Not impressed emoticon.

"Does anyone want to meet for drinks tomorrow?" I asked in the Whatsapp group. It's a group that has GM, SG, S, FC and Mrs FC as members.

GM replied quite quickly, to decline, citing a trip to the countryside.

SG replied soon after, also citing a trip out of town. It implied that she would be with GM.

This irrationally annoys me. It always has done, to be fair.

SG went through a period earlier this year, post break-up, of really not caring about, and hurting, GM to the point where I couldn't even decide if she was doing it on purpose or was just blind to the feelings of other people due to her own flakiness.

I can't even really put my finger on what exactly it is that annoys me especially about SG. It could be the flakiness, or the fact that her life is now so intrinsically entwined with GM's that when they did break up, GM "lost" several friends and SG didn't realise or care or maybe it's just jealousy on my part that I don't have someone, platonic or otherwise, who can be on my doorstep in a matter of minutes if required or jealousy that, despite their few months of fighting, they've made up and are as close now as they were before (without the relationship baggage) when my own friction with CH has set us back years and might never recover (though we are currently having a Facebook chat).

Or maybe it's all of the above to a certain extent. I just know that it annoys me, but I can't say exactly why, nor can I put it into words. Sigh.

EDIT: GM has now posted on Facebook. It appears that he and SG are in the country somewhere, on their own. I had previously presumed that GM was going home for the weekend. This revelation does now make me question if SG and GM are now back as a romantic couple.

Puppet on a no-strings attached.

Just before I went away on holiday, I had a blast through Tinder. I do this every now and again because I'm still interested in meeting people and it's less annoying than an online dating site like Match or PoF. And I knew I was going to be busy on it while I was on holiday for my experiment.

And I matched with a cute blonde girl. Seemed to have a good figure, if her photos were in any way accurate. So, having learned the lesson of waiting too long to message and losing the opportunity, (CC's friend, amongst others), I fired off a quick "hello".

And so the conversation started. She was foreign. She was recently new to the city, but had been in the UK for a few years. She had a grown up child and was divorced.

The child thing is a bother to me, but the rest of it seemed sound.

However, after a few swapped messages, something didn't feel right. I couldn't put my finger on it. Was it the fact that she kept using my name in that way that seems off? Was it the fact that she didn't really answer a question? Or that the conversation seemed stilted?

Then the last few exchanges really made no sense - I asked her how she was settling in to the city, she said she'd be out of town for a few days, going back to her previous place (I assumed to get some of her things/tidy up loose ends), but maybe we could meet when she got back? I replied, saying that I'd like to meet and almost immediately got a reply saying that she had returned! She wanted to clarify something before we met... could I check out a profile on a website?

This all seemed very suspicious. If it wasn't a bot (which seem to be more and more frequent on dating sites and apps), then it was surely a fake profile. Ordinary people do not ask you to cross reference another web site for "intimate preferences". However, while it seemed suspicious, I checked it out (I've been told I'm a sucker for a pretty face) and it led to Adult Friend Finder - a site I'd never used, but knew about. It was the original hookup site, before Tinder came along and evolved into a dating app. Unlike Tinder, it's not free to use.

So, lovely Erin, the fake foreign beauty, I had to report your profile to Tinder. Sorry. Doubly sorry if you're actually real and just wanted a good, no-strings seeing to.

But you're not.

Well, well... well?

After the last post here, it's unsurprising to learn that nothing came of my offer to CH for drinks. So imagine my surprise when CH, once again, brought up a Facebook post from the past. It was a picture of me and CH looking rather cosy. There was a somewhat cryptic comment, not unlike the last message. I did the only thing that I could - suggest that we should have a night out. I didn't specify that it was just her and I or there would be others. It wouldn't matter. It would just be nice to see her socially again.

In safe hands?

A couple of nights during my travels, we went to FP's favourite (and local) pub - a live music joint. It seemed decent enough. When we went down on the Friday night, there was a live band playing. They weren't very good. To be more accurate, the band were OK, the singer could sing, but the guitarist was appalling.

Anyway, that's not what I wanted to talk about. It was a Friday night, about half-past ten when we rolled in and everyone was enjoying themselves. However, it became apparent quickly that the blokes were a bit, let's say "handsy" and forward. I saw at least three blokes grab women, who they were talking to, by the ass with little or no reaction. Another young-looking guy approached pretty much every woman in the bar under forty, often not taking no for an answer and often requiring intervention from other patrons.

Is this what American bars are like?

If that happened here, all four guys would be kicked out by bouncers, but the staff in general didn't seem perturbed at all.

Also, FP had claimed that come the end of the night, it was impossible not to be approached by women of all ages, especially if your face was a new one. This didn't happen to us that night, to which FP claimed that it happened at different times, "just not weekends" despite that being his original claim. This was something that FP did quite a bit during our week away - contradict himself, which proved to be annoying.

A further online dating experiment

My travel adventures are over for this year, unless something unexpected happens.

Just as in this post, I used some of my downtime to browse Tinder and Bumble. While I wasn't expecting anything to happen in the short time I was in the United States, it didn't hurt to at least look, did it?

And just like my London trip, the standard of singleton that Tinder presented to me was extremely high. Women would be attractive, sexy and, judging by their profiles, intelligent and interesting. The stuff that plagues the local singleton scene (duck pouts, negativity, Snapchat filters, quotes instead of face pictures, identikit profile blurb and the incessant declaration that anything casual is off the table) was all missing from the hundreds of profiles I viewed.

Also, like the London trip, I spent a lot of time swiping right. I think I mentioned doing that roughly 90% of the time in London and it was higher than that again in the States. Not quite 100% but near enough.

Additionally, I seemed to pick up a lot of "likes" in my time in the States, but nothing that transferred into mutual matches, sadly. Tinder says 10+, which is a lot more than I've ever managed previously at one time.

Tick.

Yesterday, I ticked off something that has been on my bucket list for longer than I knew what a bucket list was. In fact, it's been on my "to do" list since I was in primary school.

It wasn't anything terribly exciting or unique - simply visit a tourist attraction (albeit one that leaned towards education rather than entertainment). But I loved it and spent the entire day like a little kid, mouth agape at the exhibits.

The other stuff on my bucket list is a lot newer and mostly based around travel to specific locations or attending specific events rather than anything else (e.g. activity based such as parachuting or bungee jumping), mainly because a bucket list (as opposed to a general "to do" list) is only something I've recently considered.

Hmmm...

I'm currently in the United States. While I knew that patriotism was high over here, it's actually disturbing to me how big it is. The armed forces are worshipped.

In the UK, small children and those requiring assistance are first on to planes, whereas I've heard a call for a flight where "veterans" are first in line. In practically every shop or tourist attraction, there are special veterans rates.

In the UK, this would be unheard of. For me, going into the armed forces is a career choice. It's no different to choosing to be a bus driver, architect or office worker.

Actually thinking about it, in the UK there are a group of people that possibly deserve the same recognition and respect affording to those military personnel in the States, and that's our health support workers - especially those in the UK's NHS.

Additionally, in any big store - whether it's general retail like Walmart or specialised like Lowe's hardware, you will inevitably come across a flag section selling all manner of Stars and Stripes flags, banners etc.

On a day to day basis in the UK, you're unlikely to see a flag and only when one of the sports teams is going to an international tournament, will there be an outbreak of flag waving.

Hello! Just a filler post.

I've been quiet this month so far, and it's likely to continue for the next week or so as my travel plans finally come to fruition, but in a discussion with a few other people, this name came up.

Pole vaulter and current, so I've been told, girlfriend of golfer Rickie Fowler (no, I don't follow golf and don't know who that is), Allison Stokke.

What's not to like? Dark hair, dark eyes, tall, amazing figure. If KfW2 had a six-pack, they'd almost be body doubles.

Grrr.

Hurricane Irma needs to sort itself out - it could potentially have a huge impact on my holiday this year. I was really looking forward to some foreign travel as well.

Jackpot!

Fresh off finding a load of historical chat logs on my laptop a while ago, I've discovered the mother lode of chat logs buried in a deep, dark folder on my desktop. Re-reading them has been interesting, entertaining, and maybe just a little sad that I am no longer in regular contact with a few people, like F, who was a close friend for a brief period of time.

It's also been enlightening. There are references to things happening that I simply cannot remember, like F talking to BR while she was on a visit here. Or close to a visit here. So I either introduced F to BR or F was talking to BR via my phone while I was in the pub. Or several group chats with people I barely knew, but who seemed to know all about me.

Pop Quiz

Who's done the better job here?

Employee #1: Delivered 2 big pieces of work in a short period of time, despite being asked to do other tasks by manager and having his co-workers reassigned to other teams. End product is 95% perfect.

Employee #2: Delivered 1 big piece of work in a year, given free reign by manager to run the project as they please. End product is 100% perfect.

Up, up and...

I've been watching Supergirl recently, the TV series, as I've ran out of my usual list of programmes.

I don't want to be critical of it - there's little to be critical of, to be honest, but it's just a little bland for me. It hasn't gotten its hook into me in the way some other programmes have done over the years.

But Melissa Benoist, as Supergirl, is doing something to my loins. Not Melissa Benoist as Kara (Supergirl's alter-ego) in the same programme or even Melissa Benoist in anything else I've seen her in (photos, other TV and film). Just the Supergirl outfit.

I think it's the short skirt and boots combo. Or maybe just the boots.

Oooh.

Another work night out. It was only meant to be a few drinks, but six hours of heavy drinking later and I pretty much collapsed into bed. I was half-expecting some drunken messages from Ideas Girl, but thankfully none materialised. We did manage a quick, but stilted conversation when one of my friends was at the bar, but that was the only interaction we had.

We left the bar early-ish and went to another, just around the corner. There, I seemed to grab the attention of a pretty blonde girl who kinda reminded me of one of MM's friends. She disappeared though. We were sitting at a table near the exit, so I've no idea how she managed to get past us, but she must have done. When I went looking for her later, there was no sign of her, and the bar was half-empty, so it's not like I missed her in the crowd. Ah well.

Feeling very lazy today.