The dating reply card

I think I want to start giving out comment cards after going out on dates. Wouldn’t it be wonderful, if at the end of an evening you could hand your date a postage paid, anonymous questionnaire, like the kinds you find in the middle of magazines, to send back to you rating the evening? Think of the great feedback you could get.

I can see some of the questions now. It could rate things such as how gentlemanly I was, how my restaurant selection fared, and how my humor rated over the evening. I also foresee questions such as, “how likely are you to go out with Kevin again?” Very likely, somewhat likely, not very likely, or likely to move house in the event he tries to stop by phones again? Oh and how about a follow-up section – “would you like to recommend Kevin to a friend? If so, please fill in a name and number.”

I would also include an open-ended section, for personal testimonials. Just think of how handy this could be when meeting someone new. Chatting them up not going so well? Breakout the “references” book and let them read some first-hand accounts on your behalf. As the statistics show, good PR is three times more affective than advertising…

Next year I'm ordering boxes by the case-load

Today I learned that Girl Scout cookies are as effective in an office as currency as cigarettes are in prison. I think I need to go home and see what other important lessons from watching Oz I can translate into the workplace.

Type 2 drunk dialing

This weekend I discovered a new danger of combining alcohol and cell phones. No, I’m not talking about traditional drunk dialing, where you have a few and then decide to call/text message people. I’m referring to Accidental (or Type 2) Drunk Dialing – that’s where you go to drunk dial a friend or ex and, due to hitting the wrong speed-dial or misreading the phonebook, you call or text the completely wrong person.

Luckily, I got away somewhat unscathed in my Type 2 Drunk Dialing this weekend. I meant to sweetly tell a friend of mine from college, who lives in Maryland that a song we associate with one other was playing in the bar. Instead it went to my friend, who was standing less than five feet away from me. She now thinks I’m mildly retarded.

I also may have sent messages that make little or no sense to assorted friends, coworkers and uh, family members. It’s not a prideful moment when your mother calls you the next morning to ask what “swamp-water” is and why if she shows up, she can “keep the alligator.”

In what will only be an expensive mistake, meaning to text my sister in Australia, I ended up calling her. On a plus side, because of the time difference, it was 5:30 in the afternoon, so I don’t feel as bad.

A friend of mine didn’t get away quite as easily as I did. Meaning to tell off his recent ex, (always something good to do via text message at 3:00 AM after trying to drink all the alcohol in the bar) he may have, we’re still not sure, accidentally sent the choice words to his boss instead. I guess we’ll find out Tuesday morning if he still has a job. She still hasn’t written back yet, but if things don’t go well, he might become the first guy in history to be dumped AND fired by BlackBerry in a single weekend.

Can you get the Super on this immediately?

I'm writing a very strongly worded letter to my landlord. I'm not signing my renewal lease unless he makes the floors stop spinning on Friday and Saturday nights.

And we’ve reached a new low

Yesterday a buddy of mine was dumped by his girlfriend. Now it wasn’t insulting enough that she did it over e-mail, but it had those little words at the bottom “Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld.”

Tres harsh, Heather.

Valentine's Day candy

I was fortunate enough to be given some of my very favorite Valentine's Day candy yesterday - message hearts. I've loved these ever since I was a kid, although I think they've changed a little over the years. While I still got the hearts that said "Be Mine" and "Hug Me," I'm pretty sure I don't remember being 11 and seeing the ones that say "E-mail Me" "Fax Me" and "IM Me."

Some musings on Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day is one of my absolute favorite holidays. I’ve spent the past week or so conferring with my buddies in Hitch like fashion on their Valentine's Day plans, and running several ideas past emergency sessions of The Girl Council. I’m proud to say that my friends have some rather good ideas in store this year.

While I am a fan of Valentine’s Day*, I have to say, it can be quite the make-or-break inconvenience if you’ve just started dating someone before the holiday hits. Suddenly you’re forced to evaluate the relationship no matter what stage it might be at, to determine what you need to do for Valentine’s Day. Brand new relationship – maybe a future, maybe not – perhaps just send her a card. Been on a few dates, perhaps getting a little serious, maybe take her out for dinner? Gone out once or twice – you might scare her off if you admit the holiday even exists. Been together for quite some time? If you don’t do something that involves a fireworks display, dinner at the four seasons and a horse-drawn carriage ride through Central Park, you could be sleeping on the couch for awhile. Personally, I begin breaking a sweat if I don’t have a solid plan by New Year’s Day.

Women have it much better off around Valentine’s Day as we men have zero expectations whatsoever. We’re floored if we get so much as a “happy Valentine’s Day.” Send us a card, and we think you’re amazing. Send us flowers and we’ll be following you around like a little lost puppy for several months. A girl I was dated once gave me a watch for Valentine’s Day. I was in so much shock I lost the ability to speak, which was probably a good thing, because I most likely would have proposed.

*A friend of mine in college, who really got around, used to call it “VD”. We couldn’t help but snicker he would discuss his “plans for VD.”

Top 10 ways to tell someone their fly is unzipped

10. The cucumber has left the salad.
9. Quasimodo needs to go back in the tower and tend to the bells.
8. You need to bring your tray table to the upright and locked position.
7. Paging Mr. Johnson... Paging Mr. Johnson..
6. Elvis is leaving the building.
5. The Buick is not all the way in the garage.
4. Our next guest is someone who needs no introduction.
3. You've got a security breach at Los Pantalones.
2. Men may be From Mars.....but I can see something that rhymes with Venus.
1. I always knew you were crazy, but now I can see your nuts.

Some ranting on phones

I’ve spent the last couple of days trying to figure out why, in this age of digital cell phones, with nationwide travel capabilities and unlimited long distance, I still have a land line in my apartment. I’ve noticed that a bunch of friends of mine don’t even have them anymore and only use their cell phones.

Not only do I rarely call from my home line, but I rarely check my home voicemail. I decided today that maybe it would be a good idea, and upon dialing in got a lovely message from my Grandmother wishing me a happy birthday from October, and a message dating back to September from a client asking for an urgent call back – something about a drug being withdrawn from the market.

People tend to call me on my cell phone anyway – even if they are one of the five people who actually have the number, they know that home or not, they can reach me on my cell. I’m beginning to think that the only reason I have a home phone so that my mother can call my cell, and when I don’t pick up, she has a second number to leave the exact same message on.

And while I’m on the topic, I just want to share that I think there’s a special layer in hell reserved for people who can’t leave a proper message when they get voicemail. You know the people I’m talking about – the people who either can’t tell you why they’re calling in the first place or leave you the exact same message every time they call. You can even say it along with them when retrieving the message. My personal favorites are the people who leave a long, slow, drawn out message – that is until they get to the part where they leave their number – then they race through it so you have to listen to the whole bloody thing over again in hopes of catching it the 32nd time around.

The questions that make up my morning

So when pouring milk for my cereal this morning, there was only enough 1% low-fat milk left to fill about half a bowl. I filled the other half with fat-free milk.

Does this mean my bowl was filled with .5% low-fat milk?

Have a few and try

Things that are difficult to say when drunk:
1. Innovative
2. Preliminary
3. Cinnamon

Things that are very difficult to say when drunk:
1. Specificity
2. Proliferation
3. British Constitution

Things that are downright impossible to say when drunk:
1. Thanks, but I don't want to have sex.
2. Nope, no more beer for me.
3. Sorry, but you're not really my type.
4. Good evening, officer. Isn't it lovely out tonight?
5. Oh, I couldn't -- no one wants to hear me sing.

On the Super Bowl, commercials and pharmaceuticals

When people ask me who I'm rooting for in this year's Super Bowl, is it bad that my response is "Levitra"?

Dude, where’s my car – the Kevin home edition

So after a company open-bar event (because those are always such a good idea) and a trip to a second bar, I’m missing some time in my memory of the evening. I awoke at 5:00 AM with the implicit feeling that a midget was trying to jack-hammer his way out of my skull. After throwing back a couple of Excedrin migraine, and a brief finding of religion where I prayed for death, I was able somehow to get back to sleep until about 6:45, when the caffeine from the pills began surging through my body, and I realized more sleep was just not going to happen.

So trying to be productive, I balanced my checkbook, cleaned house, lay down and watched a movie, all before 10:00 AM. It was then that I decided to check my e-mail, and where I began wondering exactly how the evening ended.

The first e-mail I received was from a friend telling me off for an argument I can’t remember having. Slightly bewildered, I went to the next two messages – both of them forwarding a link to Craig’s List’s missed connections asking if it was me.

Not only did the post have my name in the subject line (it read "We talked last night at Jake's Dilemma (Kevin?)" but I have also been known to play the foosball on occasion, and I had mentioned to Brad that I would possibly meet up with him and Luke at Jake’s (where we frequent regularly), but I thought I went home and went to bed. So here I am wondering, what exactly did I do last night…?

-----------
Addition: Somehow the post has been deleted from Craig's list. To make things worse, neither Brad nor Luke, who were both rather boofy-blitzed last night, remember if I showed up or not.

Area code snobbery

There’s a great deal of area code snobbery in New York City, and I can understand why. We used to all be connected by the prestigious "212." Smart, elegant and classic – it’s all the things New York is, and so when the city was split by the debut of 646, no one wanted to give up their 212.

I’ve heard people moving into new apartments say "I just don’t know what I’ll do if they don’t give me a 212." No one wants to be branded by the 646 – it’s the mark of a non-native. The worst is getting a 917 for your home number – everyone assumes you only have a cell phone, and not a landline.

Even cell phone users would prefer to have the 917 than the 646. 917 is so the new 212 of the New York mobile community.

You outer-borough people aren’t above this either. You ask a proud Brooklynite to trade in his 718 for a 347 number, and if he doesn’t knock your teeth out at the mere suggestion, he’ll just look at you, puzzled and ask why you want him to have an area code that makes him sound like he’s in Kalamazoo Michigan, when he’s two blocks off the "F" train.

I'll cook

So a friend of mine, who had gone on a few dates with this girl he met called me up, looking for suggestions on how he could “kick things up a notch” with her. Given the number of dates they had been on, I suggested he invite her over and cook her dinner, both scoring points for being romantic as well as putting the implication of sex directly on the table (so to speak). My friend, not believing me that inviting someone over for dinner somewhat implicates sex, asked me to appeal the idea to The Girl Council.

For those who don’t know, The Girl Council is one of my best ideas. Made up of 6-7 girls in my office, I (and my male friends through me) bounce ideas off of them and ask for interpretations of cues that girls give off to get the female perspective. I in turn do the same for them regarding the guy point of view (and 7-1 is about the ratio of women to men in PR, so it works out well).

Well, The Girl Council agreed with me by a clear majority, but it was not a unanimous vote. Needless to say, debate broke out on the topic and we spent much of the rest of the day discussing it.

Vindication came that very night when I got home and turned on an episode of my favorite show, the BBC’s Coupling, in which the following conversation took place:

Sally: You know what “I’ll cook” says, it says “let’s have sex.”
Susan: No, that would be “come and spend the night with me.”
Sally: “Come and spend the night with me” says “let’s have sex.” – “I’ll cook” says “let’s have sex and I’ll cater.”

I rest my case.

Oh, and for any of you reading this who are slightly worried after also receiving an invitation to my dinner party, no need to worry, it’s not my way of suggesting an orgy.