I had this whole amusing thing planned for today, with a Venn diagram of my brokenness. ‘Cause, see, I went on a date this weekend (yay!), and it went well (yay!), which was great because if it hadn’t I would have had to banish this dude from my favorite coffee place, and that’s never fun. But instead I ate a cookie and talked, and those are pretty much my two favorite activities ever so All Was Well.

But the thing I was going to make the Venn diagram about was something I realized halfway through, which is that I am Bad At Date Conversation. I mean, normally this takes the path of me not shutting up while talking about the excitement of freelance writing (it is not exciting), but on this particular day that didn’t happen, because I had the good sense to not talk about work. Which was good! It’s like I’m an AI that learns from its previous social failures, except actually I think that just makes me a person.

So we talked for several hours, which was pretty great. Except that about halfway through I realized that I still have not quite mastered talking, because here are in no particular order the things that this person and I discussed:

• The failures of Atlanta’s mass transit system, complete with art projects to commemorate them.
• Thermite.
• The fact that I know how to make knives out of rocks. (Not well, but still.) Continue reading →