7/21-2

Well, it's now almost 10am CST and I'm feeling only marginally better. Really, I want to curl up and go back to sleep. Unfortunately, sleeping so much during the day yesterday caused me to be awake until 1am this morning. Lucky for me, the person I've been talking to recently works nights, so I was able to IM with him into the wee hours until I fell into a Nyquil-induced coma.

So, I wrote once before about J. - the off-shore diver that I might have a date with in August. He is still off the Gulf of Mexico, although I got two pieces of information wrong the first time around: 1) He doesn't pillage the Gulf for oil, as I first thought. His crew repairs broken oil lines, which are currently spewing hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil into the ocean and 2)He doesn't actually dive anymore, unless he wants to. He plans and supervises the dives.

He was in port recently in LA and I was able to talk to him on the phone. Our conversations quickly stretched into one hour and then two. Now that he is back at sea (jeez, it sounds like he's a freakin' sailor!), we can only e-mail and IM. I found out that he went to highschool near Seattle, WA (about twenty miles north of where I grew up) and went to college in CA.

Now, here is the crazy part: What are the chances that two people that grew up close together, would be living in an entirely different state, meet on the internet, and end up liking each other? I'm not saying it's fate, but it might be. Who am I to spit in the wind, just to see if it will come back and hit me in the face? Right now, I kind of feel like the Meg Ryan character in "Sleepless in Seattle," which she of course reprised in, "You've Got Mail". It's crazy to like someone that you've never met. I know that and he knows that. Doesn't change anything, though.

Fortunately, I've had enough experience with internet dating to know that you can never get your hopes up. Someone can be amazing over the phone and a complete jerk in person (see Blind Date #1). Someone can seem cool and then you find out that their favorite band is Enya, or even worse Meatloaf (see Blind Dates #4 and #5). And some guys will say and do anything to get laid, knowing full well that they aren't interested in a relationship with you. I haven't been swept off my feet yet. It will take at least a first and second date for that.