"Nice" Guys

It's time to identify a trend in my dating life.  They are all pretty much assholes.  I know everyone is always saying, "Why do girls always date bad guys?" or something like, "Nice guys always finish last."  Last night I went out with someone who is just really nice to me.  He just right away seems like a genuinely good guy. He asked me to get a drink and talk about a case competition I was doing, and after a few hours we hadn't touched on the case competition.  It was actually really refreshing and a little bit scary at the same time.  I've been looking for this!  I ordered a martini that sounded awesome ... and it was terrible.  He switched with me and ended up drinking a blue martini while I was drinking a vodka soda. He's not like the guys I usually date.  He's not super into sports, he's from San Francisco, his idea of a date was the two of us getting a drink and talking.  Most guys I've dated have taken me to a dive bar to watch a sports game, and usually at some point we end up with all his friends.  I actually really love dive bars.  I also really love watching a game in them, but at a certain point I had to realize that I wanted other things too.  I think this is what I realized when the marine came to visit me.  He landed and went to the bars to meet his friends.  He came over two hours after he said he would, and he was a little bit drunk.  It just does not make you feel special.  Anyways ... this new nice guy is also quite a bit older than me (ten years), which made me nervous at first.  But after going out, I think that maybe 10 years is a good amount of time ...

308 Miles Down 33 Miles to Go

I would have killed him.

Yesterday I had a moment where I just had to stop myself and yell at me, "What the hell are you doing?!?!?!"  It started completely normal and escalated quickly.  I had been planning going on a ski trip for a while ... and I was starting to have second thoughts.  They overbooked the house, and to be honest, I'm too old to get wasted and sleep on a roll of toilet paper for a weekend as a pillow.  It wouldn't have been that bad ... but I feel the same about trundle beds as I do about wood floors and toilet paper pillows.  I wasn't skiing and started to think of all the other things I could do with my weekend.  As I commiserated with my friend who also was planning on backing out, we started listing all the other things we'd rather do.  I hate communal food ... which was the game plan for the weekend.  I told him I didn't want to live without oranges for four days, and communal food is always 95% carbs.

As we complained, he said, "I'm not hitting on you.  But we should get a hotel in Boston.  You can have oranges.  I won't slobber on your alcohol.  Guaranteed own bed.  Also sweet hotel robes."  My first thought was this sounds indefinitely better.  I started googling for crazy things to do in Boston and looking at hotels in Boston.  Enter, "WTF" moment.  Friday night was Valentine's Day.  I was searching for a hotel room on Valentine's Day with my friend ... who was not single.  I decided two things when that happen.  One: Time to put some space between me and him.  Two: You can't just find people you like and spend time with them.  If my husband was talking to another girl how he was talking to me ... I would have been really hurt.  Then I would have killed him.  I think maybe I'll just put a little space between us ... I do not want to wake up and realize one day that I'm starting to have feelings for someone who is taken ...

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The First Bend

I missed it. But I'm not stopping

Something odd happens when you've been single and moving around the country on your own.  I realized for the first time, I'm living completely untied down.  I don't actually have to do anything I don't want to do.  In every relationship I've been in, I've done things like stay in, go out, travel, see movies I didn't want to, because my boyfriend wanted to.  It's not bad to do the things he wants to, you have to do it ... But it's a little bit great not to feel obligated.

I've been talking to my ex who I have crazy chemistry with a lot, and he said something that I can't seem to forget about.  He lives in Florida now, and he said, "I am nervous dating you wouldn't work now.  I think you'd resent me for moving to Florida eventually."  What?!  Who said I was moving to Florida? He assumed that if we got back together, that I would move there with him and just piece into his life that he has.  I was confused because I'd love to travel around and live somewhere new with someone I'm dating, so moving to Florida sounds kind of exciting.  But I can't do it with him ... It would be the first bend.  If I bend for him once, I'm sure I'll end up doing all the things he wants to and forgetting about all the goals I've made for myself.  He didn't seem to understand why I want to work in a hospital, or why I picked up and moved to Boston for school.  I realized that he hasn't really known me at all after my skiing accident, which changed a lot of things for me.

I had a short run today ... Still recovering.  I realized that I missed my goal, but I'm not stopping.  I will finish this mileage challenge if I have to overcome 100 injuries.  So I'm adding on another month and another 26 miles.

Challenge accepted.  No bending.

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Wedding Ring Seeker

Just as I start putting consulting on the table for all the good things it has, I am reminded of all the bad things it has to come along with.  I went to a health care panel today (in graduate school they are always pushing you into "career exploration" which I usually hate, but today was awesome) and there were three women on the panel who were running hospitals in Boston.  ALL of them had wedding rings on.  I started thinking about my old gone Monday-Friday life, and I had a mini panic attack.  I don't want to put myself into a situation where I can't meet anyone.  When I think about dating a consultant, I am not even a little bit attracted to the idea because I know I'll be having dinner alone four nights out of seven.  I know I'll be sleeping alone, and I know I won't be able to talk to them for more than five minutes at a time all week.  If I hate the idea of this, how can I expect someone else to be okay with it?  Also, I tend to get fat from eating out at restaurants too much.  So there's that too ...

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Spaghetti and the Black Hole of Grad School

Today I was thinking about how funny family changes over time.  My dad's family is 100% Italian.  All five brothers and one sister.  I have never experienced a more  boisterous energetic group of people as I have when the whole lot of us sit down for spaghetti dinner.  It's funny the group of us will go to extremes to have a homemade pot of spaghetti.  Somewhere along the lines, all their kids grew up (me and my cousins), and we stopped meeting several times a year.  Now for some reason, as we all get jobs and start getting in serious relationships, family becomes a priority again.  Sort of like how like when we are teenagers we rebel against our parents, then one day we become best friends again...

For my going away party I decided to try to break the habit everyone has established of dodging family party obligations.  I planned a Sunday dinner, made homemade spaghetti (three pots of the normal recipe ... ), and I invited everyone personally to come send me away to Boston.  We may all be busy, but if there is one thing we share a mutual love for ... It's relaxing, and eating spaghetti.  I wasn't really sure what I was expecting, but I was overwhelmed by how many people took time to come send me away!

I had personally emailed my aunt to make sure she knew her whole family was invited and when who I had seen earlier that week.  My cousin (her son) was preparing to go to Japan and teach English for a year.  He went in for a routine physical and the doctor discovered that he had thyroid cancer in his neck.  He immediately went through surgery and has a special diet lined up coupled with a chemo therapy treatment plan.  He turned his "Send off to Japan" party into an "I am beating cancer" celebration.  My dad, his girlfriend and I drove out and I was overwhelmed by how happy my cousins were to see me.  Why do we get so wrapped up in social obligations that we forget how important our families are?  As I was leaving, my aunt stopped me and said how happy she was that I came out.  She said that she wanted to apologize to me because she feels guilty looking back on my skiing accident recovery that she could have been there more for me.

I just started to realize how important my family is ... oddly enough just when I am moving across the country.  I'm going to make it a point to keep in touch as much as I can with my family once I am swallowed up in the black hole of graduate school.  It's so easy to take for granted the strongest support system you have!

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