barnes foundation
personal ad responses

so first, the barnes foundation. it's a local gallery and garden that was started by a.c. barnes and his wife. they had pots of money and loved art and plants. so, they acquired *quite* a collection of flowers and trees (some very rare) and paintings (all very rare!). on mother's day, mom and dad and i, and the smiths (mike, marty, martin, and morgan--yeah, i know) went to the barnes foundation to see the gallery. turns out they had recently started arboretium tours, and we went on it, and i just loved it--what a beautiful garden! so, i called up the arboretium director and asked if i could volunteer. (duh, they said "of course!").

so, today was my first day. i showed up and met a.j., the second in command (twenty-something, with some bee-you-tee-full blue eyes); marty, the director; marilyn and esther, more volunteers; and nelson, a gardener. they put me (heavy on enthusiasm, lite on expertise) to work ringing trees. a.j. had sprayed around the trees with something that killed the grass. i went around digging up the dead grass. apparently, you gotta do that because the weed wacker that you otherwise need to cut the grass at the base of the trees harms the bark and will eventually kill the tree. i worked until noon, then came back to the city for a meeting with gerry altmann, a psycholinguist from the university of york, in england.

my meeting with gerry went well. it was the first time i'd met with a visiting scholar (i know! pathetic that i hadn't done it before--i've been here 3 years, after all!). the best thing about gerry is that he's got a fabulous accent. love it!

anyway, after the meeting i checked my hotmail account, and had about a dozen messages from men who had seen my ad on blinddate.excite.com. i guess my ad went live yesterday or this morning. the best (and by that i mean most stupid) one: "A 'grad' student that is so smart like you actually not realize that GOD created this world--lol!! Wow is it possible??" sent by [email protected]. it's because i listed myself as an atheist in my ad.

so now i've got this list of men who are apparently interested in me, based on 3 photos and a short paragraph. hmmmm, how to decide which (if any) of them are worth trying to meet?

and what's up with this whole online personals thing anyway? i used to think that people who placed personals ads were pathetic losers. but, having placed one, i cannot (of course) continue to think of them like that. actually, as it turns out, it's probably a pretty good way to meet people. there's a large concentration of people of the right age/sex/interests/looks/religion/whatever, all searchable and sortable. you can peruse more people in a shorter time that anyone can just going to bars or getting involved in activities. i don't mean to suggest that online matchmaking should *replace* getting out and enjoying life, but it may very well serve an important purpose.

a recurring theme in the responses to my ad is that all (most) of these men put "working out" at the top of the list of things they enjoy doing. just reenforces the stereotype i have that guys are way more into looks that women are. blurg. especially annoying since i don't think i'm in great shape (you know, the whole extra 20 lbs thing). i fear that any of those men will be disappointed in my physical appearance when/if they meet me in person. and as i write that, i'm a little pissed off at myself for caring. why would i be interested in a man who cared *so much* for physical appearance that he would fail to be interested in me? answer: i don't think i *would* be interested in such a man. plus (as people keep telling me) there are plenty of men out there who actually *like* a woman whose not skin-and-bones. sigh.