28% of online dating service Match.com users are married. I searched for a link, but you’re just going to have trust me on this one. The resident “Senior Research Analyst” found that stat from Forrester the other day, so it’s viable enough, even for a stat freak like me. What’s more interesting is what I found when I tried to actually look for the stat in Google. Apparently searching for “married,” “dating” and “service” lends itself all sorts of possibilities. I was lucky enough to find dating services for swingers, a dating service for people who just want to have affairs (of course unbeknownst to their spouse), and of course my favorite: AdultFriendFinder.com. They position themselves as a dating service for adults who just want to find sex partners worldwide. By the looks of the pictures on their website, if I was their marketing director I’d just market them as ‘The Porn Personals.” But that’s neither here nor there.
Having been out of the dating world for quite some time, I decided to wander over to Match.com to see what would lie in store should I actually need to shop for a date one day soon. Barring any unforeseen, freak car accident I know this won’t be happening and thank my lucky stars that it’s so. Perhaps it’s because I’m out of college now, where dating in my opinion, gets so much worse and not any better. And how could it? With scientists stating that women’s eggs get ‘old’ after the age of 27, dating becomes a virtual rat race to find someone to nibble on cheese with. And that’s not taking into account whether he still has all of his teeth.
But seriously, is the dating world all so horrible that reasonably good-looking 21-year-old men are spending their time placing personal ads on Match.com? What I thought might be slim pickings was actually a plethora of single (or supposedly single) men age 20-30. That’s not to say that I’d vouch for their sanity. After all, I did find Mr. Please-Write-Me who in my opinion, with that title should just stick to the picture with his son. The current one makes it look like he’s just returned from a long stay in Afghanistan. So after weeding through the desperate, the lonely, the angry and the closet-gay, I’m showcasing a few of the ones that I might actually recommend for my single female friends. So pay attention ladies:
Mr. I-Didn't-Know-The-Word-Traveler-Only-Has-One-L (that's a common mistake)
Mr. This-Is-My-First-Time
Mr. I-Have-A-Great-Sense-Of-Humor (I chose this one simply because he likes the movie Office Space)
Mr. I-Like-Frank-Sinatra
Mr. I-Will-Pay-The-Bills
Mr. I-May-Have-Too-Much-Of-A-Sense-of-Humor
Mr. Showcase

posted by paula 9:12 AM

Things we ate in one day at the state fair and survived:
1. cheese curds
2. a King Falafel gyro
3. one elephant ear
4. copious amounts of soda
5. French Fries with ketchup
6. one chocolate shake
7. Sweet Martha’s chocolate chip cookies
8. one large deep fried turkey leg (I’d like to say that we both ate this, but everyone knows Ryan's allergic to turkey)
9. one caramel apple sundae with peanuts
It’s amazing what you can consume when you only get a few hours to do it every year. You can see a few of the pictures from our experience here.

posted by paula 9:46 AM

It was a ‘movie weekend’ this weekend – we caught up on a lot of movies that we haven’t seen this year since I’m pretty opposed to spending what little summer days we have in a movie theatre. It’s been cold lately, so going to a movie at night wasn’t all that bad. Friday night I saw My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which was much funnier than I thought it would be. I also had to laugh at how familiar the plot will become should Ry and I actually tie the knot. Although my family lacks a few of the freakish idiosyncrasies that the Greek family has, sometimes I have to remember that a large, loud, obviously Polish family is something new to him, because his family is much smaller than mine. I have explained that there are a few things that come with the territory in my heritage, a few of those being:
1. My grandmother was a caterer in Wausau. She raised more children and grandchildren than any woman should – partly with the help of her husband and partly on her own. She prided herself on feeding us on every opportunity she could, regardless of whether we had just eaten or not. Because of this, we grew up knowing that a party is not a party unless there’s enough food to feed half of the state, should they choose to show up.
2. She was also an avid gardener, therefore any flowers that are present at a celebration, funeral or otherwise must be fresh or we will literally hear about it from her station beyond the grave.
3. A note on the aforementioned food: there also must be enough beverages to wash it all down - preferably of the alcoholic nature. Anything less might be construed as an insult.
4. There are a lot of us and when we get together we tend to be loud. We’re just all busy trying to talk over each other.
5. In the Polish culture, sometimes a fart is a sign of love, rather than a sign of rudeness. And the relative distance of the fart to the intended recipient is directly proportional to the closeness that the farter feels towards the recipient. Should said fart actually happen while entangled in …say, a wrestling match on the living room floor, that is the ultimate sign of love for my people.

Okay. Not really. I made that one up.

Saturday night Chris and Brad were in town for a wedding, so we babysat Marina while they went out and did whatever it is that they used to do, pre-child. It all went a lot better than I expected and even Friday was quite amazed at the new, tiny little critter that invaded his home. The movie choice for that night was I Am Sam. In my opinion, the soundtrack is much better than actual movie.
Today we had a last lunch with Chris, Brad, Marina and some friends and then headed home for a much needed nap. Tonight we watched The Shipping News, for which I’ll only say this: while the plot might be lacking, Kevin Spacey has once again proven that he is by far one of the most talented actors to grace the screen. One might say despite others’ contradictory commentary, such talent would indeed make him sexy.

posted by paula 11:53 PM