The RN: Dating Again?

Let me start with, "Sorry I've been so bad about writing blogs lately." July and August were insane:

• High-school reunion, on the other side of the country
• Talked my sister into her first 5K, yay me!
• Spent nearly two-weeks moving
• The PoolBoy and I were roommates for 8 years, the last 6 of which we were in the same place. There were far too many tangled ownership issues - we literally forgot who owned what.
• And my parents came to help, thank goodness I needed the extra hands
• Had surgery (maybe more on this later), mom stayed for this too
• PoolBoy and I spent nearly two weeks visiting a former roommate in Australia and New Zealand

So, it's been a little busy the last 6-7 weeks around here. And blogging got lost in the shuffle. Sorry.

Apparently, I have officially started dating again. I went on a first date last weekend. It was ... alright. I think I'm out of practice. So I met him at a Happy Hour/Birthday Bar Crawl thing the weekend before through a Meetup group I joined recently. It was the Meetup Organizer's birthday and he turned the normal Thursday Happy Hour into a Saturday Bar Crawl for his birthday. Perfectly normal thing to do.

Happy Hour, Bar Crawl, same difference.

The Date (he's too new to have a nickname yet) and I talked a bit at a couple of the bars on the crawl were he indicated his interest and I said sure I'd go on a date with him. But I didn't really think anything of it, I mean not every guy I talk to actually gets a hold of me for a date. Plus we all know I'm not usually thinking about being date-able, especially lately. Since, I had been back from Australia for all of 14 hours, I only went to three of the bars and then headed home. This also lead to him being a ... bit more intoxicated than I was. So I really wasn't sure how serious he was about the whole thing. I didn't give him my number, not because I wouldn't have, but because he never actually asked me for it. Although I will allow for the fact it seemed at least half the people at the bar crawl thought I couldn't possibly leave that early. Surprise, I don't stay out later than I want to, even if the means leaving at 6pm on Saturday. It's one of my new take-care-of-yourself policies, don't do things I don't want to do/leave when I'm no longer having a good time.

The point being, he probably thought he had more time to ask for my number. Nonetheless, the following Sunday (8 days later, not the next day) he messages me via Meetup to see if I wanted to see a movie. Feeling a little tired of unpacking and organizing, I was fine going even with the short notice. And I do mean short notice, I had approximately 7 minutes to get ready and leave my house to not be late. In case you were wondering, I was 3 minutes late, but he had built in a 15 min buffer so everything was fine.

I was really close to being on time.

Here's the thing, I didn't really mind the last minute "can you do something?" But, I didn't really get ... anything out of the date. Let me explain. We drove separately, met at the theater, didn't get any snacks (Boo! At the movies and no popcorn), went to our seats, watched a movie, and then left in separate cars. We had maybe 10 minutes of talking at our seats before the loud ads started for the movie. So ... like ... I didn't really get to know him any better in any meaningful way. I mean he picked a good movie to see. I was laughing out loud ... a lot. I enjoyed seeing the movie, but ... without any conversation the date didn't do anything to help me get to know him. So, it kind of felt like it was ... useless. If we had lunch after the movie or something, then we would have had a chance to talk and maybe get to know each other better ... or something.

So basically this date did nothing to help me decide either he's awesome and I want to spend more time with him or he's creepy, annoying, enraging, or whatever and I don't want to spend more time with him. Like I said it was kind of pointless as a date. I got to see a good movie, but, you know. I guess if he asks me out for second date I'll go if it's not seeing a movie without any other plans. Because while seeing a movie on his dime is nice, it doesn't seem right to go keep seeing movies and not know if I like him or not.

The whole thing just seems weird to me. Maybe I really am that out of practice, but how am I supposed to decide if I like him, if I'm not getting to know him?