What has happened since my last post? Part 1...

Ok, I know it has been a while. Stop hounding me. I haven't given up on this whole blog thing yet... I've just been busy. With what, you ask? I hope you have enough time to read this post because a lot has happened since September 20th.

A month ago I could buy a Hot n' Ready pizza from Little Caesars for just $5. No longer is that the case. Just 2 days ago on my way home from work I was stuck at a light and saw this:

I know its a crappy picture, but the sign now indicates that a Hot n' Ready pizza is now $5.55! I have claimed for a while now that you know the economy is totally in the dumpster when the Hot n' Ready pizza index passes $5. Look at the gloomy clouds in the picture above. That's foreshadowing of what is about to happen. We may lose the 99 cent double stack sooner than we think! Speaking of double stacks... I went through a phase during my last blog post where I was eating several of those a week. Lately I have been down to around 1 a week. I may need to ramp that up a bit now that my money is worth less.

In September I purchased an iPhone. It is amazing just like everyone said it was. I like that I can be on the road and check the scores of my teams, check my email, play games, listen to music, make calls, take pictures etc, etc, etc all on one device. Right after I got it I went on a road trip to visit my cousins in Indiana and listened to streaming podcasts on it through my car stereo. Pretty amazing how simple everything is to set up. I could go on about this for like 18,000 paragraphs, but just Google it and get your 1,000,000,000 results instead :-) 

At the beginning of September I also randomly got a $59.97 charge on my credit card. I had no clue what the heck the charge was until it finally posted, but I was very curious because I consistently owe nothing on my cards and watch them like a hawk if something appears. It turns out it was a renewal fee for an auto 6 month billing from Match.com. Yes, Match.com. I was on it for a while after Jen and I split up in January. I even went on a few dates and they were ok... nothing special... just ok. Oh and there are a lot of crazy people on that site, so be wary of that if you join. Anyways, I pretty much had given up on that site back in August and just decided to be more assertive in 'real' life. (Side note on the 'assertive' plan... it led to me asking out a bartender at a local pub that I used to frequent, from which we went on a couple dates... things were ok until I learned she is crazy. For some reason the topic of willow trees came up during a conversation at Shakespeares. She must have guided the conversation to willow trees because I could not even remotely care about them. Anyways, once I said "willow tree"... she started crying a little and said "I loooove willow trees" and proceeded to take off her shirt (yes, in the middle of the bar) revealing a large willow tree tattoo on her back. That was pretty crazy if you ask me. She did have about 7 Guiness pints and a couple shots in her at the time though... seems like a lot for a 2nd date hehe) Ok, back to the whole Match.com thing. I log into the site to basically cancel my account and get reimbursed for the $59.97 renewal fee and there is a message waiting for me from someone who actually sounds like she has a great personality, is smart, and is really cute in her pictures (a rare combination on there). So we start emailing back and forth over the next week or two. Her name is Melissa, by the way. We eventually talk on the phone and set up a first date at Main St on Thursday of the following week.

Shortly after getting the iPhone, I went to the Sigur Ros concert with Eric. The concert was on a Tuesday night, so I ended up going to his house on Sunday and just worked remotely on Monday and Tuesday that week. During that time I was fighting a losing battle to insomnia... so I was exhausted the entire time and kept trying to fall asleep over there without luck. My first date with Melissa was scheduled for Thursday that week, but I received an email about a divorce party for Kevin at work, which happens to take place at Main St. on Thursday afternoon... the exact place where Melissa and I were going to have our first date. So, I call her up and see if we can move the date up to Wednesday and change the restaurant because I didn't want to go to Main St on Wednesday and Thursday and I certainly did not want our first date to be associated with a divorce party! We agreed to meet at Olive Garden on Wednesday instead. I hope I can live through this insomnia long enough to survive those days...

On Tuesday before the concert we went to Hockeytown cafe, which was right next to the concert venue, to grab some food. I had some steak sandwich panini thingamajig... it was mediocre at best. Then we headed to the show. The concert was fantastic. We had special preorder tickets that let us enter the general admission area ahead of most other people. So we got front and center on the first tier above the main floor. It was a really good spot. They played pretty much everything I had hoped and even dumped a ludicrous amount of confetti on the crowd during the middle of one of their more upbeat songs.

After the concert I drive home and get back around 2am. I manage to get a few hours of sleep and end up calling in to take the morning off so I can at least try to sleep some more. Melissa and I meet over at Olive Garden and continue our conversations from the emails and phone calls. We get along great and she is just as cute as she is in her pictures (also doesn't happen frequently with online dates, by the way). After dinner I didn't want the date to end yet and neither did she so we end up settling on mini-golf. About 2 or 3 holes into mini-golf we are both dying. Mosquitos are everywhere! I say "forget this, chalk this up as a bad idea... let's get a rain check" and we get a couple rain checks and decide to watch a movie instead. No good movies are out... so I ask her if she would be comfortable coming over and watching a DVD. She is ok with that and we watch Juno. It was a good first date overall, we talked through the whole movie and dinner and seemed to really be a good match (no pun intended). Good thing they didn't cancel my account on Match.com when my subscription ran out, otherwise I would have never met her.

The next day was Kevin's party. I asked Melissa on our first date if she would be interested in meeting me at Main St around 7pm after most of the party should be cleared out and she shouldn't feel too overwhelmed by meeting so many of "the guys" right away. She agrees and shows up at 7 and even brings Kevin a gift! Kudos to her for that gesture! A few people were still left and she got along with everyone. She came back to my place again after the party and watched some football with me and my roommate for a while before heading out for the night. It was a really good second date... we were totally comfortable with each other and that is when I started to realize quickly where this was going. Here is a picture of her at Main St. A lot more happened over the past month. It will take several posts to go over everything, so stay tuned!