9/20/09: Pho

Hi guys! Wow! So much has happened this week that I can already feel myself getting ahead of ... well ... myself! So, I'll take a breath and start from the beginning.

This is first real date with Bar pick up Guy. As you recall we met on Saturday night. Fast forward to Sunday evening ... I check my phone on the way home from a friend's BBQ and I see that I've missed a call from a number I don't know and then have a text from that same number. It's from him!! Can you actually believe that he called THE NEXT DAY??? I looked around quickly to make sure that I hadn't unwittingly stepped into some sort of parallel universe and called him back. We chatted for a bit and made plans to meet in about an hour for dinner. I rushed home, freshened myself, and met him at his door.

We walked to the restaurant and encountered a pretty sizeable wait for a table. This is a difficult social situation on your typical first date, for various reasons. First, you are forced to stand there and make conversation with this person, probably in an uncomfortably small waiting area or hallway, with people bumping and jostling as they come and go. Second, there is no alcohol or other social lubricant that can help you get through this bit of potentially awkward conversation. With this guy though, it was fine. We chatted throughout the wait, throughout dinner, and then right on through a post-dinner drink at a little bar down the street. It was really great. He's very interesting, has lived all over the world and most and best of all ... seems completely normal, stable, and adult.

HALLELUJAH!!

So, the drink ... he suggested going back to his place, getting a couple beers, and sitting on the front stoop. I declined because there was something about going back to his house on the first date that didn't sit right with me. Too familiar, too tempting should one beer turn into four. We settled on the bar and it all worked out fine. After the drink, it was quittin' time and he walked me home (well, us home really ... since we live on the same street), dropped me at my door and gave me a really fantastic hug goodbye. He asked me whether I was free to go to dinner sometime in the coming week and I said YES!! Again I looked around for the sign that I had somehow left my previous loser-dating life and fallen into the rabbit hole but there was no such evidence. Maybe something will work out? Whoda thunk it?

I went to sleep that night, happy, ready for the week, excited to have met this lovely man. Who shall be known henceforth as: Salt'n'Pepa ... SNP for short.