ready, set, match!

about the time i got laid off, i was bored and tired of waiting for mr right to find me. so, i decided 'what the hell' i'll sign up for match. just to see. if i can find anything and everything else on the internet, why not a guy too?? i'd also just gotten a dose of courage from one of my oldest friends, cherry, who grew up across the street from me until her family moved to a different neighborhood when we were 8 or 9. i won't digress here, but i'll tell you all about the fun we used to have in another blog. in any case, she'd been telling me to try match and that that was how she had met timmy to whom she is getting married to this summer. i also thought about my friend, nicole, who had married her match a year or so ago and had met him 4 or 5 years ago. so i thought, wow, ok, i guess there really is something that could maybe come from all this and since i have the time...

so online i got. i created my profile, uploaded some pictures, and decided to see what i would find. i had a lot of guys email me or wink which was quite flattering. however, the number of those that were actually ones that i would write back to were fairly slim. i had set a lot of 'requirements' for my dates: height, how much they exercise, smoke (absolutely not), no kids, no divorce, age range, etc. a lot of the emails/winks i didn't return were b/c they didn't read what i wanted in a guy. divorced, 2 kids, living in the suburbs is just not my kind of guy. i did make a few exceptions and returned some emails to guys who were shorter than my required height (6'1 or taller) and eventually met up with two of them. i decided that maybe i was being too narrow and that maybe i should give a shorter (to me) guy a chance.

the first guy i met up with had some good potential, but he was only 5'11: he liked to run and had done some marathons, had a black lab, lived nearby, and i don't really remember what else. but we met at a bar for some beers. it wasn't a bad meet up, it just wasn't there for me. did it have something to do with his height?! i don't know, but i don't think so.

the second guy i met up with again had some potential as they all did - they had written a nice description of themselves or we'd had some good emails back and forth. i can't quite remember the order, but i think it was another 5'11 guy that i met up with to test the height thing again. we had several things in common but just not more than that. nice guy, not for me.

the third guy was pretty cool in emails and he was taller...can't remember how tall, but over 6'1. in his picture he was cute. so we met up and he just wasn't as cute in person and it was hard to talk to him. i had an easier time talking to a group of girls who wanted our table when we were leaving. i almost wanted to stay and have some drinks with them! (almost kidding).

the fourth guy: now this is where it gets interesting. i actually emailed HIM! woah. and he wrote back! woah! i broke out of my shell and decided to actually email someone instead of waiting for someone to email me. he's a little bit younger - 28 (bday in may), tall (6'4), from westchester county, ny (and lived in the city for a few years), is/was a trader, and went to duke. i liked his profile. it wasn't very long and it didn't say much, but that he was shy at first until you got to know him and i liked how he didn't feel the need to brag like so many of the guys' profiles that i read. and so we decided to meet up at a bar (which i picked) and it ended up being the coldest day in december. literally. as in below zero cold. and the bar's heat was broken! and while freezing, we still sat there and talked for a couple hours i think. i'm really not sure why we just didn't go somewhere else, but we didn't... until he asked if i wanted to go get some food. so we went to sushi. this was right before we were both leaving for christmas.

the fifth guy: and this was the last of the ones i met. it was the night before i left for cancun. he was totally small world: we were talking about something and i mentioned i went to culver and he asked if i knew a certain guy that he'd gone to college with... and i did... i swear everyone knows this guy. so then i knew where he'd gone to college (princeton) and that he also knew my friend, kelley's cousin, and some of his friends that i've met over the years. weird. but nice convo. but that was it and so...

the only one to be lucky enough to see me again was the fourth guy, alex. and in all honesty, i wasn't sure i'd get to see him again. since we were both leaving to head to our respective homes for christmas - me, houston and him, ny - and he wasn't coming back until after nye's. i was coming back, but for less than a week and then i was off to cancun for a week so that meant there was at least 3 weeks until we could possibly get together again. and let's be honest, that's a long time and my luck with guys, well i figured he'd probably forget about me and we'd never get to meet up again.

but alex surprised me... he texted me over the holidays and kept at it until we were both in town and could meet up again. ok, i know i said 'texted' and some of you think that is poor form. for me, it's perfect. as you ladies know, i'm not very good at the phone... i'm much better at texts than i am at the phone. so he hadn't forgotten! yay!

once we were both back in chicago, we made plans for dinner at a place in logan square called lula's. dinner was great. we went to a bar to continue hanging out afterwards.

pretty soon my birthday was coming up and he asked if he could take me out for my birthday. i had plans for pretty much every night: dinner with friends, hanging out with friends for a party at my house, then my aunt and uncle took me out. so we went out on that wed (my bday was mon) and we went to sushi in bucktown. the name of which escapes me at the moment. dinner was great and afterwards we found our way to the violet hour (which devon has blogged about in the past) and we found our way in the unmarked door. what a cool place that was! the cocktails to choose from were fun and creative and the design of the whole place was cozy and cool and i loved it immediately. he asked me if i'd like to go back to his place and that he'd be a complete gentleman if i wanted. so with semi fears of being hacked in to little pieces and stuffed in a closet (now one of our favorite jokes), i went. and true to his word he was a perfect gentleman.

after that i don't really remember the order of things, but we continued to go out...and texting... and still are... in fact i'll be seeing him in a few hours for some mexican food and 24.