A Date, In Three Parts

So, my date on Friday night.

Y'all want a report, right? Well, the best way to describe it is to compare it to a Jr. High Spring Musical. It started off poorly, then got sort of OK in the middle, ended pretty well, but in retrospect should never have happened.

In Which It Started Off Poorly:
So Captain Awesome (that's his nickname, because he thinks he's so awesome) was supposed to call me on Thursday night with the details of where we would be going to dinner on Friday. We were planning on meeting in Baltimore. Here's a rough transcript of the call:

CA: Hi, what are you doing?
Me: I'm busy watching The Office season finale.
CA: That's cool. So I hope your day was good. This is what I did today, blah, blah, blah, blah [transaction not recorded because it was way less interesting than The Office.] blah, blah, blah, blaaaaaaahh.
Me: hmmmm. Ok.
CA: So I haven't figured out where we should go tomorrow. Have you ever heard of "Johnny's"?
Me: No. I never go out to eat in Baltimore so I don't know any restaurants there.
CA: Well, it sounds like it's a diner so I don't think we should go there.
Me: Alright, let's not go there.
CA: Have you ever been on Broadway?
Me: No. I never go out in Baltimore, so I don't really know the street names.
CA: It looks like there are a lot of places on Broadway, we could just walk into one.
Me: [getting impatient because I'm missing some really funny parts in The Office.] That'd be fine, but there will be a wait. I'm just sayin. .......... Alright. [clearly, I have to take control of this situation, otherwise this will take all night.] I have heard of one restaurant called The Blue Agave. It's supposed to be pretty good mexican food.
CA: The blue what?
Me: Agave. It's a cactus.
CA: What?
Me: AGAVE. A-G-A-V-E. Agave.
CA: Oh! The Blue Agate?
Me: No. Agave, with a V! V as in Victor. AGAVE!
CA: Oh, Agave. Ok. I'll look that one up and call you tomorrow with details.
Me: Great. Bye.

That little convo didn't win big points with me. The next day I got a text followed by a phone call that said, "Hey let's go to the Blue Agave, it's the best Mexican food in Baltimore." And I was like, Yeah, I know - I told you that, moron.

So I was less jazzed than before to go out. But I just kept thinking, Tortillas ... mmmm, Tortillas ... to keep up my spirits as I drove up to Baltimore.

I should have known better than to go into Baltimore with only roughly copied out directions. Baltimore is the equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle for me and I NEVER go into Baltimore without getting hopelessly lost. So there I was following my directions, when suddenly the street I was supposed to be following disappeared. Poof! Gone!! I drove all around the intersection where it disappeared, but it never reappeared. And then ... well, then, what was there to do besides just keep driving? With no idea of where I was going I quickly found myself deep in the heart of The Ghetto. And I'm not talking about some grungy area that white people call the ghetto because they've never seen a trash pile on a street before, but the REAL LIFE GHETTO with rows of abandoned and boarded up buildings and people out on the corner looking all shifty-eyed. Ghet-TO.

The only thing to do was to keep driving. Yes, keep driving, because if I were to stop the scene would probably have looked a lot like those Amazonian Army Ants that swarm along their path leaving only a MINI steering wheel behind.

As I drove, I called Captain Awesome to tell him how much I hate Baltimore and that I was hopelessly lost. Fortunately, he had a GPS and so he got my coordinates and came and rescued me. Which was .... embarrassing. To say the least. He thought it was great though. Like some knight in shining armor and I was his damsel in distress. Whatever.

By the time we got back to where the restaurant was, our reservation was long gone. Not willing to postpone eating any further we went to The Hard Rock Cafe in the Inner Harbor. When I told Camie this later she burst out laughing. And I was like "What's so funny about that?" And she said that she couldn't think of any situation that was LESS like me. "You hate the Inner Harbor and you hate Hard Rock Cafe." Which is true. She knows me well.

In Which it Got OK and Ended Pretty Well:

Things really picked up when I finally got to eat some food. I was starving. And irritated after my tour of the Slums of Baltimore. I ordered a salad, which was ok despite the 1/4 inch of water in the bottom of the dish. He ordered a chicken sandwich with fries. I reflected on how they should really serve salads with a side of fries. I mention this because later we were talking about our eating habits and he said this: "What I ate tonight? I never eat like this. Really. I don't. Never. I can't believe I ate it tonight. I don't know what I was thinking." I made some comment about how I eat a hearty diet of junk food, but inside I was thinking, "Shoot! I should have asked for his fries!"

After eating, we headed back to our cars, and I headed home without incident.

In Which I Reflect:

So on the phone Captain Awesome talks and talks and talks and talks. Which at first was OK. But now it's mostly annoying, because every once in a while I'd like to say something. But I can't, because he's talking. I hoped that in person this wouldn't be such a problem, because he'd see from the Shut-The-Hell-Up expression on my face that I had something to say. And it was slightly better ... but when I looked back on our conversation I realized that he would let me start a story, but then interrupt and we'd end up talking about whatever he had brought up. And I was bamboozled into never actually getting to say anything.

Also, he's amazingly narrow minded and judgmental. And I've got enough weirdness in my life that I don't need anyone walking into it with a lot of opinions about how I should be living it. (He'd definitely not approve of the amount of cheeseburgers I consume in a given year, for example.)

So. As far as second date's go, it wasn't too bad. Not great - especially the getting lost part. But not terrible. Do I want to go out again? No, not really. But I don't really want to go out with anyone. Dating is just way more effort than its worth. I can buy my own watered down salad, thankyouverymuch.