Feet of Clay

Helene Fischer photo credit.

Unformed thoughts are the clay surrounding the part-time writer's feet. There is one thought that's gradually making its way out of the earth, coagulating into something vaguely worthwhile, and it's this: the envelope. I think we daters and searchers for the one have an envelope problem.

Aviation types talk about the envelope quite a bit. The envelope is the closed line drawn on a piece of paper that defines the capabilities of an aeroplane - airplane for you North American types. Stay within the line, and you remain within the parameters of what the plane can do. It includes everything from the stresses of speed and g-force to the range on a given amount of fuel. The envelope corrals the machine. Importantly, every machine has its own defining characteristics creating a distinctive-looking envelope.

So the unformed thought is that every individual has a life envelope too. Some parts of life we all know - eating, drinking, breathing - but there are tons of specific experiences that define who we are. Lots of these, along with their combination, go a long way to telling others just who we are. And maybe, just maybe, we should look for someone with a similar envelope.

Perhaps finding someone with a similar envelope is a better way to find someone compatible. That's all.



Bottoms Up, Adventurers.

Hope Springs Eternal

As an underaged but regular drinker, Friday nights were everything. Sports, school, vacations: nothing came close to that specific nervous anticipation before meeting my buddies for (illegal) drinks on the last day of the week.

Naturally there's something about being a teenager. One has the sure knowledge that you have the world completely by the balls. As a male, my own balls told me everything I needed - that I could get away with the underage drinking gig; my parents would never know; that I would be irresistible to girls; that this time would last forever.

Wrong. On all four counts.

But the pain of such mistakes lead to refining the plan. Once I was a legal drinker, the focus shifted from the thrill of drinking in public to the women one might meet in the process. The Friday night anticipation - and associated excited nervousness - persisted, not for the booze, but for the broads. A little success in the romance department whilst drinking sealed the deal.

Alcohol reduces inhibition (duh) a fact I continually learn and sometimes regret, usually the morning after. So it's (again, duh) no surprise that drinking and dating go together like gin and tonic. More accurately drinking and pre-dating go together, because nothing puts one in mind of meeting the love of one's life than a glass or two of champagne, or 1.2 martinis, or a teaspoon of absinthe, or whatever gets you to the perfect drinking buzz.

Forgive me then if this love affair with drinking, friends, and the chance of meeting new lady friends mash up with Friday night anticipation, for this I know is true: If you walk into a bar and order a drink, you never know with whom you'll walk out.




Bottoms Up, Barflies!



Pic from Sports Illustrated (obv) and here [link]

Easy, Like Sunday Morning.

Finding new ways to weed out possible Mrs Wombats has become a sort of hobby of mine. Dating websites all do this more-or-less the same way, with written profiles and canned questions. I dislike dating websites.

To my mind shoe-horning the individual into these boxes cannot meaningfully tell us that much about them. Most people find writing about themselves difficult. That part of their profile then becomes an exercise in satisfying the minimum word-count, with commensurate usefulness. Asking me whether I'm black or white or hispanic is meaningless, in my opinion. My star-sign? Yeah, whatever.

So I have tried to create a series of questions that ask about stuff that I think will tell me something about the other person, in relation to me. Make sense? Maybe not. Here's an example, which you might care to answer.

What does your ideal Sunday morning look like? And if it's different, what do you actually do?






Pic from here [link]