Independence Day

Well, I'm back to dating. And I'd like to put my old dating habits behind me. You know, not overload my weeks with dating different guys. Except that's exactly what I did. The next week or so is just a busy week for me to begin with. This weekend is the time where I go camping with my friends (camping = renting a huge cabin in the Poconos, complete with fireplace and jacuzzi, drinking and playing games all weekend), so I'll be gone from Friday right after school until Monday. Thursday my mom and grandma are leaving for Florida so we're going to be having a dinner on Wednesday night. Thursday night is my training night at the gym, so that left only tonight and tomorrow open for dating.

Tonight's date went well. I'd be even so bold as to say that it went very very well, but I don't really want to jump the gun on this one. He had IMed me before on Jdate, and since I had been so caught up in the whole CK thing, I pretty much gave him the run around. I never said that I wasn't interested, but I was always very busy, just in case he asked me out I wouldn't have to tell him I was really dating someone else. Last night he asked if he could call me on his drive home from his parents' place in north jersey, and I wasn't doing much, so we ended up talking on the phone for over an hour. I really hate doing that before a date because it leads to false expectations I think. We decided to go out tonight (because it was the only night this week I had left... either tonight or next Wednesday!). I wanted to go to this cute diner/restaurant in Collingswood, and since he doesn't live far from there we decided to meet there. I warned him that I am frequently late, and he claimed that he's usually on time. Well, reverse that. He got stuck in a back up on the Ben Franklin that made him almost a half hour late and I was actually early, plus he got lost coming over the bridge and I had to call my friend to help get him there.

Once we got there, it really wasn't awkward at all. We had dinner, and shared a milkshake (2 straws and everything), he shared well... and I like that. We made easy conversation, and as far as I know, he has no girlfriend in Canada. About halfway through the date, we notice that they are setting up some sort of Karaoke machine on the table behind us. Thinking that we're going to be subjected to awful, out of tune renditions of Living on a Prayer, I almost suggested we get the check and go. Glad I didn't. Turned out to be Quizzo. Whoohoo. We made a pretty awful team at first (we were Team Salt - we got props for our classy name). He came around to my side of the booth, and we did the "same side" thing for the rest of the evening. We sucked at Current Events, round 1, scoring only 1 measly point, putting us in dead last. The next round was songs with numbers in the title, I kicked ass on this one, and he contributed to a few, but unfortunately we were still in dead last. The third round was Science Fiction which focused most of its questions on SciFi movies from the 80s, 90s, and today. He knew just about ALL of them. At this point, I think we moved into 2nd to last place, over Team OMG (they should've lost for a lame name anyway). The last round of questions was all about rain forests, and we did ok on that one, good enough to retain our status of 2nd to last. Now that it was time for the wager, we decided to go all in. Couldn't hurt us much, and if we didn't wager anything, we'd still lose anyway. The category was Hollywood promo stints. We both thought we were done for. The question - What 1996 movie was the first movie to air a commercial during the Superbowl and is the top 18th grossing moving of all time? (Or something like that) We hemmed and hawed over this for a few minutes. The answer I wasn't 100% sure of, but we took a guess on Independence Day (my suggestion). We were right, and ended up tying for second place overall. We got a $15 gift certificate to the restaurant, which was pretty sweet. He allowed me to keep the gift certificate, which was nice considering he had already paid for the entire meal. The wait staff and Quizzo folk were practically falling over us, gushing about how wonderful it was that we won on our first time here and now how we definitely need to come back again. It was kind of a strange/awkward way to leave things because we hadn't discussed if we would be doing something again.

After we left, we had to go to his car first so I could give him directions on how to get back to his place. We kissed in his car for a little bit, and it was a nice end to a really fun date. It wasn't the typical date that I'm used to, and I think I could get used to this.

Date tomorrow night, different guy.