As most people who aren’t extremely lonely, I hate calling call centers for large companies. Today, I initiated what would end up being a 1.25 hour call with Rogers technical support to get my co-worker (Darren O)’s blackberry up and running.

There were too many password questions going on, so I passed my phone over to Darren to straighten it out. Once I passed him the phone, I skyped him to say that the support person had the voice of some woman who spent her entire life working in a smokey diner. We went back and forth about it for a while, him trying not to laugh….The person on the other end had no sense of humour. At one point, Darren said “Maybe I should just drop it on the floor and jump on it…..No, no, no- I was just joking.”

Towards the end of the conversation, he’s getting the direct line of the support person and we overhear “Kevin? Like K-E-V-I-N? I thought you were female!”.

Oddly, he didn’t understand why this would be insulting.

On my recent road trip down the NYC, some radio station somewhere spurted out a statistic that 30% of people who subscribe to online dating sites are in relationships (or so their partners think).

I could get into how wrong this is, on so many levels, but here’s my question…how the hell do they find the time to do online dating?? It’s not like meeting some guy in a bar and going off together…you have to put together a profile, find decent pictures of yourself, search around through all the loser profiles out there, then start to chat with someone, then a month later, you’re on a date. Wouldn’t a hooker be easier?

I’m not going to say that I don’t like metro-sexual men. I like my men to be manly, but I’ve been attracted to the good grooming skills of metros before.

A friend of mine, who I will call Peter, is a metro sexual. Great guy, lots of girl friends (though I’ve never known him to have a girlfriend), tall, good looking, great clothes, likes to have nice dinners, I’m guessing he can cook…The other day, we were chatting about metros and someone mentioned to him that he’s one. He adamantly denied it. Swore up and down that he was not.

I don’t understand. No one was making fun of him for being one. There is nothing wrong with it. Why deny it?

My colleagues over at Dating Dames, a wonderful b5 blog, which I am an avid reader of. Today’s post was about cheaters and it got me to thinking about a few things.

I have been cheated on several times. Some of my favorite lines:

“There’s this girl in town. For some reason, she thinks she’s my girlfriend.”

“No, Jason is into her. I had to let her sleepover so that he could put the moves on her when he came to pick her up this morning.”

” She’s my sister.”

“No, that was my roomate on the phone. He just has a high voice.”

“No one left out the back door when you were coming in. You’re probably just tired and seeing things.”

Being cheated on is the worst possible feeling in the entire world. Even if you find out about it after the relationship has fizzled, it still sucks. You question what you did wrong, how you could have changed things, etc.

In the Dating Dames post today, Michelle talked about worrying about being cheated on. That is a ridiculous way to live. Despite the many times some guy has gotten too scared at my awesomeness and slummed it somewhere else, I never think that the next guy I’m with is going to do the same. Thinking about getting cheated on can consume you.

Even just knowing statistics sets you up for disaster. If 1 in 5 guys cheats (as Dating Dames says), then 20% of the married men I know are cheating? If I know that none of them are cheating, then will my future husband be the one that falls into that 20% category? I can see 5 married men from where I sit at my desk. Is one of them cheating? And where the hell do they get these statistics? Who openly participates in these surveys?

Then Michelle says that there ways to avoid cheating. This is a lie. If you are an honorable person, you wont cheat. Stopping the porn is not going to help. Castration might.

About 6 months or so ago, I was out with a friend who was in from out of town. He’d invited several friends that I hadn’t met yet, and I was seated next to some guy, we’ll call him Jeff. While sitting next to him, he was teaching me some things about my Blackberry. One of the things he taught me was how to use the BB instant messenger.

On my way home, he im’d me “Don’t message me late at night ;-)” Uhm, ok?

By the time I got home, he’d added me to his Facebook. Not unusual. Then he started poking me. I hate pokes. I never know what to do with them. And it always seems like people I don’t want to talk to poke me. I can’t think of anytime I’ve ever been poked by someone who wasn’t hitting on me either. (I also can’t think of anytime I’ve ever poked someone).

What surprised me about this, was that he was married. I always assume that married people don’t cheat. I come from really solid family background, and out of my 18 sets of aunts and uncles, only 2 are divorced, so to me, staying together is the norm. But, I’m pretty sure this guy was hitting on me in some way.

I completely forgot about it/him until about a week ago. I was at a restaurant with some friends from work, and the same friend from above called to tell me he was in town and asked me if I could suggest where to go for dinner. I suggested he come and meet me there. By the time he got there, I was taking off to go on a date, so I barely got to talk to him. While I was saying good-bye, I noticed that Jeff was with him. Because my experience with Jeff was so limited, I didn’t even feel it necessary to acknowledge him.

He’d poked me by the time I got home that night.

Should I feel like I was being hit on by a married-man?

This is an old story, but I’m running dry. I had met some guy a few years back that looked like Steve Urkle. So, naturally, I called him “Urkle” to my friends. He didn’t show up for our first date. He said I didn’t confirm plans the day of (we had a venue, a date and a time…didn’t know what needed to be confirmed). Wasn’t all that bad, the bartender bought me pity shots. My boss at the time told me I was too harsh, that I should have in fact confirmed the day of, so I gave him a second chance. We went on one date, it was mediocre, but passable. And a mediocre date is sometimes a relief from all the others, so I agreed to see him again.

For the second date, I had asked if we could go out for dinner, at one of my favorite restaurants. He agreed, and we had a time and a place figured out. Because of my work-outs, I really have to plan my meals in advance, and I had gone about the day expecting to have dinner out that night.

When I called the day-of to confirm (learned my lesson) our conversation went like this:

Me: So, do you know where you’re going?

Urkle: Uhm, actually, I thought maybe we’d do something different. My building has a few bowling lanes in it and some pool tables, maybe we could just hang out here?

Me (hungry and suspecting he might be wanting to do more than play pool): Actually, I was really looking forward to dinner all day. I planned my day around this meal.

Urkle: I really think that it would be more fun to hang out at my place.

Me: I’m sorry, but I really want to go for dinner as planned.

Urkle: Look, I don’t know you all that well, and I just don’t want to spend money on someone if I don’t know where it’s going.

Me: Hang up.

This goes back to my original post on men being cheap. I can half understand the point of view, but the place we were going to had $9 entrees. That was no just a man being cheap, he was being a dick.

One month from today, I will be saying adieu to my twenties and heading into what is most likely the second third of my life. Until this summer when I was home for a family reunion and my cousin, who was my best friend from my birth until she became way cooler than me in high school, asked me if I was nervous about turning 30 (she may have been cooler than me, but she’s been in her thirties for over a month now). Up to that point, I hadn’t given it much thought. I gulped down the first real jitters I had about it and lied telling her “no”. I haven’t put A LOT of thought into it, until now, my final month.

Just this morning I was telling my girl friend about how I can’t think back to any “dark” period of my life, I’ve always been happy. But I hate those people who say they live without regrets. Here are the things I regret about my twenties, things I don’t mind shaking off in my thirties:

- Being in a serious relationship during my 3rd and 4th year of University. That was just dumb. All my other friends were out having a good time. I didn’t even like the guy.

- My rebound after the above. That was sick.

- Taking out massive amounts of unessesary student loans. I also worked full time while in school. I bought a lot of clothes. Didn’t think $450 a month in payments for the next 10 years would be that much if I was making millions. Too bad I don’t make millions.

I did a lot in the last decade, but here are the things I plan on doing with my last month in my twenties:

- Get drunk. A lot. Ok, I kinda do this enough already, but my age is catching up with me as I forget most of the night when I drink. That is also not a bad thing. But still, thirty-year-olds shouldn’t black out weekly.

- Buy a condo. It was always my goal to own before I turned 30. I’m a downpayment and 36 monthly master card payments away from that.  (See Regrets above). Pretty sure I should reset this goal to age 35.  

- Travel the world. This wont happen either. I am going to NYC in two weeks. But I’ve already been there, so that’s not cool. I am going to Mexico in December. My first trip out of Canada and the US. BTW- Jon and Lenore, Charlene and I are coming to Ireland in the summer. Get your livers and spare room ready.

- Learn to skateboard. This is probably something that shouldn’t be done over the age of 22, but I’ve never actually done it.

- Ride a motorcycle. I’m as shocked as you are that I haven’t done it yet.

- Marry some guy rich enough that I can quit my job and write this blog full time.

Here are some things I am proud of accomplishing in my twenties:

- I was voted, by a panel of 10 judges, as having the perfect body. (October 22, 2005)- I was also in Ms Fitness Magazine and Oxygen for that reason.

- I lived in 3 provinces. (An aside- when I moved to Toronto, which was the first time I stepped foot in this city, my dad- who was kind enough to drive me here in a U-Haul- literally dropped me off in the city, shook my hand and said “Well, I gotta start heading back now.”)

- I got my bachelor degree in Business

- I worked 12 jobs/careers (not all at once)

- (This is about to get cheesy) I made the best friends, who, I will probably be friends with for life.

- Tried sushi, and it’s now one of my favorite foods. Growing up on a farm, where you see your dinner from your front window, doesn’t exactly make you excited to eat raw food. It was kind of a big deal.

I have a thing for tattoos. The more the sexier. I kinda like piercings too. I went out with a guy once who had some sort of tribal symbol (I couldn’t tell you what his nationality was) that spanned his entire chest, and that alone probably got him a date or two more than he deserved.

A new thing I do at the gym to pass time is to guess which guys have tattoos, of what, and where on their body. I’ve developed a crush on a guy that I’ve seen at the gym a million times, but never noticed until I decided he probably has a massive panther across his back. Ok, maybe panthers aren’t the coolest tattoos, but whatever, I don’t know anything about tattoos and I know that’s a common one.

A girlfriend of mine is totally into tattoos (on herself…she also has piercings in places you wouldn’t expect on a Senior Manager at one the the big four accounting firms in Canada). Her tattoos are very symbolic to her and whatever time of her life she was in when she got them. When I told her that my brother has a tattoo on his upper chest of a man and woman embracing, she asked what it symbolised for him. When I said I didn’t know, she freaked on me and told me that I need to ask. So I did. His answer “Dunno. Just thought it looked nice.” (Note: Tattoos on my brother, not hot).

I was considering getting a tattoo, but, like my brother, I am not deep and don’t know what to get. Then there’s the whole “tramp stamp” thing, which I don’t get. The small of my back is a place as intimate as some other parts of my body no one gets to see, and I think it’s sexy to have one there, but I don’t want people to think I’m a tramp.

Do you think tattoos are sexy? Do you think tramp stamps are trampy? Any suggestions for what I should get?

When I was in University, I met this incredible guy. He was cool, sweet, good-looking, played football, funny, reasonably smart, came from a good family…all the things I was totally into. Early on in our relationship (after I came back from the hair salon and was looking particularly hot), he said to me, before heading to class “You’re too good for me.” Then he kissed me and ran out the door.

I was left speechless. I’d never had a man say this to me before. How could he possibly have thought that?? He was perfect for me and made me so happy!

So I spent the next few months complimenting him, telling him how great he was, how cool, sweet, good-looking, funny, reasonably smart he was. I even started pointing out my flaws so that he would see that I wasn’t perfect (when in actuality, I am). Unfortunately, it didn’t go so well for me. I ended up boosting his ego through the roof and made him think I was inferior, and he eventually dumped me (on New Years Eve, at a big party, in front of hundreds of people…and I’m pretty sure it was mostly to do with my bad haircut).

Ever since then, I cringe when someone says “You’re too good for me.” Shelly, a friend of mine who I recently highlighted in this post, was going through a break-up with her long-distance boyfriend. She said that while he was “not-dumping” her (a tactic employed by balless men), he would tell her that she was too good for him, and that she needs to be with someone better.

Do you know what’s more annoying than having someone think they are not worthy of you? Having them tell you what you need. When a guy says something like that, you almost don’t want to dump him just so that you can prove that you know what’s best for you and that you can make that decision on your own. Until she told me that, I was kinda sticking up for the guy. Shelly is a grown woman, who has loved and lost several times, and can decide for herself what she needs.

I’ve long since made a pact with myself that if a guy ever says “You’re too good for me” I will agree and show him the door.

A while back, I did a post about Firemen and how disappointing they really are. This afternoon, my building’s fire alarm went off. I am the type of person to grab my purse and coat and make my way calmly out of the building when this happens, but today, I just wasn’t really in the mood (I was cleaning of all mundane things). The alarm wasn’t that loud, and I could still hear my tv over it. I didn’t smell smoke and figured that if there really was a fire, I could jump out of my second story window.

After about 5 minutes (and a swept floor), I hear a knock at the door. So I grab my jacket and purse and start heading out. In the hall, there were about 3 firemen. I hadn’t even thought of that false-alarm perk! But then I looked at them. Yep, someone my age’s fathers. Dammit. There were three deliciously-red heart thumping fire trucks outside, and not one single hottie.

Is there anyone at the fire department I can write to have them add this to the job requirements?