January 3, 2009
The cavalier girl who only yesterday was bragging about being too laid back is gone.

I went down to the laundry room early this morning since my laundry was interrupted by a homeless guy living there yesterday.

My apartment manager had put in a new lightbulb, so the entryway to the laundry room was now lit, but as I reached for the door handle, I heard shuffling behind the door.

"We were just picking up our laundry, hon," said an effeminate young black guy who doesn't live in my building as he sashayed out the door. "Ladies first," said the white punk behind him as he snapped his cell phone shut and held the door. I wasn't sure which of us he was talking to. It's one thing to have a frightened homeless guy cowering in your laundry room when the weather's freezing, wholly another to encounter two young guys who can afford cigarettes, beer, cell phones and a car that was illegally parked in a tenant's space.

I put in a load of darks.

I went down the stairs a half hour later to throw my clothes in the dryer and there was another vagrant there. Smoking, but thankfully at least somewhat fearful this time. I would put him somewhere between the first guy and the second two.

My apartment manager had told me to call the police after I told him about the first incident, but I was thinking that the police wouldn't care since my "security" building currently has no lock on it's door, and logically it's not their problem.

"What do you want us to do, guard your building?" the woman who answered the phone at the Seattle police non-emergency number snapped at me.
"No, I was just reporting it because my apartment manager told me to," I said, chastised. I never get why people in authority get much more upset about things they should be used to dealing with than the people who are actually dealing with them.

I printed up a note and taped it over our mailboxes. It said "I've seen people living in our laundry room. One yesterday and three this morning. Just thought you should know."

My apartment manager nailed a screw into the front door so no one can use it, including the people who live here, and took down my note.

January 2, 2009
Certain events over the past few hours, weeks, months -- hell, my whole life – indicate to me that I’m too laid back. I’m laid back even by Seattle standards and Seattle is the most laid back place I’ve ever been to. More than baked, colorful, rushing Mexico and certainly more than Los Angeles where doing lunch is a competitive sport.

Today the hallway of my apartment building smells like a medium-sized animal died in it. I had to do some laundry, so I braved closer to what appeared to be the source of the smell: the laundry room. I could barely open the outer door since a metal cart had been jammed up against it. There’s a lone apartment in the basement and it occurred to me that whomever lives down there (I’ve never seen them) may have wanted privacy during New Year’s Eve, which was three days ago. The overhead light was burned out so I couldn’t see.

I opened the laundry room door, which was slimy, and there was a person apparently living there. Rust-colored couch pillows on the floor, clothing and whatever else strewn about the room. At least I had identified the source of the smell.

“Hello? Hello?” I said to the scrawny man’s back. No answer, of course.

I hightailed it back up to my apartment and called my apartment manager.

“There’s some homeless guy living in our laundry room.”
“Did you call the police?” he said.
“No, I didn’t even think to.”

I told my neighbor from across the hall what happened.
“Did you yell ‘You don’t belong here’” she said. “I would have yelled ‘You don’t belong here.”
“No, I said hello, hello,” I answered.
“You're so nice,” she said. “The hallway smells like shit. I bet he shit in our laundry room.”
She was probably right.

In December I volunteered at Northwest Harvest, an organization that provides food to the homeless. I’m planning on getting more involved in the coming year.

I don’t want my stairwell to smell like roadkill, but I’m too laid back to call the police on someone who wants a warm place to sleep. It would never even occur to me. It didn’t occur to my neighbor, either, and she’s not even what I’d call laid back.

December 22, 2008

The normally busy Queen Anne Avenue was closed (stolen from zoomar and Chris B in SEA [not the one I had lunch with yesterday] at flickr):





December 21, 2008
Happy birthday to me! Here's my Amazon wishlist in case you care. My sister sent me all the Woody Allen DVDs I requested. I guess she cares about me.

Seattle has been on its fourth consecutive snow day, and boy, are we having fun. I mean that. It's magical. I went to brunch at the Mecca with a guy friend. (See, the city is shut down, but the coffee shops and bars are open, it's paradise, just like in the Bible.) I had coffee, a tuna melt and cole slaw, and a mimosa that was almost clear because Mecca don't skimp on nothin'. Chris had a burger and fries with a side of barbeque sauce and a Diet Coke (that Mecca serves in a pitcher) because he had half a bottle of vodka last night and didn't want a drink for lunch.

He has just sent off a proposal for the really cool 33 1/3 book series that I hadn't heard of before, but which clearly rocks. They have people write books about albums. So clever. I told him that my most recent musical "find" is Fountains of Wayne (this a a joke since I couldn't find a new band with my bifocals and a German shepard) and he showed me his cell phone address book which had the entry Adam FOW. He had just interviewed one of them and it's here. Adam references "Radiation Vibe," which I love. I also love "Please Don't Rock Me Tonight."

After I bid adieu to my friend, I started to walk home. The snowflakes were filigreed quarters at this point and I was drawn by the cheerful shouting and whoops on Queen Anne Avenue.

Snowboarders, skiers, sledders, and my personal favorite, people in laundry baskets, were using this normally busy thoroughfare as their own personal ski hill. They had even built a jump and everytime anyone wiped out going over it, or just wiped out in general, there was clapping and filming and laughter. Good fun.

I called a girlfriend to come join me and could she bring a laundry basket, because I didn't want to trash mine, but by the time I had taken a scorching hot bath, had a glass of red wine (and white), cars outside my kitchen window were going backwards like the people sledding on garbage bags, so she decided not to come over.

My current status: cozy and wondering how I'll get to the airport to go home for Christmas on Tuesday.

I'm assuming tomorrow will be yet another snow day.

November 24, 2008
I saw an incredible pre-teen-human-falls-for-vampire movie recently and it wasn't Twilight. It's called Let the Right One In and it got 97% on rottentomatoes. It's a Swedish horror film with mostly child actors, but don't let that put you off, even if you hate horror or kids or subtitles, because it transcends all of that.

As we were driving home, my friend, a YA author with Random House, said:

"Was that really great acting or was it just that we had to watch their faces because of the subtitles?"
"No, I think it was actually the acting." I said, still in a stupor over how brilliant the movie was. "Was that guy supposed to be..?
"Yeah, I think so, but they didn't really say so."
"I know, but it was conveyed with just a look."
"Yeah, I know!"

They let you figure things out for yourself, but it wasn't confusing, it was just right. The two leads were eleven when this was filmed.

Make an effort to see it; don't wait for the Matt Reeves American remake.

October 13, 2008
Mwah, darlings! I am not dead but I feel like I am in that really delicious way. Don't you just love this time of year? It's pre-Halloween. I'm going to have the long-awaited follow-up to Dating Amy finished by All Hallow's, so help me Stephen King, and then I'm jumping right in to NaNoWriMo for my first series--a rocket-hot urban paranormal.

Other than that, I am immersed in all the great television that's out there right now. Not just my usual fave Desperate Housewives, but Mad Men, Entourage, Pushing Daisies and in perfect keeping with the season, the vampiriffic True Blood. Tasty.

September 2, 2008
Search terms for this site tend to be things like "Amy" and "Dating" with "Brad and Jen wedding" and the occasional "Marcia Cross" thrown in. Maybe "Amish dating" (I changed the site to Dating Amish one April Fool's Day) or even "money slave" (check my email section). But today I got my best search term ever: "movie film please be careful. i m on my period right now and my breasts are a little sensitive."

August 2, 2008
Your author is kicking ass on the the writing portion of the 100 Days to Halloween challenge. I should be at page 40 or something, and I'm at page 150 or something. So, yeah. YEAH! Not saying it's all great or all publishable, but that it's all there.

My friend A, who's a filmie like a lot of my friends, breathlessly told me over a year ago that "They're remaking Funny Games." I had never seen the "make" so I didn't care much about the remake, but I remembered her words and rented it when I saw it at Blockbuster a few days ago. (No, Netflix will never take me, since I actually enjoy going to the video store.)

It was flat-out fantastic. Naomi Watts, Tim Roth, some guy named Michael Pitt who I assumed was Brad's brother based on his blond good looks (he's not) were riveting.

The film got mixed reviews, including a half-star rating from Roger Ebert, since it's disturbing, but since when is that bad!

Phenomenal acting, especially Pitt's pouty-lipped, preppy sociopath, and a thought-provoking premise win high marks from me. It was more upsetting the second time I viewed it, which was the next day, but isn't that an endorsement in and of itself?

July 23, 2008
I got some great news about my 100 Days to Halloween goal-setting project: My math sucks. One of my goals is to write three pages a day of my next book. I've been writing maybe one if I'm lucky, but apparently that's okay, since July 21-October 31 is 103 days, not 100 days, so I'm ahead. I think.

I picked up the current issue of Wired today at the grocery store because the cover story is "Get Internet Famous! (Even If You're Nobody)." I want to see how many of their suggestions I accidentally did.

The story is about a woman named Julia Allison, whom I've never heard of. The main thing I noticed about her, besides that she sounds desperate, not that that's bad, is that her hips don't look much wider than her calves when she's sitting cross-legged. Can anyone tell me if that's Photoshopped? Because I'm a size 6 (okay, a size 8) and when I'm photographed from that angle it's like Australia is sitting in my lap. Thank god for the three extra days of starvation I now realize I get on the 103-day weight-loss goal, huh?

July 21, 2008
Yesterday afternoon I was at the Seattle Zoo for the first time. I was at a barbeque, because what goes better with animals in open enclosures than the scent of meat cooking? Lunch (burger with accoutrements, creamy cole slaw--not the vinegary kind I hate--fruit, corn bread, for some reason, and ice cream sandwiches for dessert) was interrupted by primal roars coming from the bear enclave across from us. People ran over, hoping to see some carnage, and indeed, as the guy next to me pointed out to the female zookeeper, one of them was bleeding. These are Asian bears, and their hair sticks up. It looked like an oil slick on his thick dark fur.

"Both males?" I said.
"Of course," she answered.

She radioed another zookeeper who proceeded to throw phone books at the bears to stop them from fighting. Jokes went through my head about the animals looking up domestic abuse lawyers, calling a cab to get away from the biting.
"What's with the phone books?" I asked.
"It gives them something to distract them. Something to play with instead of focusing on each other."

Now if it were me and I were a bear, I'm thinking another bear that I may want to take food or territory from is going to be a hell of a lot more interesting than the yellow pages, if only because the other bear can at least move and respond to things.

As the bears, who turned out to be brothers, made up by one safely sticking its head into the other's open jaws, not at all like when some clueless human does it in a Vegas animal show, I realized how easily distracted I am from the bloodlust of my goals.

No one has even thrown a phone book at me, as far as I know, but the metaphorical ones distract me constantly: Work, money, drinks with friends, reading blogs, reading books, renting DVDs of Lost so I can catch up on a series I’ve never watched, watching DVDs of Melrose Place so I can relive my youth, drinking with friends again.

So I’ve decided to set a few goals, but having them scrawled in my Far Side desk calendar seems uninspiring (although it is aptly titled “Scared Silly”). I thought it would be more fun to pick a date a few months away and to plan for it.

The date I picked was Halloween, the best holiday ever. As luck would have it, it's exactly 100 days away.

My stated goals are to lose 13 pounds (that works out to be a pound a week), and to write 300 pages on my next book (you can do your own math). Also, I would like to be sitting at a party somewhere in a non-shitty, non-last-minute costume and I would like to be happy.

It’s Day One.

Let the ignoring of the phone books begin.

July 13, 2008
So, happy summer! I just want to say how flattering it is that this web site -- that I never update -- still attracts lots of visitors every day. Thank you, thank you! I will try to be a better content provider.

Someone wrote to me last week, distraught because she feels her husband is putting his family ahead of her. I've not been married, so consider the source, but here's what I think:

It's okay if a man is putting his family ahead of his woman if:

They're his kids (assuming minors, here) and it's a time or attention issue and not a step-mom boundary setting situation, in which case, see someone else besides a chick with a dating web site.

Someone in the family is gravely ill and you, the woman, are acting spoiled/narcissistic (in which case you won't be able to recognize what you're really like, but I digress).

It's not okay to put his family first if there's some sort of legitimate dispute that involves you as a couple (family planning, child raising -- yours, money issues -- yours, well basically anything that's yours or affects the two of you.)

I think to keep a marriage viable (and a sex life hot), you need to be able to at least fake a united front in the face of one another's families.

Keep in mind that you and your mate are a family and you're totally legit. Really. Even if you don't see eye to eye, don't let them know. You can fight about how you really feel once you get home.

May 11, 2008
Googling my book and found this. Powell's is one of the best bookstores in the country. And it looks like I only cost $6 there.

March 1, 2008
I had no idea that my current job search would be taking as long as it has. I should have friggin’ taken the gossip column job I was offered last month. I curse myself for stupidly not wanting to contribute to the destruction of young actresses vis-à-vis drawing attention to their DUI-earning, pantyless, sex-video-making, Kevin-Federline-marrying, rehab-dodging, drugged-up ways. Although I’m sure there’s a special director’s chair in Hollywood-morality heaven with my name on it (“Sanctimonious Bitch”). Unless there’s truth to the rumor that Hollywood heaven is run by Scientologists, in which case there’s a sensory-deprivation booth with my name on it (“Xenu 147”). (A reliable source who offered me a free personality tests on Wilshire once told me that in the afterlife you get all the Krispy Kremes you can eat and they have zero calories, plus you only have to tithe 7.5 percent of your income instead of the earthly 10 percent. And St. Peter looks a lot like Tom Cruise, but circa Risky Business, thank Ron.)

Do you remember the Twilight Zone episode where the chick is dreaming that the earth is spinning toward the sun and things keep getting hotter and everyone knows that they’re gonna go to that great Shake ‘N Bake pan in the sky real soon? Then she wakes up and it’s a good news/bad news deal, because booyah! it was just a fever-induced nightmare! Wow, it would really, really suck if the earth went off course and were heading toward the sun, nervous chuckle. That would almost be as bad as if, say, the earth were careening AWAY from the sun, and everyone sitting by her bedside is not so much with the laughing because that’s what’s really happening?

Well last night after taking an antihistamine and dumping Annie’s macaroni and cheese and chardonnay down my gullet, I was thirsty and that worked its way into my dream. Was I a desert princess being deprived icy cool pomegranate nectar by a brutally handsome sheik who had kidnapped me so he could have his way with me and I secretly could have escaped but pretended I couldn’t because I (also secretly) dug him more than figs and free camel rides? No, I dreamed I was that mental patient in the hospital where One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was filmed who gained 13 pounds because the nurses left him unattended at a drinking fountain all day.

February 28, 2008
Sex and the City movie trailer.



February 17, 2008
So I'm not the only one who finds those LowerMyBills.com ads disturbing and bizarre.

February 12, 2008
Encouraging words for the blunt and awkward: Why Perfect Dates Make Lousy Partners

February 10, 2008
So the comment in my previous post about being the It Girl of copywriting is the type of thing I shouldn’t say because it makes people resent me, it’s not even true and if I lived in a Road Runner cartoon a refrigerator would fall out of the sky onto my head just as I was saying it. Of course if I lived in a Road Runner cartoon, heavy objects would fall on me regardless of what I said, so it’s moot. Anyway, I have not accepted a job, so all the offers in the world don’t matter right now, do they.

I was sitting here not working (of course) the other morning and one of my girlfriends called and asked if I wanted to hear Obama speak because he was going to be at Key Arena. I said sure and we met there, but we were two of the 3,000 people who didn’t get in, so we went to a bar and watched him speak on television. Nothing quite says politics like drinking before noon on a weekday.

I was leaning toward Clinton, ‘cause I’m one of those goons who think the Clintons can do no wrong, but after hearing Obama speak for an hour I’m even more in the Hillary camp. He seems really fun and cool and that’s the problem: I don’t want a president I’d feel comfortable having over to my apartment. I don’t think world leaders would take him seriously at all – he’s even more pie in the sky than I am.

I went to my caucus yesterday and in addition to visiting the snack table and realizing that chocolate fudge brownies go really well with pretzels, I realized that we Democrats are doomed. Obama swept my precinct table, all my local precincts and eventually Washington State. I don’t think he can go up against McCain, though. Regardless of what you think of her, a vote for Hillary is a vote for a white male with eight years of experience in the White House and I think that’s more a threat to McCain.

Maybe I’m not so pie in the sky, maybe I’m a pessimist. I hope so.

February 9, 2008
Some of the writers I know write four books a year. Others do the more usual and sane one book a year. I haven’t sold a book since 2004. Time flies when you’re completely disorganized. And no, of course this is not an announcement of a two-book deal, because I’m the one writing this entry.

When you’re an author who doesn’t actually bother to write books, you have to do other things for work. Sometime in early January it occurred to me I should probably start to look for a job since I haven’t worked since the Fourth of July. I follow the news, even that which doesn’t have to do with Heath Ledger and Natalee Holloway, and I understand that a recession is coming. You would never know it by me. I feel like the It Girl of copywriting. I see half a dozen jobs I’m qualified for every day and recruiters keep emailing and emailing. Of course no actual job has materialized yet, but being unemployed and in demand sure beats being just unemployed.

January 25, 2008
This morning Hillary Clinton said about rival Obama: "I try not to attack first, but I have to defend myself — I do have to counterpunch."

The quid pro quo childishness between Obama and Clinton is disheartening. Not only because I apparently have a bias that a black men and a woman should somehow be above sniping, but also because isn't that kind of default reaction that gets us into situations like Iraq?

I mean if they feel the need to counter-attack each other over something as silly as a job, it's not too far a leap to justify counterattacking other countries when lives and land and I guess a sense of national identity are at stake.

January 24, 2008
Last night I told a girlfriend of mine that I was surprised how bad I feel about Heath Ledger considering that up until this week I was confusing him with Jude Law, "the guy who was schtupping his nanny and was one of the elves in Lord of the Rings."

Here he is doing a funny Orlando Bloom imitation:


January 19, 2008
I may have overstated the other day when I said that my body is tight as a drum. I have breasts and a butt, for I am an endomorph. There is no tightness and there is no drumlike-ness. I noticed this when I was running on the treadmill for the 6.2 miles I’m supposed to be doing for my Olympic triathlon training. I also noticed that I need a new super-strength running bra instead of the two, yes TWO, that I currently wear together.

I’ve always thought that runners had runner’s bodies because they run. It occurred to me last week that perhaps it’s the other way around: running is comfortable for people with tiny, skinny frames. Ectomorphs. They are fast, unencumbered by the fat and curves that someone like me will always have. To be me is to be one of them, but carrying a big sack of flour as they stagger toward the finish line.

I have decided that I won’t push myself with running anymore, since, unless I lose 20 lbs., it’s really hard on my joints. I biked 24 miles today and it was easy, but from now on I’m not running more than 3.2. And even that is heroic for an endo.

January 13, 2008
Well, the Seahawks season ended yesterday in a Green Bay blizzard. With football coming to an end there will be fewer chances for me to see my favorite commercial which states: "They were mini burgers!" (I'll see if I can find it.) I would love to be a really great advertising writer, to really excel at... some aspect of writing. I know, I have a book, but I'd love to do something award-winning, groundbreaking, you know? Something like this:
I couldn't find the miniburgers one, but this one from the same series is funny too:


One more...


January 12, 2008
Logically they should be dismal and blah, but for some reason January and February always feel hopeful and ripe with possibility to me. A time of fresh starts in a way that New Year’s Eve never is. Maybe it’s because the worst of winter is behind us. Yesterday I saw daffodils in the front bins at Safeway and I thought, “it’s starting.”

My triathlon training is going really well. I swam for a mile yesterday. Never thought I’d be able to do that. My skin smells like chlorine, my hair smells like a condom from my latex swim cap, but my body’s getting tight as a snare drum, so I guess it evens out.

To the poor girl who wrote me yesterday asking how to break the news that she’s unemployed on a first date:

First of all, sweetie, being unemployed for a month is nothing -- you’re obviously not a writer. Anyway, use any of the following: You’re between gigs, you’re freelancing, you’re a contractor, or my personal favorite, you’re a consultant.

Why are you worried about this for a first date anyway? You can distract ‘em with your wit and cleavage for at least the first few months.

January 1, 2008
Hey, I typed the right year first try. More Best and Worst 2007...

Worst -- The Coffeeshop
I used to love you, and in honor of that I’m not to going to mention you by name on the Internet. But, seriously, first you instill a No Dogs policy, which I’m actually fine with since I think dogs around food is a health hazard. Now it seems you have a Selective Dogs policy that invites people to bring in their smelly rain-soaked drooling mongrels and actually let them sit on tables where people are eating, but you still won’t let some of the iconic neighborhood pooches in? Not to mention that you fired a bunch of the coolest baristas in town, some of whom have been with you for years, all I one fell swoop. And also not to mention that you replaced them with people who don’t even know the rules, for instance that a tall latte does not necessarily mean a double shot, that’s only for grandes. I guess I just don’t understand why amazing baristas are out, yet TALKING ON YOUR CELL PHONE AT FULL VOLUME IS IN, DUDE.

Best -- Pushing Daisies
Oh my God. Anti-depressant pear and gruyere pie, lovers who can’t touch, professional mermaids, a cynical black p.i. who knits and a golden retriever who is arguably one of the best supporting actors on TV make this show an artistic event. Oh, and the narrator. On the doomed love at first sight of two minor characters: “Bernard remembered her hair redder, her sweater tighter and her smile... well her smile he remembered just right.”

The facts were these: This doesn’t deserve to be called just a television show.

December 31, 2007
I'm doing the usual best and worst list to wrap up the year, but I'm doing them one at a time and in no particular order.

Best: The Bush Administration
He didn’t bother me as much this year. I’m either used to his reign of terror or the whole self-medicating-with-chardonnay thing really does work.

December 30, 2007
I’ve been on an extended party since my birthday on the December 20. I’ve socialized with everyone I know, almost. I have drunk a dozen bottles of chardonnay, eaten all the bread and cheese and sugar cookies in the world, learned to play poker (with a cheat sheet), accidentally joined the Seattle flickr group and am training for a triathlon (Not a specific one, just doing two-thirds of a sprint triathlon every time I work out.) I spent about $100 on lottery tickets because according to astrologyzone.com I should have been in a Bill Gates/Warren Buffet money phase. I won about $7. I saw the two best movies I’ve seen all year – Sweeney Todd and Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead – within 24 hours of each other. I cleaned my oven, which is something I have not ever done unless I was moving. It really thrilled me, and sadly, I am not joking. But of course the biggest news of all... I got the hole in my ceiling patched.

I am planning on doing nothing for New Year’s, but I hope yours is happy beyond measure!

December 17, 2007
I just noticed that I wrote two completely different entries about the hole in my ceiling. Tonight I ran into an attractive man who lives in my neighborhood and when he asked me what’s new, I of course told him about the hole in my ceiling and he said, and I quote, yeah, you mentioned that last time I saw you.

In other news, there’s still a fucking hole in my ceiling.

You know that feeling you get where it’s like the world is right. People smile and hold doors open for you. Your team comes from behind at the last minute and scores a touchdown with a 53-yard run. You think you were late with a credit card payment, then realize you’re three days early. You say something witty to the guy behind the counter at Blockbuster and everyone in line laughs.

I’m currently going through the polar opposite.

The guy at the coffee shop where I always get my coffee made me a latte and charged me $3.26 instead of $2.78. It’s not about the money, but I looked at the menu and realized he had made mine a double. I only desire this of martinis.
“Is this a double?”
“We always make them double unless the customer specifies otherwise.”
I always assume I’m wrong so I actually wonder if every other barista for the last six years has been compensating for my stupidity and making my lattes with a single shot instead of a double because although that’s the way they do things for everyone else, I’m so hopeless they just give me a single because word’s gotten around that that’s how I wrongly order. He grudgingly makes me my single (It’s noon! I can’t have a double!) and doesn’t offer to give me back the difference. I don’t ask for it, either. I do check it out, though. I ask Hot Coffee Shop Girl (people may remember her from a post on my original site. No, she has not moved on and gotten a real job yet) about this policy and she validates me. My six year’s worth of experience and I are right.

I go to the used bookstore that has cats. I’ve written about them before too. I’m am horribly allergic to cats, but I like them anyway. One of them always recognizes me and rubs my legs as soon as I come in. Once it assessed me and actually jumped onto my shoulder. I assumed we were friends. It was curled up in front of the mass market paperback section that was labeled Sci Fi and had Dean Koontz (whom I’ve never read) and Stephen King. I ran my hand over the cat’s orange fur and it scratched me really hard. As I pressed a bit of worn Kleenex over the blood I thought about boundaries. When the cat wants to be social it’s okay to jump on my shoulder, but when it doesn’t the claws come out. Got it.

My phone was out for a bit the other day and for some reason it made my wireless network AmyBaby disappear. I was on hold with linksys yesterday for an hour during a Seahawks game that my team did not win. I never did get through.

I may not have mentioned this yet, but there’s a hole in my ceiling.

December 16, 2007
A big part of my life is my neighborhood. This is intensified by the fact that I don’t have a car, it’s something I looked for for two months while I lived in a tiny week-by-week rental that turned out to be halfway house, and having it is part of the reason I moved to Seattle in the first place.

My neighborhood has four grocery stores and a farmer’s market within walking distance. My neighborhood has an old-fashioned movie theater. My neighborhood has three coffee shops and only one of them is a Starbucks. It has a bar from the 20s, a hamburger joint from the 50s, and brick buildings that haven’t gone condo.

At the vortex of my neighborhood is my apartment, Casa Amy. As fiercely anal readers will notice, I used to live on the other side of the building (I accidentally typed ‘love’ instead of live, take from that what you will). My view then was of Victorian houses. My view now is of everything. People cannot believe it as they stand in my living room: Oh, you can see the water and the ferries! Oh, and Mount Ranier! Look, it’s the whole city, the Space Needle! Wow, you have everything! This is what they say.

I love my view, I do. I’ve been at parties in the houses of the rich where the view was unfurled like it was the carpet at a Hollywood event and I thought, “Eh, mine is better. Is that spinach dip I see on the buffet?”

Currently Casa Amy has a twelve-foot stain on the ceiling. There was a leak, first from snow, then just rain. A chunk of its plaster fell onto my hardwood floors. My bathroom has been a disaster area since at least June, what with the possibly toxic mold and all.

While people from the neighborhood still gasp at my view, they now do the same when they enter my living room and look up. It seems that along with my neighborhood, water damage is now a big part of my life.

December 11, 2007
Laughably, some people describe me as mature or sensible. “She’s a bright young woman with her head on straight” -- I can only assume they mean that in the Frankensteinian sense. The reality is that I am avoiding cracks in the sidewalk as much as I do black cats. I am sticking pins in the voodoo doll of your likeness and don’t for a moment think that I’m not.

I’m spinning like a tire on ice about my career lately. More about that when everything gets sorted out, but let’s just say that while the fear of ever getting published is gone when it’s the second time around, there are many other fears waiting around to replace it.

Due to the snow and heavy rains we’ve had recently, a portion of my ceiling has fallen off. Worst of all it’s in my fame and reputation area. That is definitely not good, whether you’re superstitious or not.

How will it all play out for our poor heroine? I told myself that if the next song on my 6-hour’s worth of iPod music was “Violent Love” by Oingo Boingo that my life would fall into place, and it was.

December 9, 2007
I’m so fucking sick of Christmas already. Do you realize that since retailers start pushing it just after Halloween, we basically spend 16 percent of our lives preparing for that one day? And is it an especially emotionally fulfilling day for anyone? Because it isn’t for me.

The independent coffee house I normally frequent was blasting what sounded like Yuletide greetings courtesy of Brian Setzer after 100 double-shot eggnog lattes. I naively sought refuge at Starbucks, which was even worse: “What Are You Doing New Year’s?” I haven’t even gotten through my birthday on December 20. Give a girl a break.

Foul mood, yes. I stopped at Trader Joe’s.

“How’s it going, Amy?” I know the woman so I’m honest.
“Eh. I can’t listen to any more of this Christmas….” I wave my mitten in the air to indicate the ubiquitous piped-in cheer.
“I just tune it out.”
“I have my iPod on continually,” I agreed. “Staying in town for the holidays?”
“Yes. I mean I am,” she said. She volunteered nothing more and neither did I. Last I heard she had a lovely husband and family in town. “I’m going to a movie or something.”
“On Christmas?” I said, by this time distracted by the Jarlsberg Lite cheese.
“Someplace where no one else is,” she said.

Good plan.

December 7, 2007
So happy Pearl Harbor Day I guess.

As you know if you're one of my four readers, I've been on a winning streak since about a year ago. Scratch-offs, drawings at nightclubs, random contests. I've been winning 'em all.

Jane Porter, another Seattle writer who happens to be on my imprint at Grand Central, had a short contest to pick the name of her next book. It was originally called Alpha Mom, and the cover art actually incorporated that title on a chocolate cake. But then some woman said she owned the rights to the phrase "alpha mom," which is weird, and Jane had to change her title at the last minute.

So my first idea was MRS. PERFECT, which won. My second idea was Queen Mom, which made me laugh. Anyway, I won a $50 gift certificate to Sephora, which is superhandy since I started wearing makeup last year.

Just so you know, I declined my prize since I thought it was unfair that I'm actually with the same publisher as Jane, but apparently it was a blind test, so my Lip Venom and I will live happily ever after.

Sadly my winning streak has encouraged me to buy lottery tickets. So far I've spent $12 and won $1. Here's a story about how destructive the lottery can be. Some people buy tickets and don't claim them.

November 28, 2007
I checked here to see what I claimed I was going to do over the weekend. I couldn’t remember if I said I was going to do an entire first draft of my new book in a weekend or in the month of December and of course I said I was going to do the whole thing last weekend. Typical Sagittarius. Biting off more than you can chew after announcing it to every one first is a lifestyle.

Anyway, I finished the proposal I’ve been working on since July, which was a HUGE relief. And I did pull together a rough draft, technically, but I was hoping it would be longer than 150 pages. Maybe I can get the rough draft done in December. Riveting stuff, huh?

To celebrate finishing that proposal (because this author stuff sometimes seems to involve as much marketing writing as getting an MBA does and the skill set for writing a proposal and writing a book are like opposite and it sucks, so finishing any of this crap should be rewarded by having Ryan Gosling come to your house and fix you martinis while he tells you how pretty you are), I took two days off and went for long walks and bought my secret favorite movie Black Widow. It came attached to The Vanishing. Not the brilliant original which got 100 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, but the remake which got a rating of 41 percent, and about which one of my film critic friends said “Jeff Bridges’ hair style acts more dynamically than he does.”

I didn't think he was that bad and he’s also a Sagittarius. See how neatly this whole entry ties together?



November 24, 2007
One thing about meeting other published authors is that you can trade war stories – lack of publicity, book signings where only a few people show up, meeting famous authors and whether or not they would let you stand near them when they had their picture taken.

I am interested to hear how other people work, though. My work style can and has been described as “casual.” I didn’t realize how casual, though. And by “casual” I mean slow. Some of these other women are writing three and four books a year. I’m not sure I’ll ever be that prolific (and Stephen King writes, what, 17 a year?), but I think I can probably accelerate from my rate of one book, well, ever.

I’ve been working on the first 50 pages of my first novel since July and now I need to do a summary of the whole book to submit along with it. To get published you basically need three things: a catchy idea (check, response has been overwhelmingly positive), 50 well-written pages (I beta tested this one on readers and everyone said don’t change a thing, plus one person compared me to Tom Robbins – thanks, Amie!) and a plot summary to let the publisher know that the story moves. I need to tidy up that last one, although I’m thrilled with what I have so far. So anyway, I need to submit various permutations of all this stuff on Monday. That gives me two days to finish the summary, which is 90 percent done.

But I was thinking, what if I raise my game from completing three words a week(!) and just do a rough draft of the entire novel in the next two days? And be like these other women authors. I have about 200 pages of notes, so how hard can it be? So I’m going to try this and see what happens. I’ll update you on my progress.

November 23, 2007



Good lord. It's taken me eons to figure out how to upload pictures since I switched to a Mac about 10 months ago. So not so much eons as 10 months, which is eons in Internet time. This is a picture of me and some other authors at a lunch thrown by the gorgeous Jane Porter, a fellow 5-Spot author (upper L-R: Jane (Odd Mom Out), Lesli, Amanda Ford (Kiss Me I'm Single); lower L-R: moi, Amy DeZellar and New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth Boyle) in Bellevue (a terrible, soulless suburb of Seattle. Do not go there.) I'll say more when I've gotten over the shock of being to upload a photo.

November 12, 2007
It’s true what that an author said to me when I first had the web site – enjoy this time of not being published because being published takes a lot of the fun out of writing. Of course I didn’t believe him at the time, what struggling writer would?

I don’t mean to sound ungrateful at all, because being published is a huge honor, but in a way he was right.

If you’re like most writers, you have an internal editor in your head. Once you’re published, you also have an internal lawyer, internal copyeditor, internal publicist, internal sales force and internal editorial committee that may to may not like any given story idea, any given sentence. I know things I’m glad I didn’t know the first time around, like that for every 10,000 manuscripts submitted to a major publisher, they publish three (and I don’t know where I got that, hopefully it’s not accurate). No wonder I’ve been working on the first 50 pages of my next book since July. It’s been four months today and counting.

November 10, 2007
I'm quoted in this month's Men's Health magazine, on newstands now. The article is What Women Really Want!

October 27, 2007
Happy pre-Halloween weekend. I’m going to a party tonight – only one this year, thankfully. Sometimes Halloween Saturday night is like a synchronized cabbing event. I have an off-the-rack French maid costume from last year (just realized that’s an unintentional pun since the top is way too tight) and I’ll wear either that or nothing. I won’t actually wear nothing, but you know.

I’m having déjà vu from three years ago, author-wise, anyway. I’m feeling the crunch to get a book deal before the end of the year. I guess it’s ironic since back in 2004, even though I had never been published, I at least had an agent and I don’t now. I was going to try to do the multiple-dating thing that one would think I’d be good at and secure a new agent before I left the old one. But I’m not a great juggler or a great liar or even a great weasel who, while not outright deceiving anyone, just doesn’t tell the whole truth upfront. You see, the official protocol in publishing is that you don’t court a new agent until you’ve broken up with the previous one 30 day before. If you haven’t officially left your first agent, it’s like a guy who gets separated and immediately throws an ad up on Match.com – he’s not Satan, but he’s not Snow White, either. (Oooh! I wonder if I’ll see either of those tonight? My money’s on Satan, but then it always is.)

A writer’s life feels like endless waiting. I couldn’t remember how long it took to get an agent the first time. I mean, it took forever of course, and never mind the fact that I don’t even have any agents reading pages just now, I wanted to give myself a reality check to see if it was really as frustrating as I remembered back in 2004. Apparently I am an unreliable narrator so I checked in my old spiral journals (which are full of nothing but the truth so help me God) to see if it did indeed actually take forever or if it was just a few months. According to the extremely spotty entries it looked like a matter of weeks, but I can barely read my own handwriting, so who the hell knows.

So is it better to be out there once you’ve already been published? My guess is yes. I’ll let you know, though. If all else fails, temping in an office is fun, if only for the character studies. Just last year in my office the new chick, supposedly some published writer, came to work on Halloween dressed as a French maid.

October 23, 2007
So I was yukking it up about this guy (no pun) but then I started to feel bad for him when I saw on his web site that he admits to having no social IQ and is an orphan. I mean he's an adult orphan, but still.

Nightmare Online Dater

October 17, 2007
As I was saying, the new fall season is fab and

Desperate Housewives is better than ever. It harkens back to Season 1 with Bree breaking and entering to get a pie recipe, among other things, and speaking of pie...

Pushing Daisies is the best thing I've ever seen on television. It's Edward Scissorhands meets Amelie but with pastry, fine cheeses and Swoosie Kurtz -- and I bet that's just how they pitched it to the networks. Gorgeous, heartbreaking, funny, sweet, corpse reanimation... do you need more on a Wednesday night? Tonight's the third episode, but you can catch up on ABC.com.

October 6, 2007
Fall cheer, cont.

1408. I was having nightmares just from reading the reviews of this sucker. I told myself I would not rent it because it would be too upsetting since I live alone. I told myself I would rent it the instant it came out since it sounded GREAT. On the way to Blockbuster (who weirdly has this exclusively), I told myself that it would probably be unavailable since it was after 5 p.m. I told myself to visualize one copy in the gray return cart since I believe in visualizing stuff. I told myself I really overestimated the popularity of this movie when I saw the whole wall had available DVD cases three deep. It was scary but didn’t give me nightmares. Cusack totally made you care about his character from the start and as a reviewer said: It didn’t make me feel like a psychopath in training just watching it (I guess like Hostel and such).

October 4, 2007
I know that of course I am supposed to be the happy-go-lucky party girl living in a whirlwind of colored confetti and good cheer, but as anyone who has read my book (or knows me) can attest, I am not. I think it was a few weekends ago after the temperature suddenly dropped and the rain was steadily beating against my window one afternoon that I realized: I’m going to be suicidal if this glum-weather shit keeps up. I knew that I needed something besides drinking before noon to cheer me. (And yes my pious sobriety was short-lived, sue me.) Like any drowning person I turned to movies and television.

And lo, tidings of salvation appeared and ye shall know them by their ratings. It’s the new fall season!

The Office. I missed most of it since I was at a book signing for fellow 5 Spot author Jane Porter and then her fantastique after-party during which I drank chardonnay in plastic cups and had guacamole and hot, spicy shrimp and my favorite kind of sugar cookies – ones with pink frosting. Anyway, how hard did I laugh at Michael saying “I’m not superstitious, I’m just stitious.”

more to come...

October 2, 2007
My Starbucks Pervert story was mentioned in the Sydney Morning Herald today. Thanks Sam!


September 22, 2007
Thank god for Google. I'm working feverishly on my next book and was going to say that "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need," was from the Declaration of Independence. It's a quote from Karl Marx, however. I 'll have to check with Google again, but I'm pretty sure he wasn't one of the founding fathers.

That political science degree's really coming in handy.

August 31, 2007
So the biggest news lately is that I quit drinking. I've been averaging four glasses of wine a day for... ever and about a week ago I just stopped.

I’m not sure it’s permanent, and I’m not in AA, although I would have joined if I had had cravings. I did have physical withdrawal, though – a piercing headache on day 2, insomnia and a hangover-feeling on day 4. Some argue that what I now think of as “the liquid demon” is a muse in disguise, but I just figured that stopping the alcohol influx at the very least wouldn’t hurt my writing. Also realized I am not F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Or Ernest Hemingway.

Or William Falkner.

Or Lewis Carroll.

Neither am I Edgar Allen Poe, Truman Capote, Jack Kerouac, Raymond Carver or Charles Bukowski.

My book I’m working on is set in a bar, though.

August 16, 2007
I don't know why it is that 50% of the "odd news" stories come out of Seattle, but I think Jägermeister should totally have a campaign built around this one.

Jägermeister: Because Sometimes Good Taste is Crucial.

Karaoke Singer Attacked after Starting Song
By HECTOR CASTRO
P-I REPORTER

It could have been the Coldplay song "Yellow" that upset the patron of a Wallingford neighborhood bar. Or perhaps it was the karaoke singer who belted it out.

Employees at Changes, on North 45th Street, said they don't know, but the ensuing melee just past 1 a.m. Thursday was one unlike anything seen at the bar before.

As soon as the man on stage started singing about the stars in his best Chris Martin impersonation, the woman reportedly said: "Oh, no, not that song. I can't stand that song!"

Witnesses said her distaste for Coldplay quickly took a violent turn, and she leaped at the would-be crooner, shouting expletives and telling him that his singing "sucked," while expressing the same opinion of the song, according to a Seattle police report.

She pushed the man and punched him, all in an effort to stop his singing.

Other patrons went to the singer's aid and hauled the 21-year-old woman outside.

"It took three or four of us to hold her down," said Robert Willmette, one of the bartenders at Changes.

The woman, Willmette said, "went crazy" when she got outside, punching him twice in the face, and throwing blows at the others gathered around her.

But the person who drew most of the music critic's ire was an off-duty Seattle police officer. The off-duty officer identified herself as a cop, gave her badge number and had another patron call 911 to request help for an officer.

The response was fast and overwhelming, with both patrol officers and Gang Unit detectives converging on the normally tame neighborhood bar.

"They blocked the whole street off," Willmette said.

According to the police report, the woman's rage only grew when the uniformed officers arrived.

The officers took the woman, whom Willmette described as "a little hippie girl," to the ground, but she was still able to head butt the off-duty officer several times before she was handcuffed.

After treatment for injuries she suffered in the scuffle, the woman was booked into the King County Jail for investigation of assault. She was also held on a warrant issued for a previous theft charge.

The off-duty officer also went to the hospital, for treatment of several cuts, scrapes and bruises.

Later Thursday morning, bar employees were shaking their heads over the woman's bizarre behavior.

According to the night bartender's notes, she had just one drink -- a single shot of Jägermeister.

August 10, 2007
Crap. I haven't updated like I promised I would. I've been busy with weird things. Like I cleaned and purged my whole apartment.

As many of you know I'm big on feng shui and I'm currently doing my damnest to get my chi flowing. My floors and tabletops gleam. I have a gorgeous ruby-colored candle on the wooden shelf in my fame area and irises from Trader Joe's in my money sector/kitchen. The whole place smells funny. I suspect it's the Murphy's Oil Soap -- my floors aren't used to it and may be having a reaction.

I asked my apartment manager if he had an extra kitchen table I could put in my wealth area/kitchen, but I left out the "in my wealth area" part. He took me to the storage garage under my building and held my hand like he was a knight and I was a princess while I climbed over rolls of carpet in my flip-flops.

There were dressers from the '30s there and I told him so. He didn't realize. There were no kitchen tables, but he gave me a little bookshelf and I put it in the bagua of my living room that is supposed to give me a strong, healthy center.

It is currently only half full, but I'm visualizing and ordering with one-click on Amazon even as I type this.

August 2, 2007
I still can't get my mind around that bridge just caving in. So far everyone I know is fine. I guess because of construction only one of the eight lanes was open.

August 1, 2007
Holy shit! That 35-W bridge collapse happened in Minneapolis where I'm from. It was near my alma mater, the U of M.

July 22, 2007
The Los Angeles Times interviewed me:
Blogging: A Crash Course on Introspection

July 18, 2007
More from my new friend:

From: "chris edward"
To: "Dating Amy"
Subject: GET BACK TO ME A S A P
Hello Amy,
Thanks a lot for your urgent responds.As i told you before,i work as an accountant in HFCNG BANK in Nigeria.My late client who worked with( NNPC COMPANY) in Nigeria deposited amount of TWENTY FIVE MILLION US DOLLARS (US$25,000,000.00) with our bank before hie death.

All the efforts made to contact any of his family members did not work out,that was why i contacted you to make you the beneficiary to my late clients fund, since the bank has giving me limited time to provide the next of kin to my late client or the money will be confiscated by the bank.

Now as i told you it has an open beneficiary status,where by you can be the next of kin and the money will transfer to your personal account, as an insider, i have all the legal documents to back it up.You can either be a next of kin or partner or anything depending on what I decide. No one is aware of this fund and again the deceased has no one coming again for the fund,and i do not want My bank to confiscate the Fund since they have giving me limited time to provide the beneficiary or the fund being confiscated,My concern is for you to keep it absolute secrecy until the money transfer to your personal account. Be sure that you have no risks to fear about.

The guarantee is that I am working in the same bank and will also serve as an insider on your behalf.I am sure also that no one is coming later to ask you whether you are the real next of kin or not because I studied every thing before contacting you and moreover, I cannot involve myself to danger in the same bank where I am working. All you have to do for me is to keep this absolutely secret, knowing that this involved my integrity with my bank.

I have some questions for you.

1. Are you married and of what age are you?
2. Are there things you want to ask me?
3. Can you tell me whether you are capable of receiving this amount or not when transferred?

For me, I am married with two kids and has worked in this same bank for years. I will give you the updates when I hear from you. I am expecting you to call me for more clarifications. Furnish me with the following informations to enable me start proccessing and documentation:

YOUR FULL NAME
YOUR COUNTRY
YOUR OCCUPATION
YOUR AGE
YOUR PHONE NUMBER.

Best Regards,
Chris Edward,
+234-803xxxxxxxx

LET US WORK TOGETHER AND ACHIEVE THIS AIM,TO USE THE MONEY AND HELP THE POOR ONES AMONG US THAN THE BANK TO CONFISCATED THE FUND.

July 17, 2007
12:26 p.m.
As you can see I'm getting a lot accomplished today. Actually due to the magic of cut & paste I've done 3000 words already. I wanted to share this great oportunity that came to me out of the blue last night!

__________
From: "chris edward"
Subject: can you be hornest
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2007 02:31:48 +0100
HELLO,
I am sorry to intrude into your private and peaceful life, this may come to you as surprise but bear with me ,it was through intensive internet search i got your contact and decided to contact you,all the same My name is Mr. Chris Edward, I work as an accountant in a bank; I contacted you to work together with me in claiming my late client's fund. Unfortunately he died without a registered next of kin and as such the funds now have an open beneficiary status. This has officially transferred the right to you, as no other person from his family knows anything about this fund with our bank.If you are interested in working with me, please get back to me as quickly as possible, so that I give you the details of what we are to do. I wait for your prompt response so that I can brief you of what you need to and how to do it.

regards,
chris.

On 7/16/07, Dating Amy wrote:
Hi Chris,
Oh my lord, are you serious? I'm on this total winning streak lately -- on Friday I won tickets to a Mariner's game (as you must know I'm in Seattle) and last Christmas not only did I win $2 on a scratch-off lottery ticket, but I also won a grab bag of CDs (music, though, not bank ones) and stuff at a concert because the real winner couldn't claim it because she donated the grab bag or something. Anyway, I totally believe in destiny and if you can see it you can be it! I'm thrilled by your news. What's next?
Yours,
Amy

P.S. I'm very hornest, especially lately as I'm not seeing anyone.
____________

So I put myself on this really-not-very-aggressive-at-all writing schedule of two pages (600 words) a day. To put it in perspective, Stephen King recommends that writers churn out 10 pages a day like he does (he figures that’s 2000 words, I don’t know why his word-count for a page is 200 words and mine is 300 when I count words in books, but even with his generous word-per-page allotment I’d still only be doing three pages a day). Anyway, I’ve been at this for 12 days and I’m like 6000 words behind. Or 20,000 words behind.

I have managed three drinks a day, three date offers a day, four pots of iced coffee with cream a day, and 6000 thoughts about my ex-boyfriend.

July 16, 2007
After I got home from winning the Mariner’s tickets over two gin martinis at the bar, I celebrated by opening a bottle of pinot grigio and posting my first ad on the craigslist personals. It just felt right to step outside my usual social circle and to bring a blind date to the game. Craigslist also seemed to make sense at the time, because while it is considered somewhat less-than say eharmony or match.com or even yahoo, it is fast and free – much like the people one can meet there! I got about 50 responses and only one was an offer of a massage. Maybe I can win a prize for that.

In the hot, sober light of morning I realized there was no way I had the guts to take some stranger to a baseball game. I’m not that girl anymore. The first guybud I called jumped at the chance to go, though.

I broke the bad news to some of the more promising characters on craigslist and most still want to meet, even sans tickets.

July 15
Lately my writer’s block has been less like gridlock at an intersection (a $650 fine in LA last I checked) and more like a five-car pileup on the 405, (no charge, but you might die or have your insurance rates raised) which is a scary analogy since I don’t drive anymore.

I realized that part of my fear -- with updating the site at least -- is that while I have far fewer readers than I did in the throes of my 50 dates, many of those who still check in are with THE MEDIA. This scares me. You guys scare me. I see you in my site statistics, you call me, you email me, but for some reason I still don’t feel safe and nurtured with you. Perhaps we need couples counseling. I’ve done a lot of soul searching lately, though, and I’ve decided: Fuck it, it’s my site and I’ll write stupid not-very-well-thought-out crap if I want to. And it may not be in order, either, so neener.

I’ll start with some recent snapshot of Things That Make Me Happy:

1. I’m on a winning streak. Up until my birthday last December I had never won anything in my life. Truly, Never. Not a raffle, not a calk-walk, not the lottery, not the John Lennon Songwriting Contest, not the contest that Visa held where you send in a story about your most poignant Visa-related incident and I wrote about the time an ATM at the Charles de Gaulle airport ate my debit card and Visa got me home from my first trip to Europe safely. It’s not so bad, since if you’ve never won anything ever, you don’t know what you’re missing.

That all changed round about my birthday when there was a gift bag of CDs and prizes given during the Three Imaginary Girls' Christmas party at the Crocodile Café. The woman behind me had the winning ticket, but couldn’t claim it because she had supplied the gift basket or something and she hit me and said “You go up there and claim it!” and I did. I also won a $2 scratch-off ticket that my boss bought me (she bought for everyone on our team, but no one else won).

My phenomenal luck continued on Friday night. I was having a martini at McCormick’s happy hour and they gave me a ticket with my drink, explaining that there would be a drawing later. No blip on my radar yet, since I’ve held many a ticket in my hand and... nada. The woman next to me, slim with her white hair clipped up in a chignon, said “Have a nice night, dear,” and handed me a quarter-inch thickness of blue tickets. At exactly six when the drawing started I spread them all in front of me like tarot cards. Winners were called again and again. T-shirts I didn’t win, free dinners I didn’t win.

”We’re worried about you even crossing the street your luck’s so bad,” the guys next to me said.

“The grand prize winner for box seats and a car and driver to tomorrow night’s Mariner’s game is…”

Well you know who it was. I’ll report on the game and other Things That Make Me Happy in my next entry, which the press will likely also be bored by.

July 7, 2007
Almost exactly three years ago I had my panties in a bunch -- although as you'll see he was able to untangle them -- over this guy I called Teflon. We've had awful fights since, but when I read back, I see he wasn't such a bad guy. Here's a (trick-or-) treat for you from my book.

If someone can tell me the real name of the movie I call Lake Badajuju, I'll send you an autographed copy of Dating Amy: 50 True Confessions of a Serial Dater.

Date #40: Halloween in July

True Confession: I always think of this as the Night of Two Firsts (and, yes, they're the kind of firsts you might imagine).

I think I have a tarot-specific form of obsessive-compulsive disorder with astrological tendencies. I'm very superstitious, and often make up little rituals for myself, a trend that's only been exacerbated by years of living alone.

One of my favorite rituals is doing affirmations, which I repeat until I've whipped myself into a nervous frenzy of positive thoughts. Big, yet attainable goals are then sub-divided into “written” and “spoked aloud.” Sometimes I have so many affirmations going that they cancel each other out, for instance “I'm with the perfect guy for me” seems to conflict with “I have a book deal based on dating tons of crazies.” Somewhere mixed in there was, "I have a great boyfriend by the Fourth of July," which I had just remembered. I think it may have been a recycled. I hate the Fourth of July. It's my least favorite holiday. I almost never have a good time. It seems like I'm always alone. (Those would be examples of non-positive thoughts.)

Teflon builds super computers and always emails instead of calling. It was our third date.

He had given me my choice of the whole weekend and I picked Saturday night. Creative Visualization says that sometimes if your goals don't manifest using affirmations, it may be that you feel conflicted about them. I wanted to spend the Fourth of July with a great boyfriend and yet I had picked July 3 to see Teflon, who I thought had the potential to be one. Spirituality is very complex.

We had just finished sharing a perfect meal of cashew chicken (something I order at every new Thai place so I can have an x-factor when I do restaurant comparisons) and some beef and vegetables thing that he picked. We were at a little family-owned place a few blocks from my house.

"No fortune cookies," I said.

He threw a Visa down onto the check.

"Nope, just chocolates. Maybe your fortune is to travel to Peru," he said, passing me an Andes mint.

Next we went to an Irish pub that I don't care for as it is always either silent as a tomb or crashed by people coming from sporting events wearing colored foam things on their heads. Although it was a Saturday night, it was quiet for the time being.

Our whole excuse for getting together after we met at a party a few weeks before was so he could lend me Running with Scissors, a book he thought I'd like. I made some nice date chatter about it: "As a straight man, how did you feel about the graphic description of the 13-year-old boy being forced to give a blow job to his 35-year-old neighbor?"

"I was fine with it. I definitely went through a homophobic period when I was younger, like in junior high, but now I couldn't care less."

I'm sure he was thrilled that I brought up the subject of blow jobs since he hadn't even been allowed into the lobby of my apartment building yet. I wanted to throw him off, though.

"Are you saying you're okay with statutory rape, then?"
"Well, no, of course not…"
"I like to think of myself as an amateur sociobiologist," I said. "I know we're not really tortoises, but in dating I think we do take our cues from Darwin."
"I agree. In fact I think we are tortoises at heart. It's just that we're the only species that has to societal constraints on our mating."
"Those pesky statutory rape laws again?" I asked.

We talked about how even supposedly monogamous birds are found to have eggs fertilized by different males. This we both knew from the Nature Channel. He seemed a little too supportive of the theory that men have a biological responsibility to spread their seed. This was disturbing to me as I was really starting to like him. I wondered if Charles Darwin had been married, and if so, how his theories went over with Mrs. Darwin.

"Would you like another beer?" The waitress reappeared.

I launched into a long explanation of how I want slightly less than a pint like they have at the alehouse at the top of the hill. The waitress and Teflon both looked confused. I gave up and ordered a whole pint.

"They know what I'm talking about at the top of the hill," I said after she left. "Then you should definitely hang out there," he said.

As we were leaving he ran into some women he knew from work and laughed that the same thing happened to him the night before. I could tell from his smugness that he had obviously been on a date then too.

There was an uncharacteristic chill in the air and it felt like October. We considered and then discarded the idea of sitting at the lookout at the top of the hill (where I'm understood) on the grounds that it was too cool. I suggested watching a video at my place, which of course he jumped at since that's guy-code for sex.

"Horror is my favorite genre," I said as we walked into the Blockbuster around the corner. “Yeah, I like it a lot too. That and sci-fi.”
“I dated a guy who was in this,” I said picking up a copy of Lake Badajuju. “He had a small but pivotal role.”
“I didn't know the seventh sequel of a slasher movie could have a pivotal role.”
A thin guy with a ponytail wearing a dark blue Blockbuster shirt and a nametag that said Mrs. Vorhees was stocking shelves. I picked up the DVD of Halloween.
“Do you know anything about the special features on this?” I asked him.
“Yes,” he answered and resumed stocking.
“What she means is, is this the one with special features or is that a different version?”
“It doesn't matter, I don't have a DVD player anyway,” I said.
“Wow, that guy didn't like me,” I said as Teflon and I walked back to my apartment with the VHS of Halloween. “I think it's because video store guys are all frustrated screenplay writers and get annoyed with people who know less about film than they do.”
“I think it's that they have shitty jobs for just over minimum wage,” he said.
"Do you know who Mrs. Vorhees is?"
“Yes, she was the original killer in Friday the 13th. Before Jason. She was his mother.”

I'm thrilled that he's able to draw upon horror-movie trivia. It's foreplay to me.

It's one of the only times in my life that I've been wildly physically attracted to someone who was actually solvent and educated and not crazy or on drugs. We were making out even before the teenagers in the movie were. I love kissing him. I love the way his lips feel on mine. I love that he's big and tall and not frail and little. Sociobiologists say that women are sexually drawn to men who have compatible blood types. I love his blood type I bet.

He ran his hand up my dress. After awhile I dug my heel into his thigh so hard that he got a leg cramp.

"No one's ever been able to do that before," I said as he massaged his leg.
"I find that hard to believe. You're very… responsive"
"Do you want to go into my room?" I paused the film.

Teflon snapped me out of the haze that he had put me in by hesitating. "I guess we could…" he said.

I leaned back on my ivory down-feather comforter under a string of pink paper maché heart lights. He ran his hand down my leg to my foot, leaned on his elbows and looked up at me.

"Before we go any further, you should know that I have…"

Some horrible, communicable disease? A familial history of genocide that surfaces when he's aroused? I knew he was too good to be true.

"… a fear of commitment."

"Oh. Wow," I said. I put a pillow under my head and looked at the ceiling. He moved up next to me and put his head on the other pillow.

"I first realized I had it after grad school. I could tell something was off. A lot of my friends were getting engaged and married but that just seemed like a lot to take on to me. I even lived with someone for five years."

"Did she ever catch it from you?"

"No," he said. "She met someone when we were together. After we broke up they got married right away. Marriage never came up in conversation when she and I were together, though." "In five years?"

I didn't believe him. I suspected it was the disease talking.
"I don't mean to make you feel bad, but I'm kind of freaked out," I said.

"I've had lots of different reactions when I've told potential partners," he continued. "Everything from them breaking up with me to saying that they had it too."
"Well I don't want to have sex unless we're at least committed to being exclusive," I said.
"That's okay. I'll just masturbate when I get home. That's what I usually do anyway."

As if to end the conversation he moved back down my body, slid his hands up my hips and peeled my black lace boy-cut underwear off. "These are very sexy panties you're wearing," he said. He lowered his head. His tongue was agonizing. I arched into him and put my hands back over my head. If I had nails they would have dug into the wall. He gave me yet another first. Maybe this commitment thing was over-rated.

It was late.

"I should go," he said, getting up to get his tennis shoes.
"Come here for a second," I said.
He had told me a secret and I remembered that I had one too. He lay back down beside me.

"This is weird, but… I write about my dates on the Internet. You're already on there. The thing is, it's really popular. I've been on the news. I'm even using it to run a political campaign."

He considered. "Well thanks for telling me."
"I just didn't want you to think I was just some unemployed person with nothing happening."
"I didn't think that," he said. "Hey, you should write about tonight and the two firsts. It's definitely something people should hear about."

"It's not that kind of a Web site," I said.

It was after midnight and I was alone. In the other room it was still Halloween and Jamie Lee Curtis remained on pause, frozen in a silent scream. In my room fireworks sparkled up over the hill, because it wasn't Halloween, it was the Fourth of July.

July 6, 2007
People have been asking me “So what are you going to do on Friday?” since it would be my first day of not working. I assured most of them that I would indeed write most of the day since that’s the reason I quit my copywriting job. It’s the end of the day Friday and I have not written a word except for the 47 that came before this sentence. (Including that sentence it’s 75, though).

July 4, 2007
Happy 4th to all you American readers. I’m not celebrating my own Independence Day until tomorrow, which is my last day of work.

I went to lunch with one of my guyfriendcoworkers J on Monday since he was to be out of the office for my other goodbye lunches, goodbye drinks and goodbye coffee breaks.

I had a glass of pinot grigio with my half a chicken sandwich and fries and couldn’t even think for the rest of the day at work. How can my tolerance for alcohol be so low when I drink wine every night? I don’t know how people can go out boozing and then come back to work. Although it is funny when they roll in after obviously several hours of a liquid lunch and then go to a big meeting where you could basically send the conference room up in flames if you lit a match in front of their breath while they ask about something that has 1) already just been covered or 2) makes no sense at all. Heh.

There are some things I’ll miss about corporate life.

July 2, 2007
I had the dream last night.

The one where I take a quick flight with no luggage except for my rucksack. Usually it’s to somewhere in Europe, but that varies. It is never to someplace like Nevada or Idaho. When I’m awake I think it was based on a real flight I took from Nice to Paris that time the train went on strike and just let me off. But there are worse places to be stranded than the French Riviera. I had my first Nicoise salad at the airport there (the French are laughing now), then I just hopped a plane from the coast to Charles de Gaulle airport and it was relaxing, but most of all it was quick, from getting on the plane to the flight itself. They sat me next to a woman from LA, and by that time—I had been drifting purposefully through Europe for a month by myself – I was hungry for conversation from home. She was with New Line cinema and just flying back from the Cannes film festival. We chattered over the unfortunate guy seated between us for the entire 45-minute flight. I hope he didn’t speak English.

Now I dream of quick flights with no planning and very little baggage. Maybe it has to do with recent events. I quit my job last week. I’m taking the summer off to write my next book. It is a novel.

You can expect updates to the site now.

June 17, 2007
I’ve been having life-changing, earth-moving events happening lately, so I’m going to jump right in and write about doughnuts.

I do not normally eat doughnuts as I rightly feel that they battling it out with potato chips as the leader of the empty calorie vanguard. Plus that jolt of sugar in the morning (when they are usually consumed) throws my whole food-craving schedule out of whack for the entire day.

Still, due to many non-pastry related things happening in my life, I’ve decided to half-heartedly embrace the New Girl in Town me that I was circa 2001. The girl who actually gave a damn about exploring things beyond a five-block radius of her apartment. Every weekend morning I go to the coffee shop that’s, well, five blocks from my apartment. I don’t even enjoy it anymore, though. So this morning I made a plan to visit Top Pot doughnuts. Many may know it as a supplier to Starbucks, but it is a local coffee shop in its own right if one lives in Seattle.

I walked and walked and spied the sign I had seen on the Internet. It was around nine. There was only one couple ahead of me. A woman I work with had recommended the raspberry glazed, which is a regular glazed doughnut with a raspberry frosting, but is not a raspberry doughnut. It was huge, but I ordered it anyway, along with a cup of coffee.

I took my meal to the loft upstairs, which is designed so that anytime anyone moves a chair or takes a step, the sound and feeling are like the ground bouncing.

The doughnut was very good. I ate it with my hands, with both hands because of its size. I did not see or dare ask for a fork, because I didn’t want to be a nerd, although I really did need one. The coffee was terrible.

I saw pink glaze on the cuff of my sweatshirt when I was at the gym later that day. I put my mouth to it and it was sweet.

May 10, 2007
There's a book about blogging called No One Cares What You Had For Lunch. I haven't read it, but I think it's a funny title and it got me thinking about whether or not that's true. I almost never update and yet I have hundreds of visitors every day. Perhaps I'll start documenting lunch. Here goes:

Today I was in a frenzy to catch the bus like always. I missed the first one and so had time to make oatmeal with orange-infused cranberries on it. The oatmeal turned pink in a few places and tasted like a citrus-clove project I did in fifth grade smelled.

I meant to grab a Lean Cuisine, but in my hurry to curl my eyelashes and put mineral powder on my face I forgot.

I asked one of the designers I work with if she knows of a great Japanese restaurant in Bellevue where we work. She is a Japan-o-phile. She found one above a movie theater, but since its website showed what looked like caviar on its sushi and announced that they were charging those kind of prices, we passed. She offered to drive me to Uwajimaya and I accepted and then emailed that I couldn't spare the time.

I got teriyaki chicken with rice and salad from the place across the street and asked for the teriyaki sauce on the side. I like to be the commander of my own teriyaki sauce since it's fattening.

My Japonloving friend found me that afternoon. "I was looking for you since I went to Umajimaya anyway," she said. "I bought some chocolate cookies that have gold on them." I made her open the packet. The gold sparkled like the glitter on the dance recital costumes I wore in fifth grade. The cookies were good. My boss let us go home an hour early because workers were tarring the roof of our building and it smelled like nail polish remover on all 21 floors.

That's what I had for lunch today.

April 16, 2007
Sam Brett, the Sydney Herald's own Carrie Bradshaw quoted from my book in her article "What is Your Dealbreaker?"

April 14, 2007
The girl behind the counter defines nubile. It is comical to watch the men, especially the married ones, tripping all over themselves to wait in her line. She has a figure like a centerfold and long straight hair like Sheena. They say Let’s Go to Her Line She Looks Lonely even though there are a dozen people, all of them men, in her line already. Their wives just roll their eyes.

Judging by the conversations with her regulars, she has apparently just had a significant birthday. It cannot be 30, so I’m guessing 21. (I accidentally typed "I cannot be 30" proving once again that Freud was right, there are no accidents).

“So do I have to start calling you ma’am?” a man who cannot be a day under 47 says to the girl.
“No I’m not ready for all that,” she answers.
“Yeah, you don’t ever want to be that age,” he says, apparently unaware of the vaguely homicidal nature of his comment, because if she’s never to reach “ma’am age” there’s really only one alternative, isn’t there? Furthermore, dude, if you were a woman you’d have been getting ma’amed for like the last 15 years. People are practically calling you ma’am now, you have big breasts.

April 5, 2007
An article I wrote came out today. It's been picked up in several places; this is the Comcast version. Its working title was "What Type of Dater Are You?" and as you can see it has evolved. (I had to look up phenotype on dictionary.com when I saw this incarnation.)
What's Your Phenotype?
Here's an outtake from the original article. They wrote it and I resisted on the grounds that it was too mean (and too close to home since I haven't had a real relationship for a year and three months, plus I wasn't sure about the CSI reference -- which I also did not write -- after talking to some of the hip younger people at work who are not in danger of dying alone anytime soon and they said they watch CSI, and plus, isn't it the most popular show on television ever? I've never seen an episode but my apartment is often quiet.)

The Loneliest Human On Earth

You'll know them by the sound of their slippers softly padding through their pin-drop quiet apartment. They really love their cats, their mystery novels, their videogames, their Law & Order reruns because, well, there’s nothing and nobody else around to love. If you can find it in your heart to give them the time of day, they’ll be very, very grateful. Unfortunately for them, though, you’re out there to find your perfect match, not donate your love life to charity.

Ha! I said CSI and they had written Law & Order, but I'm going to leave my brainlapse out there for the world to see. Is there a difference between the two shows? I don't watch anything but Desperate Housewives.

March 18, 2007
I love the coffee shop. It's a scene. I’m there all the time now. Every weekend day and after work in the evenings because I’m feeling more and more desperate to get my second book underway and that’s where I write.

The twenty-something barista’s a friend of mine. We compare lack of sleep.
“Were you up late drinking green beer?” he says.
“No, but I couldn't sleep because my neighbors were partying in the alley all night.”
“The guy upstairs used to sing and play his guitar until two in the morning. I finally disconnected his power.”
“Thank God, I thought my annoyance was an age thing, like 'you damn kids quiet down, it’s after 11:00.'”

My ex said he's barbequeing tuna for dinner. I found out a couple we know did not break up even though I heard a rumor. Maybe the coffee shop isn't so much a scene as it is a small town.

After accomplishing nothing except overcaffeination there, I forced myself to go to the downtown library to write.

Literally hundreds of open carrels and a teenage couple chooses to sit with me. Shouldn’t they be making out behind the stacks or something? They throw identical books entitled Modern Chemistry down on their side of the table. I read her book upside down: The Solution Process, Concentration of Solutions, I can’t concentrate or find a solution. Why can’t I concentrate? WHY CAN’T I CONCENTRATE?

Normally I would pull rank and point out, as the boy has just done, that there are “like a thousand other open seats,” but three of the characters in my next book are teenagers and I feel this is a good chance to observe some real ones up close (like in a zoo!) The boy pulls a tether of purple gum out of his mouth and drops it in his lap when I look up at him. I look back down at my laptop and out of the corner of my eye, I see him put the gum back in his mouth and start chewing. The girl puts her chemistry book in her backpack and start reading Song of Myself, by Walt Whitman. All three of us sigh loudly.

I’m really on the road to a bestseller.

When the boy steps away I ask the girl how old they are. "I'm 15, he's 16. Have you read this?" she says, holding up Whitman. I shake my head. "You're not missing anything, it doesn't even rhyme."

March 12, 2007
From the mouths of babes:

I was at Norstrom's Rack returning a $72 black Le SportSac bag with a pink flower on it that the guy I was returning it to pointed out was part of the OC collection. I've never seen an episode of The OC, although I know who Misha Barton is. He went on about how it was his favorite show. I told him to find a new one, since even I know it's off the air now and then I went upstairs to find a more comfortable pair of shoes than the ones I was wearing so I could continue walking home. Mid-50s in Seattle coupled with daylight savings time equals my own personal OC.

As I was trying on a pair of chartreuse Reef flip flops (and yes, I bought them and OH, YES they are like sex for my feet they're so comfortable), I was privvy to the following conversation courtesy of two teenage girls:

So I wrote Jason a note? to tell him that I like him as more than a friend? and I wrote it in Swedish?

Do you know Swedish?

No, but I told Ingrid everything and she wrote it.

Does he know Swedish?!

No, but he's going there this summer. You're missing the point.

What's the point?

He's cute!

March 5, 2007
I was at happy hour with a bunch of bloggers the other evening. They don't know each other from blogging, but from hanging around a band they all like. I know them from blogging, depending on how far back you want to go. I started a website and got a book deal and read from the book at bookstores and met a guy at one of my readings who has a blog who got me a job where I met a woman who blogs with him and they both know other people who blog and some of them came for drinks.

The happy hour restaurant is on a street with lots of restaurants. I've written about many dinners I've had on that street, but I've never been to this restaurant before. I walk past it when the weather is nice and people sit outside on the patio and have tiny burgers in sterling silver towers. I've been meaning to go there and now I am there.

It takes us 40 minutes to get a table. I don't wait that long to get a drink, though. The specials are mystery wines (you can have a red or white, but the bartender picks it) or an alpine martini, which is made with vodka and a piece of a spruce tree frozen in ice. I love martinis, but only the gin ones with olives and am hesitant about a branch being put in my drink. I know someone else will order one and offer me a taste, so I order the mystery white wine once I've made sure it's dry.

There is nowhere to sit for quite a long time. A table of ten well-heeled-looking men have been there since we arrived and don't appear to be leaving anytime soon. The waiters and waitresses are patient as they navigate around us; we are squarely perched in their way.

Just when we had given up hope we get a table near the window, not a huge victory since happy hour is waning. We promptly order burgers and cheese plates and maybe even veggie things -- I can't remember. The party of ten men have left, finally. The crowd is thinning.

"I miss blogging," I say. "I want to do it, but only if I can be anonymous."

"You can't blog anonymously anymore," several of the blogger chime in. "I'd love to write about my life, but people would know it's me," says the woman I met through the guy I met through my book reading. "And if you network with your friends, then obviously they know it's you, so it's not anonymous."

"I think I could do it all over again," I say. "Start a journal, have it get picked up by the national news and get a book deal. All without anyone knowing who I am."

Stephen King had the exact same thought when he wrote as Richard Bachman, although obviously at a much higher level. He wondered if he could do it again. Could I? I don't know if Bachman ever got published without his creator's famous moniker, but I bet at my own small level I could. Really, you just wait. "There are too many bloggers now," the woman informs me. She may have a point, since in 2002 when I started my site, the term "blogging" hadn't really been invented yet.

We discuss my book and the far more successful book Eat Pray Love, and someone's upcoming trip to Italy and how an absent blogger friend's house is a babe magnet since it's extraordinary. I eat my tiny burgers with strong, good cheese and mooch French fries served in a little silver chalice from the guy who originally came to my book reading. As I predicted, I got a taste of the alpine martini. It tasted like a lesser version of the gin ones I favor, which, after all, are made with juniper. Still okay.

Our pretty waitress thanks us for the exorbitant tip (40% I think), since apparently the table of ten men left without paying her anything.

I tell the bloggers it must have been an oversight and that one of the men will be back with apologies and a MasterCard.

"You also think you could get a book deal as a blogger again," they say and shake their heads.

February 11, 2007
I'm in the March issue of Men's Health magazine in an article called "Score Every Time" (1,093 Sexy Women Confess What They Want in Bed!) If you're a man who came here because of that article, here's a classic I wrote for my website a few years ago. Upon closer inspection, I see that some of it is kind of mean. Wow, I've really mellowed these past few years.

Amy's Dating Tips for Men

---

As you know by now, I like to date. I gotta tell you, though, guys, I see common mistakes being made that are the kiss of death to romance. I can't very well coach the dudes I'm dating, but I can throw a rope to all of you. Here, in no particular order, are 10 tips from the dating maven:

1. Don't talk about how hot your ex-girlfriend/the girl on the next barstool/Catherine Zeta Jones is. As a female, this seems like such a no-brainer to me, but I see even the suavest guys do this crap. I know you don't mean this as a personal insult to the lovely woman you're out with. I know that to you it's just interesting conversation. After all, who's not interested in hot chicks? Answer: Your date is not.

2. Whoever asks, pays. Even if you're lucky enough to have her ask you out first, you will still score big points if you scoop up the check. Chivalry is not dead, or it shouldn't be, at least. Most women, given the choice, would rather have you pop for dinner at a funky diner than suggest Dutch treat at a chi-chi restaurant. Addendum: If your date really insists on paying her own share and she is not a hardcore feminist, she may be trying to tell you she's not interested, so don't argue too much.

3. Compliment her. Even if your words sound cheesy to you, they won't to her. Relentless bragging alert: When I was in my twenties I had a very nice body (some say I still do). My boyfriend at the time said he didn't want to tell me what a beautiful figure I had, because he didn't want to sound like every other guy. He couldn't have been more off-base. There isn't a woman alive who doesn't want to hear that you find her attractive. Don't be sleazy about it, though.

4. Don't complain about your last relationship/failed marriage. I cannot tell you how many first dates have tanked because guys have gone on and on about how they got cleaned out due to their divorce or how their last girlfriend left them for their best friend five years ago. Get some therapy. Seriously. There's no shame in it. This is not the kind of talk that a fun single woman wants to hear on a date.

5. Don't be a big chicken. If she says she's busy on Friday night, maybe you should ask for Saturday instead of giving up. When I was in Jamaica years ago, I met a charming Southern guy who encouraged other men to approach attractive women because, "the worst that can happen is that you'll end up with a new friend." I love that attitude. Makes me want to move to the South. Life is short. Live it.

6. Confidence is it, baby. Beatles said that all you need is love, but for our purposes, all you need is confidence. Apparently when people weren't able to recognize Cary Grant in real life, he would say, "See, even Cary Grant isn't like Cary Grant." It's all in your attitude. Why do you think not-so-striking guys who are in bands or do poetry slams are so devastating? It's the willingness to put themselves out there. That quality is extraordinarily attractive to women, guaranteed.

7. Pay attention to who she is. Sometimes men are so concerned with expressing who they are and what they want on a date that the woman may as well not even be there. I know you're hot for her and planning how you're going to get her into a tongue-wrestling match later, but this kind of thinking is self-defeating as she'll know that you're not paying attention to her right then and there. If you can be in the present more, it will set you up for more potential passion later.

8. Don't try to hide your quirks. They'll come out later anyway. I've been out with guys who said, "I promised myself I wouldn't talk about my interest in Star Trek/origami/railroad books on our date," but really, wouldn't you rather be with a woman who accepts -- no, embraces -- your love of Kafka or Gaudi architecture?

9. Don't overestimate what you have to offer. It's harsh, I know, but sociological studies have shown that men tend to overestimate their value in the singles "marketplace." I dated a legally blind man who was constantly talking about how "hot" other women were. I finally turned to him and said, "How do you know?" If you are not attracting the caliber of woman you feel you deserve, maybe you should reassess?

10. Don't be overeager. You know those women who seem to be planning what color their bridesmaids are going to wear on the first date? Don't be the male version of them. Whether it stems from horniness or relief at finding someone you think you could dig long term, neediness is never sexy. I think you'll know when she wants to get horizontal, so until then, chill out. If you are much more sold on the potential relationship than she is, she will want to run away at the Speed of Light if you bring up moving to London together on the second date.

Have fun. Dating is about getting to know other people and sharing different perspectives on things. Chances are that any given date won't lead to a big, heavy relationship, and that's okay. It's a chance to learn more about yourself... or at least get another story to tell at cocktail parties.


February 7, 2007
Today I spied with my little eye...

...a harbinger of spring: a woman at the bus stop in flip-flops who was not homeless or crazy.

...another harbinger of spring: all the doors and windows open at my secret favorite bar as I walked past after work.

...every green light in Seattle as my bus sped past them. I got home in record time.

...a sign that S&M has truly gone mainstream: fuzzy handcuffs for sale at Bartell's drugstore(!)

...a beautiful ivory heart-shaped candle that I plan to buy myself as a Valentine's gift

...a bottle of pinot grigio that I'm currently drinking

...chocolate-zucchini cake with crushed coffee beans that a coworker baked.

January 6, 2007
Due to years' worth of popular demand, I have redesigned my site. This is where I'll blog.