This is Hi-Fi

Well, a family gathering prompted me to have the first long vacation in a long time. Having never been to Oregon or Washington, I decided to make a detour to Portland and Seattle, while I was on my way to Vancouver. Recently, nothing seems to happen smoothly. My vacation was no exception.

Mishaps in roughly chronological order:
1) Day 0: There were accidents on both major roads going to the airport on the day of my departure. Despite me leaving way early for a trip that usually takes 20-30 minutes, it took me about 1:45 to reach the airport. I missed the parking shuttle by about 30 seconds, and by the time I caught the next one, I was too late for my flight. =( Rescheduled for 7AM the next day.
2) Day 1: Get called at 5AM to find out that my flight has been cancelled due to inclement weather and I've been rescheduled for the afternoon. At least I get to sleep in.
3) Day 1: After some shenanigans at the airport, I end up being delayed about 4 hours and switch flights. Small problem. My bags don't switch with me.
4) Day 1: My Mazda 6 has magically turned into a Ford Taurus. =(
5) Day 2: Sit around for half a day waiting for my luggage.
6) Day 8: we arrive at our hotel at 1:30 in the morning. Instead of a non-smoking room with 2 beds, we get a smoking room with 1 bed. We have to go find another hotel.
7) Day 9: Speeding ticket 5 miles from the Portland airport on my way home, even though I'm about an hour early for my flight.

Luckily the good things outnumbered the bad by a wide margin. Too many to even list. Let's just say I had a great time and I'll need to go back to all 3 cities.

I'm not sure what YOU'RE thinking of, but I'll explain myself.

I was wandering around Seattle by myself, when I decided that I wanted to see how the downtown nightlife would be. As I wandered around aimlessly on a Tuesday evening, there wasn't much to do or see. That is, until I noticed two incredibly cute members of the fairer sex. They also had that "we don't know exactly where we're going, but we'll know when we get there" look that I did. I approached them and asked if they were interested in some company. They apparently decided that I looked harmless enough and were more or less looking for the same thing (place to hang out and grab some drinks or coffee). So we ended up finding a neat place to sit down and chat.

Keira and Beth were on a road trip. Both were moving from San Diego, back to their roots in NYC. Keira used to work in restaurant management, while Beth was a teacher. More on the teacher bit in a second*. Both were very attractive, but in different ways. Keira was more of the mysterious aloof type. Beth was clearly more of the warm friendly type.

On this sortie, I had to engage my primary target without a wingman while evading her wingman (or wingwoman, if you prefer). About a month ago, I had a conversation with some friends about the appropriate strategy for exactly this situation. One of the promising theories was that you have to engage the friend first, until the target tries to work her way into the conversation. At that point, you switch over, and you're in the clear.

Unfortunately, I didn't really follow this plan. My plan of action made little sense. Not only should I have been able to engage K in conversation, I actually found her previous occupation to be interesting. What do I do instead? I'm beguiled by the lovely B and basically make a fairly weak attempt to engage K in conversation. Granted, K was giving me a rather cool reception and seemed a bit distracted/disinterested, but not engaging her in conversation, clearly wasn't going to help the situation. K seemed to get visibly bored and/or sleepy despite the espresso (by the time I realized it, it was probably too late), and after maybe 30 minutes or so, they decide to part ways. On one hand, I'm proud that I was proactive and achieved some level of success in conversation, but I clearly didn't close the deal on any level. No emails/digits exchanged. Oh well more food for thought for the next 1 on 2 encounter. At least I got some nice conversation and a free drink out of the deal (I was so engrossed in conversation, that I didn't notice the bill until she moved to pay it).

I wonder if there is an optimal way to handle this situation?

* - What is it with teachers and their clothes? Are they standard issue? Beth was wearing the exact same shirt as a teacher that I dated last year. I unsuccessfully tried to find a picture, but it's sort of a black short sleeve shirt where the sleeves are cut along the top, but tied on. I know that's a bad description, but that's the best that I can do. That type of shirt will certainly continue to evoke happy memories for a long time.

So I've had my toe in the waters of online dating off and on for around a year or so now. The one thing that I've noticed is that they've got some strange ideas about advertising.

About a year ago they had ads for The Sims. Have I had so little luck with online dating that they think I should try my hand at virtual dating? Am I not ready to try and meet real people?

Today, I logged in and they had an ad for Online Dating for Dummies. Is my "technique" that bad?

Are they trying to send me a message?

What's wrong with this web page?

Note the text: "Breast implants are becoming a popular high school graduation gift for parents to in the U.S. to give their teens. Examine the process of augmentation."

If this isn't a sign of the apocalpse, I don't know what would qualify.

I realized that I haven't posted anything about music or its reproduction, which was one of the original intents of this blog. As such, I wanted to share a little bit about what I'm up to. Most of those who know me, know that I'm a big Liz Phair freak, and I'm going to see her for what I believe is the 4th time in about 18 months. Woohoo! As a bonus, I'm seeing Aimee Mann for the first time, in the same week.

Now I'm off to listen to my new Corrs CD. Can you imagine how much it must suck to be Jim Corr? Everywhere he goes, he has to keep an eye on his 3 gorgeous younger sisters and keep them out of trouble. I'm glad that my parents never decided to have another child. I would have hated to have to constantly keep track of a little sister. Take a look at their site for yourself.

When I was in Seattle, I visited the IMAX Dome. One of the cool highlights of the presentation is that they backlight the dome so that you can see all the speakers behind it. Unfortunately they had to ruin it by mentioning that it had "1.6 kilowatts of power!!!". Umm, I've got over 1.6 kW for each of my two front speakers. You gotta do better than that to impress me.