Long lost Valentines

This may be the most unoriginal phrase ever typed: Valentine's Day sucks when you are single.

I blame Valentine's Day, and all the hype about perfect gifts and romance for getting me thinking about past relationships. Even the Google doodle is tormenting us single folk.

Tonight I found myself thinking about old girlfriends, lost opportunities, past mistakes.

One woman in particular has been on my mind lately. While I have spend much of my dating life (when not single) in monogamous relationship -- at least the were monogamous as far as I knew -- there was one woman in my life who I think of as a lover, not a girlfriend. Perhaps that is because she was actually involved with someone else when we had our adventures. I never let myself think that a relationship was possible, even when she got to the point where she made it clear that is what she wanted with me.

So, I never intentionally put my heart into the relationship, but that is not to say I was not emotionally invested. The woman -- let's call her her Tracy -- and I shared an emotional intimacy I had never shared with a woman up to that point. We could talk about most anything. We shared fears and fantasies. We talked. Really talked.

Maybe that was because the relationship started as an online relationship. We talked on chat and on the phone long before we ever met. And for some reason, I find it much easier to confess my secrets at the keyboard rather than face-to-face.

One day, a few months ago, I got an email from Tracy out of the blue in honor of milestone. While we both moved on, long ago, it was great to hear from her. It seemed like old times. She asked a few questions in her message, and I wrote back. But there was no reply.

Blackness. A flash of bright light. Then blackness again. Only the lingering afterimage of the light remained, before fading away.

Things would not of worked with Tracy for many reasons, not least of which was that I was not ready. But I miss the friend. I miss the friendship. I miss the adventure and the daring taboo nature of it all.

I've been playing life safe for a while. Not sure I would recommend it. A crisis of confidence, perhaps. In love. In work. In play.

Valentine's Day is not for the timid of heart.

Yes, I miss Tracy. But perhaps as much as anything, I miss the me I was willing to be back then.

Even a sad story can be too good to be true

It was all a cruel, terrible, hoax. But was Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o one of the perpetrators of the hoax or the victim of it?


I don't know. But I can believe that he was the victim. I can relate and I empathize.

Deadspin.com revealed the hoax today. I didn't hear the story of Te'o girlfriend's death during the football season, so I didn't feel deceived by Te'o or the media that told and retold the story, spreading the legend. But when I read Te'o statement it read like something I could have said or written myself. I found more than a kernel of truth in the words at which many critics are scoffing. I have been there, so I don't doubt another young man could get there too.

I have avoided the topic here for many reason. The woman I was involved with in an online relationship knows about this site and got quite upset when I wrote about it in the past. Plus, I felt ashamed and foolish.

It was really only after our conversations ended that I began to understand something of the extent to which I had been deceived. I still don't know what all the lies were. At this point, it no longer matters. I was too trusting. Too willing to believe. I don't know if there was any intent to harm on her part. I don't really care.

But there are parts of what Te'o said in his statement that ring true based on my experience. It's hard to explain an online only relationship to family and friends. I left out details. I patched over inconvenient parts because if there was a chance that we would have been able to bring the relationship into the real world I wanted family and friends to not judge.

I should have judged more myself, though.

Every time we were close to meeting, something always came up. There was a last-minute crisis. An emergency or an illness prevented the rendezvous.

She didn't want to talk on webcam. I never saw her face, in spite of years of off and on contact. Eventually that became a big problem for me but I have to admit that there was a freedom in it too. I was more confident to say what I was really thinking about things. I just blurted or typed them out and didn't get sidetracked by visual cues that might have led me to bite my tongue.

For the longest time, there were no photos shared. Then, after lots of pushing and prodding and nagging on my part, there were finally a few photos shared. I later learned that the photos were actually of someone else. No, that couldn't be, she insisted. Well, maybe a few pictures of someone else got mixed in with ones she sent. That lie was exposed too.

I don't know if she was just trying to hide something or if she was pathological. I wanted to know why for a long time. I wanted to solve the mysteries. Now, I count myself fortunate that the experience didn't cost me more in some way. I didn't suffer the same public embarrassment and criticism Te'o is currently facing from sports columnists and bloggers and Twitter critics. I just had my own private torment. And the loss of an online companion and confidante who I used to talk to nearly every day. She helped me get through a bad breakup. She helped me start to envision and even crave a committed relationship again.

I can believe that Te'o grieved the death of his online girlfriend. I grieved the loss of the relationship I had too, no matter how dysfunctional and deceptive it was.

I can't say Te'o story is true that he was the one deceived. But I, for one, believe that it is possible. It rings true from my experience.

Sad.

But all too possibly true.

Now I can carry a financial adviser clipped to my belt

Portland, Ore., radio station KEX, 1190 AM, has been promoting a smart phone application for iheartradio lately, and they finally convinced me to use it more. I had downloaded the app for my phone, but had not really used it, until today.

It was not the commercials for the app itself that led me to use it. It was the fact that KEX moved its Dave Ramsey Show broadcasts from midday to the 7 p.m. time slot. The station recently swapped time slots for Ramsey's show and Dr. Laura's show, moving Dr. Laura to evenings and Ramsey to midday.

That's when I started listening to Ramsey's show. I could usually catch at least part of the show during my lunch break. It was good reinforcement to my efforts to get out of debt and helped me formulate the strategy I am going to use to do that.

But today KEX, switched the show lineups again, to put Dr. Laura on at noon and Ramsey back in the evening.

I don't listen to the radio in the evening, so I was not happy with the change. I don't want listen to Dr. Laura's show.

So while looking for a way to get my Ramsey fix today I started trying to find out if any other radio stations on iheartradio.com broadcast his show live. It took a little searching, and trial and error, but I did find one. So, if you are looking for an iheartradio station that carries the Ramsey Show live, the one I found was WTKG 1230 AM, out of Grand Rapids, Mich. I've added that one to my favorites.

I also learned that KEX wasn't actually broadcasting Ramsey live, even it it's midday slot. The show airs live from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Pacific time, so KEX had to be delaying the broadcast an hour. Now, I can actually listen to it live, either from Ramsey's own website, or on my smart phone. I can still get my audio reinforcement when it works best for me.

So, KEX, I may still listen to you in the morning on my way to work, but you have likely lost me for the midday lunch hour and that will mean the car radio will be on another station when I hop in the car for the drive home.

Blasted by the past

I had the strangest emotional reaction today. I followed a link on Twitter that led be to a website where I saw a name I recognized. The name was the husband of woman I dated in college. So I decided to read what he wrote.

It was a poem. In it, he made a reference to sex. Of course I assumed the reference was to his wife. And what I felt shocked me. I felt a pang of jealousy.

How could that be? Of course this woman was very important to me back in college. She was, I now know, my first love. She was my first really serious relationship. But that was 20 years ago.

Why would I feel jealousy now, after all these years? I haven't even scene her in probably a dozen years. It didn't make sense.

But then, feelings don't subscribe to logic.

The longest goodbye

At various times, I've written posts lamenting the fact that so many people find this blog by doing searches looking for the answer to the question of how long it takes to get over someone. Frankly, I've been annoyed that this blog's Google image is that of a breakup blog. But maybe Google knows something that even I don't.

That's because here I am writing another breakup post.

Back shortly before I started this blog I had rekindled an online friendship with a woman I had met several years earlier. That relationship had suffered through a couple of prolonged separations, during which we both explored relationships in which we didn't need computers or cell phones to maintain contact.

After my failed engagement, I got back in touch with D. I felt I owed her an apology, because at one point my ex had used my online messenger account to reach out to D. The ex was extremely jealous and distrustful of my past, so she had initiated an online chat with D in and attempt to find out if I had been in touch with D since we started dating.

About a year later, after the breakup of the engagement, I realized that I had given up my friend for the sake of my relationship, but that relationship was dead and the ex was gone and I felt like I had betrayed my friend.

We started chatting again and eventually rekindled the friendship. In fact, D was a big factor in my recovery from the breakup of the failed engagement. She allowed me to talk about all the mixed emotions I was going through and gave me the benefit of her experiences with relationships. It was quite a while before felt emotionally ready to date again, but by the time I did I had realized that my feelings for D had evolved beyond friendship. And hers had too.

Unfortunately, we were still living a long distance apart.

We have had several failed attempts to get together. We seemed to be victims of bad timing. But six months ago an attempt to get together failed when D decided not to come for a visit at the last minute. For a while, it looked liked that would be the end. But we got past that, or seemed to, and talked through what happened. We talked daily and soon fell back into familiar habits. Our friendship had certainly survived, but our more intimate, romantic relationship had suffered some damage. How much we didn't know.

Meanwhile, pages on the calendar continued to turn. I lost patience and issued what D called an ultimatum. I bristled at calling it an ultimatum, but I would have to admit, that in the final analysis, that is exactly what it was. I put a time limit on us. In early January I gave us until the end of the month to set a date to meet and I have us until the end of February to meet.

That meeting was supposed to be this past weekend. And we didn't meet.

In the end, what happened and how isn't really the issue. But I made the decision to call off the meeting, knowing full well that it would put an end to a relationship that despite some extended breaks, dates back nine years.

You can only hold on to a dream so long. You can only survive on hope for so long. Eventually you need a hand to hold. To live a life together you have to be together.

I did what needed doing and we said our goodbyes as amicably as could be hoped, but I miss my friend and lover. I wish her happiness, health and most of all, I wish her love.

And the blues play on

I don't visit bars as much as I did back in my 20s, or even my 30s, but there is something unbeatable about just the right bar.

Sometime I have a craving for a neighborhood hangout, a little hole in the wall spot where the bartenders and waitresses know your order and have your drink waiting for you by the time you reach your bar stool.

Other times, I have a craving for a sports bar, a place to hang out and grab a burger and a beer while watching a game.

But on some occasions, I really want a place with some high energy, a place that buzzes with electricity from the patrons and a band playing life music. In the months after I moved to Salem, whenever I would ask people I met where was the best place to go for nightlife in town, one of the names that inevitably cropped up was Lefty's Pizzeria and Blues Club.

It was my kind of joint, fitting many of my favorite tastes for food (pizza), beer (microbrews) and music -- in this case, blues.

Blues as been a favorite musical genre since college. Anyone with a taste for blues will tell you, there is nothing like hearing blues live, because like the music it inspired, jazz, musicians improvise during a performance, giving even classic blues songs their own fingerprint.

Unfortunately, I have not had listened to a lot of live blues. But now, living back in the Pacific Northwest, it seemed like I would get more opportunities to do so. Portland has a vibrant and respected blues scene and plays hose every year to the Waterfront Blues Festival. As I came to learn, Lefty's was considered by many one of the best blues venues for live music in the Northwest.

In my early explorations as an iPod owner, I discovered a podcast based out of Portland that talked about the Portland and Northwest blues scene and featured music from artists based here, or who have some connection to Portland and the Pacific Northwest. The podcast, PDX Bluescast, became an immediate favorite.

Sadly, the PDX Bluescast has not had a new episode in over a year now. And now this month came word that Lefty's had closed.

But the blues itself does not die. Just as the legends of the genre eventually pass on, the music itself is passed down to new generations of musicians. And fortunately, I have found a new place to satisfy my thirst for blues, but this one's based a little farther south -- south of the equator and across the Pacific to be precise. My new home for the blues, and the new podcast I turn to for a mix of classic blues and emerging voices is the Salty Dog Blues N Roots Podcast from Melbourne, Australia.

So thanks, Salty, for satisfying that craving, both salty and sweet, tangy and twangy, like a slice of pizza with pepperoni and pineapple and a liberal dose of Tabasco.

RIP Lefty's and the PDX Bluescast. You are missed, but we can all take comfort in the fact that the blues plays on.

I'll show you mine if you show me yours

I'm nothing if not a follower. I've followed the crowd onto the poker craze bandwagon. I haven't become a fanatic about it, but I do occasionally enjoy watching television coverage of professional poker tournaments and play poker now and again online. I even checked out one of the local poker leagues in town once, but haven't made it back to play anymore live games. I like to play the game but am not willing, or able, to put real money where my cards are. At least not yet.

I am among the most amateur of amateurs. But I have won a couple of qualifying tournaments on Bravo TVs Celebrity Poker site. But when you when a qualifying tournament, like I did recently, you are prohibited from playing in their tournament again until the championship tournament, which is in January or something.

So, I signed up with a free online poker website, PokerStars.com, to play there. I signed up earlier today to play in a qualifying tournament for a tournament in the Bahamas. I didn't really expect much out of it, but a way to spend some time and perhaps learn a little more about the game from competing against other people -- across the web if not across the table.

The top 200 finishers qualify for the next round, but the tournament allowed 10,000 to register. So I didn't have any delusions of qualifying, but I hoped to finish "in the money," which required a finish of 1,250th or higher.

After a few hours of playing, I found myself still "sitting" at a virtual table with a stack of digital chips. And I made it into the money. Then I revised my goals to finish higher in the money. And then, eventually the top 200 was within reach. Then, there I was. In the top 200. And still playing.

I eventually made it to the final table of 10. Then the top 5.

I did not, however, win the tournament. But I did finish second. Second out of 10,000. Pretty fucking cool, if I say so myself!

So who else do you tell about an amazing finish in a virtual tournament, but your virtual friends on a blog.

In honor of the finish, here are 10 songs about (sort of about) poker/gambling/cards from my iPod.

Ride Gambler Ride -- Randy Newman
Viva Las Vegas -- ZZ Top
Ace in the Hole -- George Strait
From a Jack to a King -- Ricky Van Shelton
Aces -- Suzy Bogguss
Luck of the Draw -- Bonnie Raitt
Ace Up Your Pretty Sleeve -- Vince Gill
Desperado -- The Eagles
Good Run of Bad Luck -- Clint Black
Viva Las Vegas -- Elvis Presley

I think I am missing a step

Well, I'm getting nearer to my long-time goal of becoming a professional blogger. I finally have a PayPal account, which would allow me to accept donations from the legions of fans that happen across my blog.

I also recently signed up for a Skype account, which seemed to be the online communication software of choice for international bloggers, podcasters and vloggers.

It would be ideal. I've been needing a part-time job to help cover some bills, so this would work out perfectly.

There's only one flaw to my plan.

The piece to the puzzle that I'm missing is that I only seem to make a new post about once every blue moon, this no one come here and there is no one to donate to my new "profession."

It's always something.

Ultimate blind date

OK, so after my last post, perhaps there is the perception that I am only lamenting a lost love and I have no immediate prospects for a new relationship. That isn't the case.

So there is this woman. Everything about her and our relationship is a contradiction.

I've known her almost 7 years, but we've never met.

She's beautiful, but I have no idea what she looks like.

She's become by best friend, but we remain strangers.

We can, and do, talk about everything but there are some things I'm a too scared to tell her.

I cannot wait until we can be together, but I'm terrified at the prospect of being in the same room with her.

Our meeting is long overdue and yet it's coming way too fast.

I'll try to explain.

By friend and recent guest blogger, known by the apropos nickname of Brat, and I have scheduled a meeting in a little more than a month. We started talking online before the turn of the century using AOL Instant Messenger. She struck up the first conversation based on one of the items in my user profile. I was living at the time in a small town in central California that she knew because a former boyfriend had lived there. Actually they were engaged. He was the love of her life and broke her heart. Then, years later, in a wierd way, he introduced us.

Our early conversations were pretty light and given that we were living a large distance from each other, it was highly unlikely anything would come of those talks. At the time, I didn't see the brat that Brat would become. Not that I'm a wild man or anything, but my new cyberfriend seemed far too nice for someone like me. Our conversations were pretty, um, polite, and squeeky clean. In fact on of the exclamations that we used at the time still survives in our conversations to this day. I'm not sure which one of us started it, but we both use it now. We say "oh my" when something surprising or shocking pops up in our talks. Offline, I am more likely to say "holy shit" for some other profanity in the normal course of conversation, but she seemed too nice to swear in front of. If this woman had been Catholic I would have pegged her as just a few inches shy of tripping on the threshold of the convent door.

Holy shit! Did I have some things to learn.

And I've learned a lot. And told a lot. We've laughed and cried and, well, let's just say we've flirted, a lot. If flirtation leads to heavy breathing and beads of sweat, then yes, we've flirted quite heavily.

But there have been times when we've drifted apart. I had a splended affair with a woman I also met online at roughly the same time I met Brat. My lover taught me to open up sexually and share thoughts and feelings that I would have previously assumed would have gotten me slapped. I had a great time and made a good friend, but my heart was engorged like the rest of my anatomy by the affair and I played the role of arrogant ass to the best of my ability and dumped her.

A year or so later I dated a woman for a while. She was too young for me and completely wrong for me but she made me grin like an idiot for a few splended weeks. Then she dumped me by refusing to take my calls or return my e-mails. It may not have been too bad except for the fact that we worked together. What is that they say about not dipping your pen in the company ink? Well, my pin never got dipped anywhere precisely, but it's still sound advice because it made going to work quite difficult for a while.

It was such sound advice that a year or so later I decided to ask another woman I worked with out. This would be the ex from the previous post. She literally took me places, geographically and emotionally, that I had never been before. So I gave her a ring. Six month later she gave it back. It's taken longer to get rid of the ring, and the emotional baggage left behind (some of which I'm obviously still dutifully packing around), than that entire romance lasted.

But Brat has helped me pack a lot of that baggage away. Some of it has been mercifully tossed out. And some locked away in trunks out of site. But there are some remnants lingering around, like gum stuck to my shoe.

And now, my sticky shoes and I are waiting for a plane. It's not getting here for several weeks, but we need the time to prepare. To get ourselves spit-polished and ready for company.

Given the long reamble to this meeting and the emotional attachments that have developed over the years, there are high expecations for that meeting. No pressure, no pressure.

I'm full of questions and a few worries about this whole meeting. I haven't dated anyone since the breakup of my engagement. She had a pretty emotional breakup herself a while back, but she's had a fling or two since. She's experienced her "rebound" relationship. Should I have? I don't know? There is a lot of conventional wisdom and advice about love and romance, but it's difficult to know if wisdon and advice apply to matters of emotion.

One thing is clear already. She is a person I care about, even though we haven't met in the conventional sense. We talk almost every day. But what will happen when we are finally together?

That is the big unanswered question.

Relationships
Online romance

Who's my daddy?

I got this from Brando over at One Child Left Behind. He had a post about running photos through a comparison to celebrity faces at MyHeritage.com. So I decided to give it a try.

Like Brando, I ran multiple photos through the comparison. Unlike Brando, I'm not going to post the actual photo comparisons. I'm just shy. Well, and I don't want anyone to suffer retinal damage just for having the misfortune of reading this blog. But if anyone is curious about what I might look like, I'll tell you who some of the people MyHeritage thinks I look like.

The results were mixed to say the least. Among the celebrities and notables MyHeritage thinks I have a resemblance to are:

Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense
Bill Gates, Mr. Microsoft
John Glenn, former astronaut and former U.S. Senator
Michael Moore, crusading movie director
Billy Bob Thornton, movie actor
Keith Moon, dead drummer for rock band The Who
Ozzy Osbourne, heavy metal rocker
Peter Jackson, movie director
Matt Groening, cartoonist and creator of "The Simpsons," "Futurama" and the comic strip "Life in Hell"
Robert Zemeckis, movie director
Tennessee Williams, the late legendary playwright
Harrison Ford, actor
Bing Crosby, late crooner/actor
Robert Altman, movie director
Mel Brooks, comic, writer, director
Charlton Heston, actor
Kevin Costner, actor

Talk about a collection of geeks, freaks, writers, rockers, artists and assholes -- and a pretty high ratio of goofy-looking fucks.

Sadly, that's pretty much a right-on description.

Celebrity look-alike

Follow up to parenting by MSN Messenger

My daughter changed her quote.

I don't know if it was my influence or not, but today, when she logged on when I was online, her MSN Messenger quote had been changed. It was still a line from a lyric, or appears to be based on my online research, but it's not the Tenacious D song about a threesome with a reference to fucking to '70s music.

The new line appears to be out of a song called "Such Great Heights". My guess is my daughter is familiar with the cover version by Iron & Wine off the "Garden State" movie soundtrack, not the original by Postal Service. I'm not sure I could tell you which is which, although I have seen "Garden State" and actually bought the DVD of that movie that is now somewhere in my daughter's house.

Anyway, she changed the quote. And when we chatted online today I didn't mention the quote at all and made no reference to our conversation last night. And she talked, or typed, back. We had a nice little chat. And when I said I loved her she said she loved me too. So, maybe I'm not the highest ranking member of the shit list after all.

Parenthood
MSN Messenger

Parenting by MSN Messenger

I spent the day with my daughter and her family on Saturday. Well, I should say part of the day. The part of the day we spent at my daughter's mom's house, my daughter spend in her room. Not exactly the picture of family togetherness.

It's getting harder and harder to have much quality time, even though I'm now living closer and getting to spend more frequent time with her.

I got copies of her new school pictures, which is great. Unfortunately, picture day was about a week before she got her braces off. And she's had her hair highlighted, so she already looks different than her freshman year photo.

It was a nice day. The family took me out to lunch and made me dinner for my birthday, which was nice. And I got to see my new niece for a little while and her big sister, so that was nice too, even though I missed my older niece's soccer game. So I'm going to try to go up and see her last game of the season next week.

The rest of the day we spent just doing ordinary family stuff. I help my daughter's mom and her partner build the computer desk we bought back in the spring and which has been sitting in its box for months.

When I got back home a little while ago I logged on to find my daughter, where she was when I left, online and sitting at the computer. MSN Messenger allows you to add a personal quote to your screen name. My daughter changes hers quite often. She had a new one tonight. It reads:

"Put on a cool '70s groove, a funky groove to fuck to."

My daughter is 14.

I was not amused. So I asked her about it.

Apparently she was amused, because she answered me back with an "lol".

She informed me the quote was from a Tenacious D song. I, being tragically unhip, do not have any Tenacious D in my musical library.

I told her I didn't think it was funny and I think it may give guys some bad ideas.

There was no response.

I told her I just wanted to let her know I made it home (not that she was losing any sleep about it). "And please consider changing the quote."

No response.

So I said I loved her and I would talk to later.

Still no response.

So I said goodbye and waited.

Still no response.

So I logged off.

I keep in contact with some friends and family by IM programs. But it feels pretty damn inadequate to try to be a parent over MSN Messenger.

Oh, and in case your curious, the Tenacious D song is apparently called "Double Team", and yea it's pretty much about what the title would lead you to think.

Look, I'm far from a prude. But I am scared shitless about my daughter trying to be "cool" and ending up doing something she's not ready for with a boy, or boys. Lord knows, I will probably never be ready for her to have an active sex life, but 14 is much too young. And not that listening to songs about sex means she's doing any such thing. Lord knows at 14 I was probably saying things and listening to things that would have shocked my parents. But I just don't know how to do this. I don't know how to be a parent of a teenage daugher. I don't know if it's appropriate to try to act like a parent when I have been not much more than a sperm donor and a periodic visitor for her entire short life.

But I didn't move back here just to share sunny days at the park with her. I came back to be here for her, in good times and bad. Does that mean I'm merely a silent observer and walking ATM machine?

I don't know.

So, all you parents out there, what should I have done? And what should I do?

Parenthood
MSN Messenger
Family

Diesel powered internet romance

A friend of mine from Coos Bay sent me a link to a Web site. A dating Web site.

I wonder if she's trying to tell me something.

The site she sent me information about is called FarmersOnly.com. The site is getting a little online buzz at places like eWooing.com and 802 Online and some newspaper stories as well.

FarmersOnly has an interesting premise. It's a site for farmers, ranchers and other country folks to help them meet. Because, well, the hours can suck on a farm and it's hard to get out much.

I wonder if she's trying to tell me something.

The site is pretty new. It's only been out there since May, and it is starting to grow, with folk from all over the country that like wide open spaces and someone to share them with. There are people of all ages on the site, but what really surprised me is that there are young people on there, 19, 20, 22, etc., looking for dates. With farmers, cowgirls and other assorted country bumpkins.

Give me a break. How hard is it to get a date when you are in your late teens and early 20s? Hell, even I had a fairly active social life back then. Of course now that I'm getting older, I could see the value of a service like this, especially if you live in a small town. I mean, dating in a small town is tricky enough.

I remember when I was in high school, and this was a very small school, when one couple broke up, there would be a series of breakups. And couples would start trading in boyfriends or girlfriends for other models depending on who was now on the market in sort of a small town adolescent version of wife swapping. Why not just have a kegger orgy and get it over with people. OK, maybe they did. I was probably sent out on a beer run when all the fun was going on.

But I just can't bring myself to actually sign up for an online dating service.

OK, I did it once, but I was coerced by a lover to do it. She signed up for a service called UDate and, so she thought I should do it too.

I wonder if she was trying to tell me something.

Of course I let that woman talk me into some things that are better left unsaid unless very drunk, and even then, well, let's just not go there. Those are probably stories left for another blog with a more, um, adult theme.

Anyway, what was I talking about? Oh, yea, online dating. I never did get any nibbles on that UDate site by the way.

So, if I ever do decide to go the online dating route again, I may try that FarmersOnly.com site. OK, so I don't own or work any land, and would be about useless on a farm. But I have an old beat-up pickup truck, an old-beat up cowboy hat and a few pairs of old beat-up cowboys boots and enough big buckles to make any goat roper drool.

Do women rope goats? If not, I may be in trouble. Why is that man looking at my crotch?

Online dating
FarmersOnly.com

Look Ma, no wires

I bought a couple of new toys yesterday. So this is my first official "wireless" post.

When I got Internet service working here at my new apartment, I had a messed up system in place. Because of limited locations for the phone jacks, and my phone company is my DSL provider, I had a cable stretching from my modem on one side of the kitchen to my computer on the other opposing wall. So I ended up having a cable hanging across the front of my kitchen about a foot off the ground, which meant I had to step over the cord every time I went into the kitchen.

It was not a good setup, and I came close to either breaking my neck or ripping the cord out of the wall several times tripping over the damn thing.

So yesterday, I picked up a wireless network adapter to connect to my modem, and now have a wireless connection. So, now, once I get my new computer desk, I'll be able to move the computer back to the spare room, which I intended to make into my office in the first place and get it off my kitchen table.

I also picked up a jump drive to make it easier to transport material back and forth from my home PC and my office Mac.

And best of all, I got out of Best Buy without spending an arm and a leg. But I was tempted. There were some cool new laptops. But, I wanted to make sure I could get the wireless thing working before I spend 2 months rent on a new toy, which I really don't need.

Well, I better go to work, since I haven't upgraded technology enough to telecommute. Which is probably good, otherwise I'd probably never get dressed.

Technology
Toys

Back connected to the wider world

Oh my fucking God! It seems like it has been forever since I've had Internet access. But I now have my own place and all utilities, including Web service connected.

I'm feeling more complete, and less out of touch. There were a few glitches with the Internet installation, so I've still got some issues to resolve, and I've got some chores to take care of, but I hope to be back to making regular posts, and catching up on some favorite blogs, soon.

For the record, moving is a major pain in the ass!

Moving

Quotes heard online

"You're the witty one after all. I'm just the naked one."

-- Brat

"Blogger doesn't like me. I guess it doesn't like naked people."

-- Brat

Apparently some people blog in the nude.

Who knew?

Update:

"Don't write things that I say in our personal conversations on the Internet."

-- Brat

"I like being naked. Is there anything wrong with it?"

-- Brat

Update II:

"What? I make a comment and you update your blog? Shit. Good thing I wasn't saying anything bad like I want you to fuck me or something."

-- Brat

Blogging
Nudity
Online chat
Naked blogging

Cyber hell

I am lost in dial-up Internet hell, so I won't try to get too elaborate here. I'm visiting family who live out in the middle of BFE in rural Eastern Oregon. OK, so that was redundant. Anyway, posting like this is nuts, so new pearls of wisdom may have to wait until I get back to my own computer and a stable Internet connection.

I guess home is where the dsl is.

And of course that is assuming I still have a home and my place wasn't washed away by the rains and flooding in Palm Springs and the Coachella Valley this week. But all things considered, I think I'd rather take my chances with winter rains in Palm Springs than freezing fog here in BFE, which is what we have going on at my present location. We had snow today, rain and now freeing fog, making for black ice on the roads. My parents have a police scanner, so I'm sitting here listening to all the calls for cops and ambulances for all the cars spinning off the roads and flipping over on the Interstate.

I don't miss this cold weather and bad roads crap. Not for a second. Family, yes. Old friends, yes. But not temperatures below freezing.

Internet
Weather
Travel

Does technology aid or hinder relationships?

It's been about 10 years now since the whole Internet revolution became part of my life. Back in the old days. E-mail, instant messaging, chat rooms, and now blogs, have certainly changed the ways people interact. Isn't it funny how people will say things to other people, strangers really, about themselves that they probably don't say to their best friends out there in the "real world?"

But for some people, the online world becomes their world. I suppose I have been as guilty of that any anyone. Although not all voyages into cyberspace have been rewarding.

Back when I was on aol lurking in chat rooms and getting billed by the minute, I got into an unhealthy pattern with some big aol bills for all the time I was spending online. Not cool. I discovered this whole subculture with this group of people who used to meet in this one geographic chatroom where people actually met periodically for parties and other gatherings. I even went to one. We all wore nametags with our screen names on them so people could put the face to the person they "knew" from online. It wasn't my scene. Going to parties with friends is one thing, but driving 60 miles to go to someone's house that I didn't know was outside my comfort zone. I guess I'm glad I went, but didn't like it enough to go back for another chatroom gathering.

A couple of times I met one-on-one with a couple of people I chatted with. Also an awkward situation. Didn't care much for that either. Although there is one woman I met up with a few times. We got to be pretty regular chat buddies online, and we had lunch a few times in the real world. The funny thing was, we got along much better online than off. We had quite the witty little dialogue going at the keyboard. It just didn't click face to face. And there were certainly no romantic sparks, which if truth be told was probably what we were both after. She later ended up marrying a guy she had met online and moving to Nebraska or somewhere. We lost touch some years back.

Now I mostly use online chat services to keep in touch with family and friends, people I know from the real world, who I maintain ties with thanks to technology. But there are two exceptions. One is a friend I met online, refered to in an earlier post as T. T and I started out as friends, became lovers, and came back around to being friends. I still hear from her occassionally, although I try not to interject myself into her life too often. She's now happily married (to a guy she met online) and living her own life. I get the occassional e-mail joke forwarded from her (God I hate those forwards, particularly the chain e-mails).

But there is one woman I met online and have known for more than 6 years now. I'll call her D. We've never actually met. In fact I've only seen a few fuzzy pictures of her, and one old photo of her. If I walked past her on the street, I probably wouldn't even know it was her. Yet, I know her probably better than about anyone in the world, or certainly so it seems, which makes it feel like I would know her instantly, even in a crowded room. We've chatted online and on the phone off and on over the last 6 years. The off periods have mostly been when one or the other of us -- or both -- were dating someone else. We've tried to get together a time or two, but fate (or bad luck or God's cruel sense of humor or something) has always got in the way. I actually had a plane ticket purchased once a few years back to fly to her Midwest locale, but she ended up in the hospital the night before I was supposed to fly out, and the trip was scuttled.

I had a lot of female friends when I was in school. Not a lot of girlfriends mind you, but female friends. There were a couple of girlfriends, but nothing really serious -- or really fun -- until I got into college. But the girls used to let me hang around. I was often the confidante, hearing about their troubles with this boyfriend, or the crush on this other guy and why wasn't he paying enough attention to her, etc. I guess I sort of fell in to the gay-male-friend role in my small town school, because we either didn't have any gay boys in our school or they were so far in the closet as to avoid getting their asses kicked regularly by a bunch of redneck farm boys otherwise known as the male half of the student body. Redneck farm boys didn't like the idea of man-on-man lovin' and they carried guns in the gunracks of their pickups. Anyway, I was sort of a geek, and not exactly popular with the popular girls in "that way," so I got to hang out with them by hearing their boy troubles. If you have to yearn, it's much better to yearn with the girl whispering in your ear, than yearn from afar while she whispers in some other guy's ear.

So, anyway, I like the company of women, and generally find conversations with women much more interesting than men. I'm not a great conversationalist, and can be vocally a bit monosyllabic. I speak slowly, haltingly, and have a habit some people seem to find very annoying, which is thinking before I speak (unless I've had a little liquor to lubricate the tongue). But that tends to make me a good listener, since often before I can respond to some comment or the other, my companion has moved on to the next throught. So, I've had many conversations with women over the years, although perhaps a bit one sided (which may be why the "real me" tends to come out more at the keyboard than over dessert at some cafe-de-courtship. But, I never had conversations with previous female friends like I once had with T and still have with D.

D is indeed a special case. About two years ago, D and I were talking about trying to figure out a way to end the long distance correspondence and actually get together, and with a real prospect of that happening within a few months time (after nearly 5 years, what's a couple of months right?). But then I messed up the plan. I met a woman that I was extremely smitten with here in Palm Springs. So, what did I do? To put it simply, I told D so long and pursued the relationship with the woman here in town. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time. That old saying about a bird in the hand being worth two in the bush seemed to apply, and there was an attractive bird at hand. So, I brushed of D.

Hated it.

Felt awfully about it.

But I did it anyway.

And I can't say it was a completely frivolous crush or anything, because the bird at hand (henseforth to be knows as the ex) and I did get together, moved in together. I asked her to marry me back on Christmas Eve of last year. So, it wasn't a minor schoolboy crush here. But to cut to the chase on that story, I got the engagement ring back in June, and promptly preceeded to watch the life I thought I was building crash down around my ankles like a cheap set of Legos.

Shortly after I started to try to reassemble my Legos, and reconfigure them from Legos-built-for-two to bachelor-building blocks, I decided I needed to try to apologize to D. Not that I expected anything to come of it, I just didn't like the way I left it and I wanted her to know I was sorry for just disappearing. There was that and the fact that my ex who thought I must be maintaining contact with D, actually contacted her (online) and quizzed D to figure out when I had cut the cord, etc. D called my cell phone to see if it was me or someone else online. D wrote me an e-mail after that to explain why she called, and I never replied. I felt bad about that also.

So, I wrote to D after I had got my own apartment -- and my own therapist -- and was trying to remember what I used to do when I wasn't part of that two-headed creature known as "we." So, I reached out to D, and to a lot of family members and old friends who I had lost contact with over the year-plus I was so wrapped up in the ex that nothing else seemed to matter. It was sort of like an alcoholic going through the steps, trying to atone for past sins. To my surprise D wrote back. More than that, she listened to me and offered sage advice on how to recover from a breakup. She too had experienced a failed engagement and a more recent breakup with someone she cared deeply about. She helped me get better. She helped me heal. She helped me find hope again.

And D and I have rekindled our online/telephone/e-mail relationship, now with the added technological components of text messages and blogs. I've never been able to satisfactorily describe our relationship to myself, let alone others. In many ways it is more intimate in its communication than any relationship I've ever experienced. And strong feelings develop from those deep, philosophical, emotional -- and yes often erotic and blatantly sexual -- conversations. When I can't talk to her, online or by phone, I miss her. She is now the one I want to talk about my day with, and frankly the one I think about building Legos with. The only problem is that we live more than 1,000 miles and two time zones apart. We've never looked into each other's eyes. We have never held hands or snuggled under a blanket and watched movies on the couch. Yet, she touches me in ways and places no one else ever has, or perhaps ever will.

Is that some false sense of Internet intimacy? Or is it real? It feels real, and I hold out hope that it is. Perhaps the answer to my query posed at the top of this post is written in her eyes.

I miss you D. Thanks for helping me salvage another year and the only life I've got. Here's to making 2005 the magical, mystical year.

Relationships
Internet