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I'm Ruby, a transplant from a different part of the Midwest.

I certainly love going out and being social, but there are bars and restaurants everywhere. It's the same for dates and friends: I'm looking for someone who can show me something I can't find on my own.

My relationships have been like dating through the looking glass. The happier I am being single, the faster I end up in a relationship.

I'll echo Ginger here: I'm here to tell it like it is, and that makes me look bad sometimes. I was immature and cowardly in how I dealt with the aftermath of my first date. But give me a break, I was 16.

This guy was practically famous at school for being strange. He wore a suit every day, rarely got a haircut and had spent enough time living abroad that he seemed sort of like a foreign exchange student.

I guess my desire for some male attention over-rode another strong motivation: my desire for my friends to think I was cool.

This week is turning out to be a gruesome trip down memory lane for me. My first everything seems to be the pancake that gets thrown away. It was round about the dissolution of my first co-habiting relationship after college that I guess I must have come to the conclusion that that's an OK thing. He hurt me, I hurt him, and now maybe we won't do the same thing to the next person we love.

My first boyfriend fits the pattern: total wreck. He was in college and I was still in high school and the more time I spent with him and his friends, the less engaged I got in my life. He left me for his ex, a girl his age, and I had alienated almost all of my friends by thoroughly assimilating his life.

Only some of them took me back.

Have you ever so completely adopted a date's lifestyle or values that your friends don't recognize you any more? How do you patch things up with your friends when you come to your senses?

I had a talk over the weekend that was like stepping into the twilight zone.

I'm thinking about marriage in a theoretical, sometime-in-my-life kind of way. It's impossible not to as all of my friends are getting married. I decided to ask a friend of my family, an older guy who works in finance, if he could tell me what to keep my eyes open for on the financial side.

I have a clear idea of what I want in a partner for the love, honor, cherish, forsake all others part. But richer and poorer is in there too, and I've given it almost no thought.

Pretty much I wanted to know what I could expect if I married someone at my same income level. I have a calculator, I can figure out some of that myself, but I was curious what an expert would say.

After an hour on the phone, I still don't know the answer to that question. But I know there are still some people in the world who think that a woman is making a mistake if she marries a man who can't support her. Support meaning pay for everything.

There was this amazing doubt in Mr. Finance's voice when he said "Do you want to work?"

Would it be nice to never have to work? Heck yeah. I could totally get down with the garden club, make some babies, learn golf. But I can't really say that has ever been a goal of mine. Especially not a goal to achieve by hitching myself to the right man.

I've never thought of my employment -- the most important thing in my life -- as a hobby.

After the conversation I found myself thinking "I'm so glad I don't live in his universe." But do I?

I need some men to tell me why they want to pay for everything and some women to tell me why they want to have everything paid for. Am I the one living in the twilight zone?

I think men are big fibbers. Like how all of them say they like women better with no make-up, but then when you wear make-up they tell you how good you look. Or like when they say they want to be friends, but then when you tell them you have a boyfriend you never hear from them again.

Just like the point of disclosing some information is to be enticing, some of it is meant to say "buzz off" in the subtext of dating speak. At the very least, it is meant to establish some parameters. But not always. Sometimes you can take information at face value. I think.

Like the other night, when I met a guy who asked if I wanted to hang out sometime, and I was like, "Sure! You don't mean a date, do you?"

See, I was a little sneaky here, because I do have a boyfriend, but I know that if I had deployed the "boyfriend jab" this dude would have heard "I'm being nice to you by not actually using the words 'leave me alone.'" And I genuinely wanted to get to know him. Mainly because he was wearing a cool red baseball cap that advertised a tow truck company with the slogan "Omaha's best hookers." It might not have been Omaha, but still, I love a hipster.

So I just kept the fact that I've been living with my boyfriend for three years under my hat, he assured me that he didn't mean a date, and later on he called me.

We've written about breaking up in this blog before, and we doubtless will again. It is a mine so rich we may never see the bottom.

This American Life had a tragic and hilarious segment yesterday about the music you listen to after a breakup. It got me thinking about the music that has been most cathartic to me. Most of the Pulp Fiction soundtrack does it for me; in particular track 13: Flowers On The Wall - The Statler Brothers

Also, Natalie Imbruglia's "Torn" and Weezer's Undone. I had Imbruglia's haircut for, like, 3 years after that. I guess I should be thankful in a way that those songs were in heavy rotation the last time my heart was mercilessly broken.

The coolest thing about the This American Life segment was the narrator actually wrote and recorded her own breakup song and played it as part of the piece.

That made me think of all the breakup art floating around in the world. I even have a sad relationship song -- more of a "why doesn't he call me" than "why doesn't he call me anymore." Her bravery has inspired me. Give me a few days to shape up my song and I'll put it up here. It should be funny.Not this funny, but funny.

I encourage you to also share the creative product of your misery. It will be like an anonymous, online trust-fall.

In the meantime, what are your favorite songs to listen to when you just want to keep feeling sad, lonely, abandoned, forsaken...you know, dumped?

I visited a friend this past weekend who got married when she was 19 or 20 and now has an 8-year-old and a 5-year-old daughter.

When she had her first daughter, years back, I thought what just about everyone did: "Whoa." She wasn't going to college, she wasn't dating, she wasn't going to parties and playing the field, she wasn't doing anything any of the rest of my friends from high school were doing. But what she wants out of life is to be a mother and have a big family.

Visiting her kind of threw my priorities for a loop.
She runs a growing company and her husband has always had a good job that has provided for the family. They were just eager to get started, so they did.

Suddenly I feel like I'm really far behind: I want to have a family, I want to raise daughters as great as hers are, but I'm almost 30. Her kids will be in college when mine are in middle school -- even if I start today.

And I'm not amazed that she is happy and successful; I wouldn't expect anything else from her. But I am amazed that anybody could be so happy and successful following that path. I have other friends who married at that age -- they are my 20-something divorced friends.

What do you think it is that makes some young relationships work and others become complete disasters?

The other day I was talking to a source and I thought -- not for the first time -- "is this guy flirting with me?"

This becomes my post today because that same day, a pal was talking about either admiring or being embarrassed by -- I'm not quite sure which -- an older woman relative of his and her flirting. By older I mean much older. More like Mrs. Robinson's mom than Mrs. Robinson.

Now I'm not saying anything about romance in your second childhood. Someday I'll give up snowboarding and rock climbing but I'm never planning to give up sex and don't expect anybody else to, either.

What I'm talking about is people who don't know they are flirting. And I'm not throwing stones here -- I'm not only president of Inadvertent Flirter club, I'm also a member.

I saw it in myself only by having my behavior described to me in detail by an outspoken friend.

I had been spending a lot of after work time with a client in a past job. I didn't consider our outings "dates;" He worked in sales and I worked in training so we both liked company and we liked each other. We both liked eating at restaurants I couldn't afford and he didn't mind picking up a lot of checks so we had a comfortable thing going.

Then one night he met me out with a group of my friends. Riding the train home, my friend told me: "It's really cruel of you to keep leading him on like that."

I was a shade offended. I had done no such thing.

Then she told me what she had seen me do. I giggled. I crossed and uncrossed my legs and leaned in toward him. What I thought was well-mannered, attentive eye contact looked smoldering to bystanders.

I was an ugly duckling, mind you. Now, it has been beaten into me that I'm attractive -- this was part of that beating.

But when I was forced to reflect on it, I totally saw it. And I felt really bad about it. Still do, a little. I've been led on before. It's a mean thing to do. Now I know better.

But sometimes I still slip. And the thing is, I think my pal's relative and my source are like me and they don't notice that they are flirting. They just think they are being personable.

If this post gets 10 comments today, I'll wash Wingfella's car (but not like this). If it gets 20, I'll wash Ginger's, too.

Have you ever noticed yourself flirting with someone you didn't mean to flirt with? Or has some cold-hearted person done it to you?

My apologies to Manbear. My post today again contains both links and references to literacy. The Atlantic has this fun thing called "Word Fugitives" and this month they looked for a word to describe "that guy (or girl) who, once he starts dating someone new abandons all of his other friends."

My favorite was romantisocial.

We all have been on both sides of this. One of the things that's so great about a new relationship is how it's all-consuming, then after a while you need your friends again for balance.

Does anyone have a successful strategy for hastening your friends back from the abliss?

My best effort at it is weak; I make double dates and task my boyfriend with occupying the date so I have some time with my friend. Then I use that time as a wedge to get some one-on-one plans on the calendar.

Any other ideas? Or suggestions to keep it from happening?

Once, and only once, I set up a couple of my friends.

They were both writers, both into traveling, both hot, and each had mentioned to me an interest in the other. How could it fail?

They abandoned me for each other for about three weeks in which they seemed to be attached by whatever body part was convenient. Then things went bad and they didn't talk to each other OR me.

Was I just unlucky or is there something I could have done differently? Has anyone had luck setting up friends? What pitfalls do you look for if you're going to try it?

I do almost everything Wired magazine tells me to, so when they recommended iminlikewithyou.com, of course I signed up. When I saw the f-word, an "OK" button that said not OK but "whatever" and a customizable ticker that includes CNN and gawker, I was in love.

But like a lot of the love in my life, I'm not sure if I get what's really going on there.

It's not exactly a dating site, but calling it social networking means putting it in the same category as linkedin, which is so wrong. You get to see people's pictures and a little personal blurb, but if myspace is a shot of green apple pucker, linkedin is a V8 and facebook is a bud light, I feel like ininlikewithyou is the mutt offspring of Hot Topic and a bookstore, shaken, with an olive.

What I know is that in a couple of hours of being logged in there (not counting the nights I've stayed logged in at work by accident when I went home), I have had interactions with strangers, and I've actually wanted to strike up a conversation with them. You get people's attention at the site by either asking a clever question or giving a clever answer to someone's clever questio and you are drawn to look at people's pictures and bio by that cleverness. So it's contrived, but contrived in the way that genuine, in-person attention seeking is. And the tone is filthy and adorable.

Iminlikewithyou claims not to be a dating site, but some of the questions are baldly sexual. A lot of them would look perfectly at home on a bathroom wall.

I hope some of you will sign up and friend me, a la our facebook and myspace pages. And for those of you who have tried online dating, I'd be particularly interested to hear whether you think iminlikewithyou's setup would make it easier to assess someone's date-worthiness online.

This movie coming out, "Why Did I Get Married" has me thinking about that question from the front end: why bother with matrimony?

I was at a party last night with three married couples. My boyfriend and I have been together as long as two of the couples; we live together; we've talked about a permanent future together, but we're not in that big a hurry to make it formal -- not to mention the hubbub and expense of a wedding.

But last week, I was talking to a friend who does want to get married, but isn't sure if her longtime boyfriend is husband material. But she's also not sure why he wouldn't be, so she's sort of in limbo.

Now, I want the ring and the dress and the party, of course. And some aspects of marriage would be convenient, for example we rented a car recently and I had to fill out an entire form myself -- a whole page of initials and signatures -- that I wouldn't have had to if I were his wife.

But pretty much, our life is stable and united. I'm not eager to get the state or the church involved. I'm not anti-marriage, but I don't see what it's going to add to my life or relationship. But so many people see matrimony as the finish line: what all this dating is supposed to be for.

When you go out on a date, are you looking for "the one" right from the beginning? When do you start measuring a date against your internal spouse-o-meter?

Here's an Internet dating story you don't hear every day. A friend of mine took a girl back to his place recently and when it became obvious things were going in the direction you would expect them to go when I start a story like that, the girl said "I have genital warts, but I'm not having a flare-up right now so you'll be OK." Then she went into the bathroom to get ready.

She spent so long in the bathroom that my friend got bored, he said. Where did he go to pass the time? Right to his computer, and www.cdc.gov.

He had (of course) planned on using a condom, but he found out from the CDC's entry on genital warts that they can be transmitted even when there's no visible evidence. And what's more, he didn't think a condom was enough protection from all of the contact that might spread the disease.

When the girl finally emerged from the bathroom, she found a wiser, much less turned-on man and he asked her to leave.

When my friend was telling me this story, I was only thinking of the hilarity of the bathroom door shutting, time passing, and instead of turning on SportsCenter or...uh...whatever it is guys do while a girl is in the bathroom getting ready to get it on, he was looking up genital warts on the CDC web site.

What do guys do while girls are in the bathroom, anyway?

Now -- even though I don't know the precise words he used to dismiss her -- I think he might have been kind of harsh. I sort of thought we lived in a more enlightened age than just booting somebody like a leper if you find out they have a cold sore or whatever. But on the other hand, I also don't think that this was a night of intimacy forged from a deep and abiding affection -- I suspect his casual dismissal matched the tone of their acquaintance.

So is there a right way to throw on the brakes? All us girls get taught that no means no at any time, under any circumstances. But we're not really used to hearing that from guys, once things get to a certain point. I'd bet it was pretty jarring for that girl to hear. Is there a kind way to say, "scram?"

I saw this on TV this morning. Some evolutionary scientists are saying that women with bigger hips and smaller waists are smarter and have smarter babies.

I didn't make any new measurements to check this today, but based on the last time I did measure myself, my waist-over-hips is about .70. That number is pretty high, I guess, which equates to less smart. Like I really need another reason to be down on my 11-year-old boy body.

So I guess this is another reason men prefer curvier women. What do you think, folks?

Over the weekend I was talking to a friend who is a high school teacher. She's single, and her female students seem to love giving her dating advice. When she told me about one of her students' suggestions over the weekend, I couldn't resist countering with my own best strategy for getting a man's attention.

Can you tell which is my suggestion and which was provided by a 16-year-old girl to her teacher? That's a 16-year-old girl at a boarding school in Wisconsin, in case that helps.

A) Part one: Go to a bar and order a martini -- no other drinks are acceptable: no gin and tonics, no beers. Part two: You have to eat the olive first. If you just drink the drink first, what you're saying is "I'd like to get smashed off lots of vodka." If you eat the olive, you're saying "I'm here for something else." If you don't eat the olive, "you are saving a little sumthin sumthin for later." Your martini-drinking behavior will be a clear signal to men, and they will respond.

B) Play catch with a football. If a guy sees you throw a really tight spiral, he's putty in your hands.

So one of those pieces of advice comes from yours truly and one comes from a high school girl. Which is which?

Yep, I used that one, in high school, trying to impress a super-cute senior. I described a sort-of-feminine characteristic as ephemeral. And then felt deep shame for making the mistake. I know the guy remembers who I am, he came up to me five years later and started chatting with me at a coffee shop. And thus I learned a good haircut and some makeup will erase almost all past awkwardness.

But I'm not as forgiving as that guy. I'm on Prudence's side in this one. When a later boyfriend not only made the mistake, but argued with me about it, I pretty much knew there wasn't going to be much return on investing any more time with him. He defended to a really ridiculous end his idea that a moniker was a small amount of something.

I can't decide if I'm more embarrassed that I didn't get some earlier clue that he was more interested in having his rightness acknowledged than in actually being right; or that I revealed my less gracious nature by arguing right back about it: I made him look at the definition in the dictionary before I was satisfied.

Either way, a malapropism is like most mistakes in that it's not the mistake, but the recovery, on which we make our judgments.

If that boyfriend had just said "whoops," I wouldn't have the story to tell, would I?

Has a date royally screwed something up, but recovered to win you back? Or the other way: made a trivial mistake, but then so utterly flubbed the recovery that they had to hand over their key to the mansion?

Here's a question a friend e-mailed me the other day:

"Not having a car in college was OK. but what about after? I was planning a small dinner party at my place and my date informs me an hour before the party that she doesn't drive. Being the host, I can't leave to pick her up right before people are supposed to start arriving. Am I an idiot for not picking her up?"

My answer is, I guess how much of an idiot he is depends on how hot she was. But I suspect he can find an equally hot girl who is a little more conscientious. What do you think?

I never called a guy back for a similar reason -- I met him for drinks downtown after work -- both of our offices were there and I thought it was just convenient -- then he asked me for a ride home because he didn't have a car. He said his sister usually picked him up after work.

I'm pretty sure that I wasn't being classist; I'm pretty sure I just thought it was super annoying that he hadn't figured out a way to get himself home. I'm not even saying he had to say "Can you meet me for drinks? I'll need a ride home." But at some point before "OK, time to go," he could have perhaps mentioned that I was his ride home.

If it happened to my friend and it happened to me, I'm willing to bet that it happened to you: did you bail on somebody because they asked you for a ride?

A guy friend came to me looking for some advice. He has a friend, a girl, with a problem he wants to help out with, but he's worried that his honest answer to the problem might be a bigger problem for him than the girl's issue in the first place.

I guess he thinks if he tells her how hot he thinks she is, she'll think he's into her, which, I guess, he's not.

The girl is frustrated because she feels neglected by men. She goes out with a pack of girls and regularly finds herself the only one not dancing with someone, not talking to someone... nothing.

So she posts something kind of desperate to her myspace page: "What's wrong with me?"

I, for one, have an easy answer for the girl: You're not acting trashy enough. Remember high school and "she's just doing that for attention"? That's the kind of thing you need to do to get attention in a meat market-type bar. If you want a guy's intellectual attention, look for one in a library or something.

But I'm more interested in the help we can give my friend. How can he give her a thoughtful and true answer without either encouraging her to pursue his affection or making her think he's into her. Either one of these would make his friendship with her awkward.

How can he tell her precisely what he thinks of her, which, presumably, will make her feel better, without suggesting to her that he feels more for her?

Admit it. You have some sort of test that you give to a new date to see if things are going to work out. I don't mean watch how he treats the waitress or if she brings up her ex. I mean a situation that you deliberately contrive at some point to say, "if this guy/chick can't deal with this, I can't deal with him/her."

Mine always comes up early. I have a lot of guy friends and I like to be really social and I need to have friendships that are separate from my relationship. So that means that I have to be able to to hang out, stay out late, drink beer, and occasionally crash on the couch of a guy and not have my boyfriend get angry or hurt.

Do I mean hook up with? no. I mean what normal people do with a friend.

It's a tall order, sure, but some women want diamonds and furs. And if I'm the only girl a guy hangs out with, it scares me.

So I bring dates to bars or parties where I'll be with other guys who have been clearly identified as friends (now not too soon, I'm not evil). If there are signs of jealousy in neutral situations, I don't wait around to test his patience with the more volatile ones.

For some women I know, it is marriage or children, so she'll come up with a way to see him interact with babies. I have a divorced and remarried friend who says "the second wife always sails."

What situations do you put dates into to see if they can handle a relationship with you?

This was in the comments of our New Year's resolutions post. It was such a good question we decided to bring it up here:

My problem seems to be not being able to get into a crowd. I moved here in 2002 and work from home.... I am having a hard time meeting a special someone, even friends overall for that matter. I still feel as if I just moved here, for I am not big pals with anyone. ...I am self-sufficient and all, but this scenario is not fun. I have a few people I know... (But) I feel now that I am not a good catch for women because I would have no "life" per se to bring to the equation presently. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to get out of this rut?

Can some other transplants tell us how you built your social group here? Or Greensboro natives, what should newcomers know about getting established in your city?

Omg can it just be tomorrow already!

I was at the video store on Wednesday night, staring at the box for "Paris, Je t'aime," trying to remember whether I had heard anything good about it. A guy walked up, seemingly out of nowhere, and picked up a different movie. I think maybe an action movie, definitely something I haven't seen.

So far so good, right? Normal movie store behavior. The guy asked me if I had seen it. I said, "nope."

But this is what got my attention: he pointed at this Sandra Bullock movie and said "You should watch that. You would like it."

I guess if the guy had been hot, I would have said, "Ooooh, I'll check it out, thanks!!" But he wasn't.

And really, I would only watch a Sandra Bullock movie if, at every moment she is on screen, Matthew McConaughey is also on screen without a shirt on.

So, without suggesting that any unsolicited movie recommendation is a come-on, I wonder if anyone ever has been picked up at the video store. Does that rate as a place to meet women? I was at Video Review on Battleground (or Lawndale or Westover Terrace, I'm not sure). Is there a video store that is better to find a date?

btw, I got "Hot Fuzz." Simon Pegg is my real boyfriend and all others are impostors.

I've posted before about how I hated having a perpetually sick/hypochondriac boyfriend. I have no patience with sick people. But this year, I have had two of the most god-awful colds imaginable.

And as a writer, I'm here to tell you what goes unsaid: I was no fun.

If I had been dating me, I would have dropped off a couple cans of Campbell's soup, a box of zinc lozenges and some tissues and said "call me when you're fun again -- and not contagious."

When I changed my stand on that one time, it led to one of my most devastating rejections. Mr. Tattoos-and-sexiness was recovering from having his wisdom teeth out and I offered to come over with a movie and not much clothing on and he told me he'd rather I didn't. Thinking about it now, I think I held that rejection against my kinder nature more than I did against him.

How much do you have to put yourself in the line of fire for a companion. I mean, when you get married you promise all that sickness and health jazz. But until the contract is sealed, how much of your companion's biohazard are you obligated to soak up?

Has a so-so prospect ever moved up or down the charts because of how he/she treated you while you were sick?

As we are in the final stretch to the ultimate, chocolate-covered rose petal diamond five star mink cristal and lobster holiday, I read a little different take on love and marriage. More marriage, actually, and less love.

Read this before you decline Mr. OK's marriage proposal:
The case for settling for Mr. Good Enough

Here's a sample: "Based on my observations, in fact, settling will probably make you happier in the long run, since many of those who marry with great expectations become more disillusioned with each passing year."

After reading this essay in The Atlantic, I think the writer's perspective is a little grass-is-always-greener. She sounds like a yuppy single mom who wishes she had a man and not just everything I ever wanted out of life (it's not like she's sharing her thoughts through her recipe column in the Russell County News. Although it's not like I am either).

But still, my heart doesn't overflow with sympathy. It may be the same thing that keeps me from enjoying Sex in the City -- besides Sarah Jessica Parker's sharpie-d on cheekbones. I mean, there are a heck of a lot more men out there than there are gigs at national news magazines.

All that said, I mainly agree with her. Nobody's perfect, so you're going to have to settle on some counts no matter what. Like buying a house: You find a couple of things you can't live without and just deal with the rest and be happy.

What say you?

Another installment of "Valentine's Day is Ruby's favorite holiday."

You're at your favorite restaurant. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out the little velvet box. You open it up and see the perfect glint of a couple of karats of true love. A dream come true or 10 car payments sunk into something fundamentally worthless?

I came across this story that claims that diamonds aren't really worth that much. Yeah, it was written when I was 4 years old, but if a diamond is supposed to be forever, it seems that this logic might also be.

Has anybody used another stone or symbol instead of diamonds to show love? Something more intrinsically valuable or meaningful? I've been sort of enamored of tanzanite since I found out that it is truly rare.

A punk rock friend of a punk rock boyfriend of mine had a nose ring made from some sort of horn or antler or something that he said had at one time been an engagement ring. All of my skepticism for diamonds isn't going to make that less icky, but it was meaningful to him. I guess.

Is there a better way than diamonds to make two months' salary last forever?

Oh please.

I was with her until the last couple of paragraphs. I was almost cheering at my desk: "Finally, someone speaking up for those of us who don't swoon!" I like being a woman and women's company. I like skirts and nail polish. But I don't look at home decor as a biological directive.

And I certainly don't have a crush on Barack Obama.

I do recall talking with a classmate in fourth grade about which presidential candidate was cuter. I think it was one of our state senators who dropped out early. And I had a poster of John McCain up in my dorm room in college, but it was the one where he was a cute young fighter pilot. And the man himself gave it to me when my political science class interviewed him.

Has anybody ever voted for the hotter candidate based only on that person's hotness? I think it's a ridiculous proposition, but Mariah Carey sold more albums than the Beatles, so what do I know?

Getting a haircut.

My hair is now twice as long as it ever was in college, and relentlessly getting longer. I have pictures all over my desk of my flippy little bob and I get all nostalgic about hair that dried itself just right if I drove to work with my car windows down.

But unlike most of college, now I have a man. A man who, like all men, likes long hair.

It doesn't seem like much of a sacrifice, does it? Longer hair saves me money -- now I only get a haircut every couple of months instead of at least every six weeks. It's easy enough to throw in a ponytail and seem fairly well groomed most of the time.

But it does take a long time to wash. It takes a long time to dry. It takes a long time to style. It gets tangled. It gets on my ice cream cone on a windy day. And it's not really what I prefer.

I concede that my sacrifice is pretty small, but it's Monday; let's ease into this whole thing.

Have you changed things about yourself for a relationship? My resentment over this whole hair length thing is at, like, a 2 out of 10. But how much do you come to resent the changes you make to please a partner? Or does your partner drive you to make positive changes?

Imagine it's 1991. You turn on the TV to see that guy opening the door with a suitcase. He says "I've been gone a long time and you're still going strong." Or something like that. Is he mad that the woman he told to leave is still there? No! He's happy his Renuzit brand air freshener is still off-gassing flower-scented chemicals!

This is the first thing I thought of when a friend e-mailed me telling me that since his girlfriend left after a long visit (at least I think that's the scenario -- this friend is sorta hard to keep up with), his apartment has started to smell like a locker room.

As it happens, I also just came back from a long trip, but my b.f. managed to keep things from reverting too far to the state of nature. I think it's because he kept using my shampoo.

Of course girls smell better than boys. That's an incontrovertible natural law. But is there something else that a girl's presence brings to a home in the strictly olfactory dimension?

My theory is that we are all cleaner and tidier when there is a chance we'll be observed -- boys and girls. What's yours?

Writing for this blog has been really good for me. The idea that I'm going to write honestly about whatever interaction I have with men has done a pretty good job of keeping me from doing some dumb things.

But since I haven't been writing as much, I seem to have gone right back to doing the same things that I totally know better than to do. Here's a summary.

Last weekend, I was at an event where I met a guy who spoke French as a first language. I got a little excited to be able to practice speaking French, something I haven't really done since college. I got carried away and gave him my phone number so we could hang out and chat some more.

I know better.

He has called me about four times a day for going on a week now.

On Thursday, I was heading into Rioja for the first time when some guys asked me something about my car. I have a pretty attention-getting car and I've become accustomed to, well, getting attention for it so I answered their questions, accepted their compliments and headed on inside to wait for my (girl) friend.

I ended up with several minutes on my hands before my friend arrived and while I was waiting, those two guys came inside and offered me a taste of their wine. By offer, I mean the manager poured it in front of me before I could tell what was happening. It's a small place and we were just about the only people there so I would have felt super rude saying "No thanks, I don't want to taste your wine because I don't want to give you the wrong idea.

But almost the worst part of this was these guys are much much older than I am. If they even thought they had a chance, I think they must have guessed my age at like, at least 10 years older than I really am. Since I'm not 14, that's not flattering!! I've been a little freaked out about it ever since. So if you see me wearing knee socks and pigtails, you know that I'm having some "I'm not 30 yet" fugue brought on by the trauma of being hit on by someone on the other side of retirement savings.

My friend arrived in just the nick of time, saving me from saying to these guys "I don't want to talk to you." Which I wouldn't have actually said anyway, I would have just smiled and been friendly to them and been uncomfortable and embarrassed.

The moral of the story is I shouldn't have given the Francophone my number and I should have been direct and firm with the wine-offering old dudes. And I think I did the wrong (my usual) thing because I wasn't thinking of writing a blog post about it. So Unbuttoned makes my life better, just like Socrates said it would. Sort of.

I run a lot of my life online. I pay bills, correspond with friends, shop and get a ton of information for my job on the Internet.

But I still judge my friends who claim to have made friends or met potential dates online. There's just something icky to me about thinking you have a personal connection with someone who you have never met, well, in person. And maybe I'm hypocritical, but I think there's a huge, wide chasm of difference between meeting a stranger online and using the Internet to keep in touch with friends you already have.

But an article in Wired this month says meeting online is kind of like meeting in church -- another place I am never looking for a hook-up, by the way.

I'm long over worrying about giving companies my credit card number over the Internet. Does my attitude about finding love online mean I belong on an ice floe somewhere?

Motorcycles are completely romantic to me.

Look at Tom Cruise and that Kawasaki Ninja in Top Gun. How about "The Motorcycle Diaries."

Freedom. Rebellion. And yet vulnerability. Plus, all that leather. There's a lot there to get excited about.

But the topic of motorcycles is a minefield for my boyfriend and me. He loves them. He's been riding since he was a teenager. I doubt I'll ever be able to drive a motorcycle because it takes at least three beers to even get me thinking about getting on one. I need my judgment good and impaired before I can overlook how it will feel to hit the ground at anything faster than walking speed.

And the other reason the topic is dangerous is that I have had so many crushes on so many guys with bikes. A friend from our hometown who looks kind of like an astronaut in his Kevlar riding outfit -- a hot astronaut. A girlfriend's neighbor whose name I did know, but who will forever be remembered as Moto Guzzi. He's the first guy that got me on a motorcycle -- and how I learned about that three beer rule. And I can't leave off, you know, my boyfriend. He's in there too.

So when my b.f. and I were driving back from the beach yesterday, we saw so many guys on motorcycles having so much fun, I could see him thinking about his first love (Cheezy, but true. As a teenager, my poster was Tom Cruise, his was the Ninja.). And I was thinking about all the motorcycle crushes I've had. Not exactly something I feel really comfortable sharing with him (but I'm not worried about this blog. He never reads anything I write :).

So for me, it's motorcycles. But there must be other topics, something you both get excited about, but can't really do together because of baggage or whatever. With five hours in the car yesterday, I had plenty of time to stew over whether it might be the kind of reservation that, over the course of a relationship, becomes one of those wide, frozen rifts. Maybe I'll just get a bike and see if it goes away. That is, until I get nailed by some 16-year-old girl in a Lincoln Navagator sending a text message about Miley Cyrus. Or worse, a 50-year-old man doing the same thing.