Cannonball!!

**SPLASH***

That resounding splash is not due to my exceptional cannonball ability, but me jumping back into the dating pool.

**Glub, glub**

That is the sound of me sitting at the bottom of the dating pool weighed down by rocks of self-doubt, fear and the growing belief that I will never meet anyone in Des Moines. And if I do, it will be some momo with 6 kids and 3 ex wives that feels that the best meal is town is the Valentines Day special dinner at the bowling alley -- which I didn't make up, my bowling alley is offering a "intimate dinner for two" with the cacphonous sounds of bowling behind you, nothing screams romance more.

You've all missed me and my wonderful self loathing haven't you???
I have been a little lax the last week. Just been moving pretty fast and at the end of the day, firing up ye olde computer just has not held a lot of intrigue.
That and I seemed to be out quite a bit last week. So buzzed and or drunk blogging is not that cool. Oh, and one night I fell asleep watching the State of the Union Address.
So, now that we have all the apologies out of the way, lets get back to my previous topic.
The dating world.
I took a few peeks around the various sites, match.com, cupid.com and there might have been another one -- who knows.
Anyway, this is what I noticed.

One -- on both sites, I did in fact see more than 2 people that I personally know. THAT is how small Des Moines can be. Which weirds me out just a little -- I mean, what if they stumble across my profile, how awkward is that?

Two -- I was blown away by the number of people that had pictures with their kids on them. I mean, in no way should you hide that you have children, but blasting their images out on a dating service just seems a little --- well, creepy.

Three -- I noticed more than a few people that were out there when I was looking TWO YEARS AGO. Not a reassuring feeling.

Four -- Pictures with your skinny-ass ex-girlfriend with only her face blurred out, not really gonna compel me to give you a chance.
With all those out there.... I shot a email off to the really pricey executive matchmaking service that I joined eons ago and have 1/2 a subscription left.
And get this -- nothing yet. That is one investment I may never see a good return on.
New pictures up on the Flickr site -- including the Smith's girls night out, the state capital and some candid's from bowling the other night. Enjoy them -- I did!
The only other little story I have to share with you all happened this morning, to start off my Monday as only a Monday can start out in my world....
A few of my ground rules for Monday -- it tends to be (barring a major catastrophe) the one day I go in at 8 and rarely leave after 5, just don't have it in me to make it a long day.
So, after snoozing the alarm more than 2x this morning, I finally got out of bed. Headed to the bathroom and flipped the switch. Except no lights. I thought maybe I was just so tired, I didn't actually flip the light. Tried again.
No light.
Looked around, clock -- nothing, no lights in bedroom.
Head downstairs
We are a hard down people.
Nothing. No power. And then I notice its a little chilly in the casa.
It snowed a good part of the day yesterday and rained ice last night...
Head to the basment, breakers all check out. Start looking out windows, no lights on around the neighbors houses.
Hm, me thinks. Could be an outage.
Yep -- call the power company, and get a recorded voice telling me there are wide-spread outages all over the metro area.
So then I think, well, I didn't really do much yesterday, I could just go casual to work and basically look like crap. Which was my plan ---
Until I ran into a very large problem.
My garage is detached from the house. And the only way to get into the garage is through the actual garage door -- not a side door, the actual garage door. Which has a garage door opener attached to it. Which is PLUGGED into a power outlet.
Yep - couldn't get to my car.
So I am stuck in my dark, cold house and can't leave.
It rocked.
Power went back on around 8:30/8:45 and I had missed two meetings by the time I got to work at about 9:30.
GREAT way to start a Monday.

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