Days 26 and 27

To explain my reference in the previous post: In the movie Fiddler on the Roof, Tevye is wrestling with his daughters' marriage choices. For his eldest daughter, he was able to talk himself into allowing her to marry the tailor, her love, instead of the butcher, a much more financially stable option. For the next daughter, he was able to talk himself into allowing her to marry a teacher from a village far away. The next daughter fell in love with a man who was not Jewish, and Tevye was not able to talk himself into allowing that marriage. For him, there was no "other hand" to balance the fact that his daughter's choice was not of the same faith.

I was just using this example to demonstrate that all Jews would be familiar with this movie and the reference, but this example didn't empirically hold up. I think you all get my drift though.

Anyway. There is an interesting series of conversations in the comments on Hilary's and JDatersAnonymous' blogs: debates about when you *know* if there's chemistry between you and your date, and whether you can be friends with someone you meet via online dating if there is no chemistry.

How many dates is too many to handle? Four. I am supposed to call Bike Guy tonight, I have an actual date with SMcG tomorrow, I have a lunch date with Funny Guy scheduled for Wednesday, and I gave my personal email to Shy Guy. I'm a little stressed over managing multiple people and multiple forms of communication (in-person, phone, and email conversations).

SMcG asked me out last night on a real date. We had dinner after our last league game of the season, and then he showed me some apartments he's renovating. As I was getting ready to go home, he told me that when we were watching fireworks for the 4th, he wanted to ask me out but he didn't know if it would be awkward. So would I have said yes if he asked me out? I said, "yes, I would have said yes." He said, "so would you like to go out on a real date?" I said yes. Dorkily, I told him that I wasn't sure if he actually saw me as a girl, since we usually just hung out before/during/after sporting activities and I was usually wearing sweaty clothes and cleats. He said, sweetly, that there were four times that he specifically noticed that I was a girl. First, when we went to meet up with friends of his for dinner, he wanted to tell me how nice I looked. Second, when we were playing soccer and he wanted to tackle me. Third, when we went out to dinner on the 4th, he wanted to sit next to me instead of across from me. And fourth, again, during the fireworks.

It's funny to me that SMcG is making the distinction between date and not-date, whereas I (and I like a nice dichotomy) was taking a let's-see-where-this-goes approach to hanging out. I figured the "are we dating?" question would come up at some point. I think it was exacerbated by people asking us, "are you together?" when we showed up for our sporting events together.

I'll let you know how the date, the conversation, the lunch, and the email correspondence go.