Talky.

A somewhat last minute early evening out saw me in the pub with a girl from work - no-one who's been mentioned here before. Let's call her Ideas Girl. We were introduced at the end of last year by Stalky Guy. Since then, we've gone through phases of chatting.

While I wouldn't say that we were close friends, we have been opening up a little to each other. When IG was looking for some company for a last-minute thing, I was one of the people she contacted. As it happens,  no-one else was available, so we did our own thing.

In the middle of the evening, completely out of the blue, I got a text message from DSC. I'm paraphrasing, but she claims to miss me, apologised for being flaky and unreliable and states that she's not like that any more. I don't know what to think. She was always flaky and unreliable when we were in regular contact - I don't know if a non-flaky version of her exists.

IG and myself also covered plenty of ground, conversationally, and it turned out to be a really pleasant evening. I surprised myself by being quite open with IG. I talked about FA2, online dating, my general happiness and lots of other, small talk things.

Oh dear.

On the bus on the way home tonight, for the first time that I've seen, the cute foreign girl that I mention in this post got on. I know that she now (perhaps always) lives near me,  but our paths never crossed. I always thought she was cute, but as we never interacted, getting anything going was nigh on impossible,

And it turns out that even if our paths had crossed, nothing would have come of it. She's married, according to the ring on her finger.

No other details, but I have to admit that I am a little disappointed.

Trimming the fat.

After a bit of a funk last weekend (lots of reasons), I've decided to cut down my presence on online dating sites/apps.

eHarmony has already bitten the dust earlier this week through not actually sending me any new matches (and you have to pay to see other members' photos).

I'm shutting down my OKCupid account this weekend. The only interest I got in a year or so of membership was the recent girl who messaged, then went quiet, then "liked" me, then went quiet after I messaged. She's on PoF, so if she wants to chat, she can find me there.

I'm also getting rid of Badoo. I simply don't understand it, and I'm getting nothing in the way of messages, visitors or anything resembling activity.

That still leaves me on Once, Bumble, Tinder, PoF and happn. None of these are providing any potential really... but it does no harm in keeping the accounts open if not semi-active.

Digest

I know I've been a little quiet of late, so here's a bit of a digest post.

The talks that I wanted to have in work have been complicated by some organisational changes. I won't know how this is going to impact me for at least another week, but I'll be trying to get answers as soon as I possibly can. Other than that, work is going well. I've got a couple of work events coming up in the next few weeks that should be fun (they usually are) and drunken too.

KfW2 has mentioned a Halloween party. S usually goes out on Halloween too and next weekend marks the anniversary that SG admitted that she liked me (that ultimately led to nothing). But... I have options for Halloween. I'm not that concerned. Halloween is something I can take or leave, though everyone else seems to enjoy it. I have nothing against being in a bar surrounded by attractive women in sexy outfits. That doesn't help with my current frustration though.

Online dating has been a little weird. The OKC girl that I referred to in this post has made contact again. Well, she "liked" me on OKC but never replied to my outstanding message. I pondered about whether to message her - my thoughts on this particular girl haven't changed. I don't see it developing into anything serious, but we're both open to meeting people for friends, so let's see hoe it plays out. It might even solve the problem of my previously stated frustration. I don't need to elaborate, do I?

The stuff I am doing around the house is still incomplete, though there's finally an end date - the end of next week. It's been slower than I would have liked, but it's always been moving forward and next week should see it all done. Then I'll take a break from house stuff over the winter. It also means that I can turn the heating on again and then start thinking about the fitness stuff. With CC not following up on the gym stuff (and that's not a bad thing) I can follow my own path - yoga, some light weights and some other stuff as well should all add up to some decent results once I get going.

In addition, there should be some KfW2-centric nights. We're long overdue a night out on the town, just the two of us. It's been in a constant state of postponement since August, so it's about time that gets done. She's talked about a night at hers, with her husband and one of her husband's friends. I don't know if she likes this friend. Despite being a god-parent, he only seems to call round/be invited when I've been invited, so I kinda think that KfW2 uses that to fulfil her requirement to socialise with him.

That then paves the way into the Xmas period, which is something else to think about (including another day/night out with KfW2), and especially New Year's Eve, which is the holiday where I really don't want to spend on my own.

And it's about time.

It's taken months, but I finally had a conversation today that I've been trying to have for a good while now. And I only had it with one person instead of three. But, it was useful and gave me a good starting point for talking to other other two people.

It's not stopped being frustrating though. To learn that some things in work are simply outside of your control, despite being told otherwise is HUGELY frustrating.

But now that it's been clarified, I can go to the relevant people and put my cards on the table - I want things to change. I don't know if it's too late to change things for this year, but I also don't see how the people involved can refuse me.

I have two days to work on writing an email that'll hopefully kick off at least one face to face meeting.

Blast from the past.

Spotted on Tinder this morning: DSC. Swiped left, obviously.

Also spotted - extremely cute girl. Super-liked her.

Talky time.

JB and CC called round last night. I initially thought independently, but I subsequently understood that JB wanted CC to be there. Who knows why? JB has always been a little weird like that.

I've been asking JB to call round for ages. Ever since I moved in, to be honest and she always promised to, but never made any plans.

However, the two of them were here for over an hour or so and it was nice to have visitors and have a bit of chat.

CC was talking about getting back into her fitness regime again after her recent trip to America. She had mentioned the possibility of joining a gym previously, and this was brought up again, though brushed over in favour of her non-gym things - she's does various things about four times per week).

I'd entertained the gym idea and had spoken about it with USHW, though my confidence issues always made me reticent about doing it again. However, there's a local gym that's quite cheap that's tempting. If I could get a personal trainer for a reasonable price, then that may well seal the deal. However, I was paying GC almost £30 per hour back in 2006, so I've no idea how much they are now.

While the house isn't crippling me financially, it's certainly tighter than it was this time last year. Financially, my plan of joining a gym and perhaps seeing a PT a couple of times a month for regular checkpoints might not be do-able. It's potentially £100 per month that I can spend better elsewhere right now.

If CC brings up the gym thing again, I'll look into it, but she'll be doing all the running for this and I'll only agree if the price is right. I'm hoping that, within the next two weeks, my phase one of decorating will be complete and that should mean I can at least get back to my yoga routine that I did a few years ago.

I enjoyed that, was motivated to do it and managed to lose 10 lb in about 10 weeks with a couple of small dietary tweaks as well. Perhaps I should give that a go again and maybe only go down the gym route if the yoga doesn't pay off?

After all, I now have a couple of previously unused rooms that now need furnished with an eye on larger-scale works around the rest of the house.

Tonight's £130 million jackpot would come in handy right about now.

The online dating game.

A few weeks ago, I was messaged on OK Cupid. According to the site's algorithm, we were very well matched. According to her profile, when I went to browse, it appeared that the site had actually gotten something right. And I'm not just talking about her likes and dislikes... her style of writing, word usage etc. is very reminiscent of my own. That's, in case you hadn't guessed, A GOOD THING.

I wasn't getting a lot of reaction from her photos - she's pretty, stands out, tall, curvy. Usually, none of these things would put me off, but I just wasn't getting that vibe off her the way I had in the past with people like CB, for example.

Still, both of us are, according to our respective profiles, looking to meet new people outside of dating, so I replied. My messages were, quite frankly, not very good. I managed to be closed off, without really meaning to. To be fair, she seemed to be the same. But we still managed to swap a few messages over a few days.

It went quiet over a weekend, she changed her profile picture,  I sent a message to try and re-ignite the conversation and she hasn't logged on since. At the same time, she removed all her pictures from her recently re-activated PoF profile.

That's two women in the past two months who've cancelled/archived their profiles after talking to me.

Only for the OKC girl to pop up on my PoF feed last night.

Ho hum.

It's meant to be fun, right?

There's one girl I told USHW that I'd message... and I will, as soon as I can think of an opening message because, typically, she says nothing in her profile of any worth and I refuse to send just "hi".

It's the little things.

While things have been good recently - being more engaged and busy at work has helped a great deal -  Mondays are still Mondays.

However, my day was made by a simple text message.

"Looking forward to seeing you again next week. I've missed you."

It was from KfW2. Of all the close female friends and non-platonic friends I've had over the years, few, if any, have exuded the warmth that KfW2 gives off. And you know she means it - it's not an empty platitude.

Even AM and QC1, supposedly two of my closest female friends for near fifteen years, never seemed to convince me when they said something similar. In fact, can I remember them saying anything like that? Oh, AM has, but that's another story.

Maybe that's part of my confidence issues rather than anything that AM and QC1 did wrong.