I am proud and lucky to call my amazing friends: I tried unsuccessfully to count. You know who you are. I hope you know how much I love and treasure and admire you. Old friends: thanks for hanging in for so long and for all our lovely memories. New friends: I'm so glad we've met and are bonding! Blog friends: Thanks so much for finding my life interesting enough to read about and comment about! And for sharing so much of yourselves with me.
  

See you on the other side of 30 ....

Posted by Dori at 10:04 PM 10 comments