The Rest of the Story
Kellie and I had signed up together and had decided to travel to the speed-dating location (the Park Plaza hotel in Bloomington) together as well. Several days before the event, Kellie had talked her ex-boyfriend's best friend Derek into going speed dating too, so we went to pick him up. Derek was cute, very nice with a lovely home. He was friendly and personable, well-employed and a volunteer firefighter. More on Derek later...
So we get to the hotel, grab a drink at the bar and sign in for the event. We received a name tag, a number (I was 404), a card on which to note our picks and our table assignments for the evening. (There were 16 eligible singles of each gender in attendance that evening and I would only get to date 8 of them). The bell rang shortly after we signed up so I made my way to table #3 to meet Chris. He was nicely dressed, probably in his early 30's, and vaguely okay looking. He was a tax business manager, and spent his days between something like 20 offices managing over 120 people. Woo. He had done the on-line dating thing in the past as well, and had decided to try speed-dating as he felt that regular on-line match-ups were too backwards - getting to know the details of someone's life prior to getting to know them and all. I ended up choosing him as a match only because he was probably the most normal, straight-up guy there.
Next was Sean. He was an IT dude at Wayzata School district and taught a couple of AV classes as well. He was thin, with curly hair and was generally boring. NEXT!
I ended up having a date with Derek and we discussed how he knew Doug, Kellie's ex, and how thing were going so far. He's a nice guy - too bad he's off limits to Kellie.
After Derek left my table, Jon sat down. He introduced himself by apologizing for the fact that he was going to bore me for the next 8 minutes. I told him not to worry, that everyone was interesting for 8 minutes, to which he replied, "Yeah, everyone but me." and he was right.
At this point in the night it was time for an intermission, so I went back to the bar and refilled my drink, touched base with Kellie to see if she had found any keepers and went to the bathroom to hear all the other hens cluck.
The bell rang for round two and like sick, desperate Pavlovian dogs we quit talking and made our way to the next trial.
Number 5 for me was David. David was at least 35 (the event was for 25-35 year old young professionals), with a Bozo-style hair arrangement and wearing an acid washed jean jacket. He was originally from Milwaukee and was an engineer and musician. The highlight of his "musical career" was playing at a church in Texas with one-time Aerosmith guitarist Paul Something (David couldn't remember Paul's name and I can't find anyone named Paul ever playing with Aerosmith in the "early days".) David insisted that other people could really feel and "jive" with his music...yeah, sure I bet.
After that was over, I got to meet AJ, my other match of the evening. AJ was cute-ish, a bit on the short side, with dark hair and eyes but a kind, easy smile. He was ex-military and works now as a law enforcement agent with some federal agency (I didn't ask which) and he seemed like a genuinely nice person. I was slightly concerned that he wasn't drinking - obvs I like to drink on a regular basis - but maybe that has something to do with his job...who knows. ANYWAY he really digs horror movies so we hit it off big time. (Well, at least when it comes to horror movies.) In the end, it turns out he matched with me as well, so perhaps he'll call or email or something. No loss if he doesn't though - there weren't exactly fireworks.
Are you still reading this? Really? I'm getting bored writing about it.
Jeff was my second to last date and he was a winner. Badly dressed in an ill-fitting sports coat the guy just reeked of loseriness. He was unemployed but planning to take some theatre classes at Normandale in January. I asked if this meant the he frequented The Guthrie (he'd never been) or Jeune Lune (he'd never even heard of it) - his explanation for being a self-proclaimed "theatre guy" while never having visited two of the most well-known venues in town? He hadn't been in the Cities very long - JUST SINCE 1997!!!! This dude was also working on his autobiography "I don't really know what it's gonna be about - I've only been working on it a week" and writing a children's book about dogs and hockey...no plot yet, just those two components. At this point, I was dying for the bell to ring, since my face was starting to ache from all the fake smiling.
My final date was with a nice Indian gentleman named Guru with whom I discussed grad school. Done.
After the event was over, most people gathered in the hotel bar to continue mingling. I decided I wanted to meet everyone I could, so I made the rounds. Jamie was a nice looking guy with beautiful blue eyes and the most annoying "yuk, yuk, yuk" laugh I'd ever heard. No secret why he was there. Another guy was looking sad and lonely but when I approached him, he was rather stand-offish and unfriendly...no surprise there either. Kellie was talking to a guy named Stephen who seemed nice enough but in a dad sort of way.(Imagine my surprise when later I found out that he was only 28!) A funny girl named Shannon and I chatted for a bit and eventually decided to introduce ourselves to some hotel patrons who seemed fascinated by all of the overly friendly people wearing name tags - they were both attractive and both married (of course). After that followed my discourse with Clint which I've already documented. By this time, Derek and Kellie had become quite friendly with two girls name Katie and Jody and the lot of us decided to ditch the hotel and go to a bar to continue the evening. We made our way to Joe Sensor's (Clint never did come over- not sure if he got lost or just changed his weird little mind) where Kel and I drank iced tea and Shirley Temples and talked about education with a random dude on a business trip from India that one of the girls had met at the hotel while Derek got loaded. At midnight we decided that we'd had enough fun for one night, so we headed home, leaving Derek - easily the most eligible bachelor that had been in attendance - to fend for himself with the two girls (he did fine it turns out.)
All in all it was an interesting experience that I'm glad I did once. I do not believe I would do it again, but I would definitely suggest it to you males out there because I did meet several very friendly, sweet, funny, well-educated, cute girls...and you'd have good chances since apparently these events are teaming with I-know-why-you're-not-taken dudes.
I'll let you know if I ever hear from AJ.