Blind Dates in Amsterdam

Busy week this week...

Went to Geneva for two days for a meeting and saw Kavita, my colleague from RI. And.... SIMON arrived on Friday! My friend Margo brought him with her on her way here and thanks to an amazing effort by April, Laurie, and Alec....my fat needy Siamese is sitting here next to me on the couch purring up a storm. Since I had to buy a new litter box, cat food, and all the othr things that cats need when he got here, I ended up collapsed and exhausted on the sofa after he arrived and slept all day. While I was worried that he would be traumatized, he was fine. Within five minutes, he was out of the crate, running around the apartment adn gobbling up the "Welcome to Amsterdam" tuna I had set out for him.

As part of my efforts to meet folks, I agreed to go on a blind date with a guy I met on line. The blind date... well.. how to begin. It was an interesting exercise. He is American and IT guy, scifi reader, divorce from the midwest. Now, I tend to like guys who read scifi and are from the midwest, I'm not so sure about IT folks but if they can make me laugh....

On Tuesday night, he was supposed to call me and we were going to go out. He never called and sent me an email after I was already asleep. I agreed to forgive him and go out with him on Thursday since my goal was not to date him but to gather people around that I could go to events with...

On Thursday night, I emailed him to tell him I'd be at this bar called Bloemers at 8pm and I gave him the address and my phone number. At 8:30 he finally called me (the only reason I was waiting around was because I was drinking a beer and reading the International Herald Tribune). I gave him directions and he said he was on his way. I thought to myself that I would wait until 9pm. Nothing is more than 30 minutes walk away in Amsterdam and he was in Leidesplein which is not that far away. At 9:10, I was just about to pay my bill and leave when he showed up. It was raining, he just moved here (he told me) and he had gotten off the tram too early. Since that shit happens to me all the time, I understood.

within five minutes he told me a story about falling in love with a woman who he worked with and writing her love poetry while married to his pregnant wife. He left his wife for woman who turned out not to be as wonderful as he had expected since she smoked pot all the day as an artist. Now he's single...

Then when I was telling him a story, he leaned in and tried to kiss me! It was about 15 minutes into the meeting! I was not turned on by him and did not want to be kissed by this stranger. I told him it was my 'local pub' and I didn't believe in PDA so to chill out.

When the bill came, he didn't even offer to pick up my beers since I had been waiting for him for an hour and 10 mintues. In fact, he said - I only have a 5 or a 50. and put down the five. So I ended up buying one of his beers. Then I tried to shake him off by showing him where the tram stop was and telling I had to ride my bike home and he asked me to walk with him for a while. On every bridge, he tried to kiss me. Ugh. I was REALLY not interested in him. He was nice enough but not kiss worthy.

Finally, I got rid of him in Leideplein and he told me that he wasn't actually living in Amsterdam, he was visiting there for work every six weeks. So now I know he won't even be someone I can go to bars with when I don't feel like going alone. When i got home, there were three messages from him about how much he was going to miss me. How great we got along and how lonely his bed was. Yikes!

So - I'm not going to see him again but its nice to know that I'm still desirable to American IT guys. At least I'm not invisible.

Life is getting better with little Simon here - makes hanging out alone not so terrible. And I'm meeting people slowly and surely. My pilates class starts in July and the Tango starts up soon too.