DC Dating

You may have read my Baby Snow Ox episode where my work life and school life all came crashing down on me one day a couple weeks ago. What I didn't mention is I also squeezed in a date that evening. Because work craziness and assignments due by midnight that I hadn't even started weren't enough to fill my day.

The date was great, starting with dinner and ending with an impromptu cruise on the Potomac river. Well, it was really a water taxi but since I had a "curfew", we hopped on the taxi, went to National Harbor, and came back. Our own poor man's cruise. I love spontaneity so it was great. Except for the part where I'm starting to feel the pressure of my assignments but still thought it wouldn't hurt to hop off the boat for two minutes while it was still unloading. The easily confused teen on the dock promised us the boat actually drops off one place, but picks up passengers just down the harbor. And he pointed as if "just down the harbor" was like - 20 feet from us.

So we get off and prepare to walk a few feet and get right back on our "cruise" when we see the boat pull away from the dock.

And keep going.

So now I'm panicking because - Podcast due! Paper due! Have to rant on a discussion board for class by midnight! And I'm wondering if I can swim back to our car when we finally see the boat appear to pull back towards the shore- way farther down then we expected. Thankfully after power-walking over there, we did manage to get back on and get home.

But if we hadn't, I so wouldn't have been surprised.

I've had some spectacularly bad dating experiences. This will probably need to be a series of posts to include them all. Or, I might need to start a new blog devoted to my mishaps - "DC Dating Disasters!" or simply "Give It Up And Just Buy Cats"....

I'll tell one of my favorites here though. My boyfriend several years ago, we'll call him "Mark", broke up with me. And I was sad. So I said yes when another "Mark" (they did have the same name) asked me out. And I met both Marks because of the band I was singing in at the time. So one night, the other singer arranged a get together at a restaurant in Arlington so New Mark and I could have a sort of group date and get to know eachother.

New Mark is kind of a strange guy. Nice. But a little socially awkward.

So a group of us are sitting around when one of the singer's friends walks in and joins us. And he was the best friend of Old Mark. So I'm instantly feeling nauseous. No way. There's No Way Old Mark would possibly end up...

Oh HEY Old Mark! Why yes, why WOULDN'T you sit right beside me? Not awkward at all.

So now I'm a Mark Sandwich, with Awkward New Mark making weird comments on my left, and Probably-Smug Old Mark hearing it all on my right. At one point, New Mark is desperately trying to keep the conversation afloat and compliments me. And I'm wearing shorts. So he says:

You have nice quads.

And that's the point where I blacked out from humiliation because who SAYS that to a girl? And Old Mark gets to WATCH me endure a date with this awkward guy, so I just got out of there as fast as I could.

Then the leader of our band changed my bio online to read "Dana loves Unicorns, Republicans, and dating guys named Mark." Sigh.

Next episode of Dana's Dating life will include the story of when a guy blew me off, then gave me a Family Discount at the restaurant he waitered at...

You're welcome for making you feel better about your own dating life.