Looking forward to tomorrow

Yep... my date with Ruth is tomorrow, probably around 6 or so (...though we actually only talked about it Wednesday when I asked her, so I should probably bring it up again today and set a definite time at least a little bit ahead of time.)  I'm kind of surprised that I'm not incredibly nervous about the whole thing... actually all the nervousness and frustration from earlier this week pretty much disappeared the moment I managed to ask her (or more likely, the moment she actually said yes. XD)  I guess it's kinda like... I'm not nervous now because the really hard part--actually asking her out in the first place!--is already over with.  Or something like that.  But anyway, I'm really looking forward to the whole thing; this'll be the first time I've ever gone on a date, so I'm not entirely sure what to expect... but I figure there will be a lot of just general talking and being around each other, which is always good!

Speaking of talking, I actually ended up text-messaging her a lot last night since I didn't see her at supper.  Okay, that's not exactly talking (and that 160-character limit per message is really annoying, as is trying to type stuff without an actual keyboard), but still.  I seem to be getting better at typing stuff into the phone, though; it only takes me a couple minutes to type up a 160-or-so character message now, and part of that was going back and trimming the message a bit so it actually fit in 160 letters.  Would probably be easier if I had one of those phones with the little slide-out keyboard thing, but eh, I only just got this one a month and a half ago and it's working pretty well for me... it'd be really silly to just randomly get a new phone already, plus I usually don't do a whole lot of text messaging (last night was literally the first time I ever sent more than two or three in a whole day.)

And kind of a funny thing: pretty much everyone I've told about this has been ridiculously excited about it.  I think one or two may have actually jumped up and down when I mentioned that after three days of not being able to say anything, I finally managed to ask her out.  I guess I'm pretty excited about it too, though I don't quite show it the same way... of course, I have been smiling and laughing a bit more than usual, and I've generally felt pretty good over the last few days despite having a minor sore throat (which seems to be going away, thankfully--it'd really suck to get sick just in time to have to postpone my first date ever...)

Still amazed that, despite all the potential problems, she actually agreed to go on a date with me.  I mean... there's religious differences (she's Mormon, I'm not), a bit of an age gap (she's 18 or so, I'm 25), we've only known each other for a month, and she said in one of her recent DeviantArt posts she wasn't really interested in dating/relationships in general.  I guess she must actually like me, then! Heh...

I'll probably post about the date itself after it happens... though maybe not in great detail since it'd probably be a little creepy to have all these random Russian people (who seem to make up about 90% of my readers) reading about my first date.

...!

Another day, another failed attempt at asking the cute redhead out on a date... looks like there's going to be a pattern here.  I don't know what the problem is... I normally have no problem whatsoever talking to her, and even asking questions about other stuff... but when it comes to actually trying to ask her out, I somehow can never manage to actually get words to come out.  And even worse, this time it was almost like she was giving me ideas on what we could actually do (seriously, one thing that came up when we were talking was "when do you have free time so we can go watch How to Train Your Dragon?"... I haven't seen it, and she really likes it and wants me to see it eventually, along with about a million other movies... and books... and webcomics... and... yeah, there's a lot of "her suggesting new stuff for me to read/watch" whenever we talk, heh), and even then I couldn't actually come out and say anything...


This is extremely frustrating.  Pretty much the first time I've ever even tried to ask a girl out, and... I just can't do it! I almost feel like giving up on the whole thing, but I know that if I did give up it'd just make me feel even worse than I already do.  I'm almost thinking of temporarily giving up on asking this girl out and trying to ask one of the other two that I like, but... one is getting sick and the other has barely talked to me at all in the past week or so.  It's like there's no possible way this can turn out good unless I somehow manage to ask her out (and even then it could still turn out bad...)


EDIT: Ignore all that stuff up there.  I just shattered one of the fundamental laws of the universe into a million pieces with nothing but 20 minutes and a cheap phone from Wal-Mart... which law? The one that says "Eddie will never go on a date or have any sort of relationship with girls," of course!  Let's hope it doesn't get reinstated anytime soon.
I'm not entirely sure how I did it, but... I managed to ask her out (over the phone, actually... seemed kind of odd to me at first, but it worked!) and it's going to happen sometime late-afternoon/early-evening-ish on this Saturday.  Still kind of in shock that this actually happened, but it's been long enough now that I think it's kind of sunk in that it did happen, it wasn't just a dream or a hallucination caused by bonking my head on something or accidentally inhaling some weird fumes.  I think I may actually have a little bit of self-confidence now.

First horribly failed attempt at asking a girl out. Yeah...

...well, actually, it's probably not that bad since I didn't even manage to get any words out (only an "Um..." of attempting to get her attention again as she was heading inside, and I don't think she even heard... so I just said "bye" as usual like nothing was going on at all, heh), and I did kind of walk her all the way back up to the lofts and everything (talking about stuff the whole way, as always... I think this is probably the second or third time I've done that XD)

But hey, at least I tried.  I think I might actually be able to pull it off this time.  Will try again tomorrow!

EDIT: ...and now that I've pretty much decided who I'm going to ask first, I keep feeling kinda bad every time I see one of the other girls I like.  Even more so since I haven't had any chances to really sit down and talk to her for more than a minute or so at a time recently (...actually, same goes with the third... really I've only found opportunities to talk to one of the three much this whole week.)  Well, I guess I can always ask both of them (or all three?) on dates at different times/weeks/etc... I seriously doubt any of them are going to immediately be all "girlfriend/boyfriend" with me as soon as we have our first date, so that'll probably still be a possibility.  And apparently it isn't really considered weird to go on dates with a bunch of different girls in a row here, so...

EDIT EDIT: Nothing much worth mentioning today (September 27th), except that I once again was going to try and ask this girl out... but once again wasn't able to get any words out, and ended up just saying bye to her as usual when she had to go do her homework (after talking to me for more than an hour, and walking back up to the lofts with me, and then talking for another half-hour at least before realizing how late it was and going off to do her homework.)  I don't know why I'm having such a hard time with this... I really like her and we really get along well, and this was pretty much the perfect time to ask... I just couldn't do it for some reason. Gaaahhh....

Assorted weirdness

Got another wrong-number call from a guy attempting to contact his girlfriend but mistakenly putting in my number instead.  And, strangely enough, the girlfriend in question just happened to have the same name as the one from the first random wrong-number text message I got way back when I got the phone!  This guy, however, apparently thought that I had stolen his girlfriend's phone or that I was answering her phone or something, because I got the following text message from him after telling the guy I had no idea who he is...

"I dated her twice and kiss her more than wance i love her if you dont give her the phone i will come from colorado and get you"

I've never seen anyone misspell "once" as "wance." At this point I was thinking "this has got to be some kind of prank."  The guy's name was supposedly "Tristin" which looks like a girl's name to me... and then he actually called rather than just text-messaging, and he sounded a bit like a girl doing a fake guy voice, especially at first.  I don't know if this guy just had a weird voice or if this was some kind of prank, but either way after I explained that I had no idea who he was, I bought the phone from Wal-Mart a little over a month ago (and so it couldn't have randomly been someone else's lost phone!), and so on the call was over.  Really strange.

Did a lot of walking around Buena Vista today.  And some jogging, actually managed to get over a mile (almost 1.5 miles!) in just three days, and that's with my knees still hurting and me not even really trying on one of those days.  Nowhere near the 3.5 I was supposed to have by the end of this week, but definitely better than the zero I had last week when my knees were still really bad.

Also, for some reason every time I talk to certain people about anything dating-related, Kaitlyn always gets mentioned.  Usually by other girls suggesting that I ask her out (and of course, previously there was the time when they were trying to get me to ask her to dance, and before that someone else mentioned her when talking about the possibility of me going to the dance with a girl.)  But... I'm pretty sure she likes some other guy, she was literally talking about how much she liked him right in front of me the other day.  Not talking to me exactly, I was just kind of sitting nearby when she happened to be saying all that to someone else... but I was definitely close enough to overhear it all.  And today I finally asked one of the girls who continuously suggests that I ask Kaitlyn out, and apparently she just has a feeling that Kaitlyn likes me.  I would've asked if this was a "actually backed up by stuff she might have said" feeling or just a feeling-feeling, but I didn't really have time.  Now I'm just kind of confused and it's starting to look like a repeat of that one time in community college when a girl liked me, then lost interest before I asked her out (with one of her friends pestering me to ask her out right up to the end.)  There's even other similarities beyond that... main difference is that Kaitlyn is probably a lot less crazy.

I guess I probably will attempt to ask her out anyway.  I mean, I do like her, and I was kinda thinking of asking her out already (though the overheard conversation a few days ago did discourage me from that a bit), and I've already gotten really close to that (between asking her for her phone number, saying that I'd walk with her if she wanted to go walking in Buena Vista to see what's around sometime, and so on) but... I'm a bit worried about just how horribly wrong it could go, moreso than with either of the other two girls I'm thinking about asking out.  Might just be me being a little paranoid, but... I dunno.

EDIT: ...and now my "who am I going to try asking out first"-o-meter has been shifted back in another direction once again.  At least it's good that I have more than one person in mind, in case whoever I ask first says no, I guess?
And one random hint to any other guys who might just be in a similar situation: don't ask guys for dating advice.  Ever.  If a guy attempts to give you advice about girls, it will either be stupidly obvious ("don't walk up and say 'hey baby'" and other similar things that you probably already know if you're even remotely intelligent) or absolute nonsense.  Pretty much all of the advice I've gotten from girls on this (with a few exceptions occasionally) generally makes sense, while pretty much everything that a guy has butted in with (and yeah, butted in would be the right word since I already knew that guys don't know this stuff at all and I would have to be pretty stupid to actually ask them for advice) has been a combination of the obvious and total BS.  Heck, one of the guys spouting the BS even admitted that he didn't have much luck with girls either... yet somehow they spread it anyway.

...whut?

Just a little while ago, two (out of three) girls I was thinking about asking out had this whole conversation about how hot some other guy was and even arguing over which of them gets to go out with him... while they were standing right there in front of me.  That's definitely a bit discouraging as far as the "actually attempting to ask a girl out" thing goes.

Well... actually, thinking about it again just now I can see one good thing there, which I won't mention because people might actually be reading this.  But for the most part, just a really weird conversation to overhear (it's always creepy to hear people talking about how "hot" someone else is) and a bit of a letdown as far as the "chances of me ever dating a girl before I'm an old man" thing goes.

Wal-Martians

Took the shuttle thing yesterday and went to Wal-Mart in Lexington, along with four girls.  They almost missed it, since they had somehow gotten the idea that it was 7:30 rather than 7:00 and if not for me sending a couple of them a text-message they wouldn't have known until the shuttle had been gone for a while that they had missed it.  Good thing girls keep randomly giving me their phone numbers this year, huh?
This was actually the first time I've been to a store (other than the little dollar store near the school) since I got here... of course I didn't really need anything, but I wanted to buy some video games (I ended up getting Plants vs. Zombies for my computer, and Kingdom Hearts Re:Coded for the DS) and I also grabbed a video game magazine (it had Kirby on the front! and apparently they're coming out with another "real" Kirby game now, rather than just remakes and oddball spinoffs!) and some snack food (cookies and milk.)

Also, in the bathroom at Wal-Mart I found a Chick Tract.  Two actually, but I only grabbed one of them.  This was the first time I've actually ever seen one up close, though of course I'd heard of them over the Internet before.  I had been kinda hoping for one of the way-out-there "Harry Potter and D&D will turn you into a devil-worshiper!" ones, but instead I got a relatively tame one about a guy dying of cancer converting on his deathbed (the only thing really out there was how his personality magically changes to be much nicer after converting and he even says he's glad he's dying of cancer rather than something less... slow and painful.)

Not a whole lot else to say about yesterday.  It'd be a little boring to just repeat the same stuff about classes and talking to people over and over, so I guess I won't do that unless something unusual happens.

Pizza, weird questions, and waaay too much painting

Didn't do a whole lot today, aside from the usual class-related stuff and talking to girls (and some guys, but mostly girls.  As usual, heh.)  Supper wasn't much of anything (some weird rice that was edible but not great, and bread rolls) so later on when I got hungry at around 9:45 I ordered a pizza from Domino's.  Actually pretty good, but expensive... I know some of that's the delivery charge but still, $19.00 for a small pizza and breadsticks seems like a lot.  Guess I won't get all of my extra toppings next time I try that...

Spent a lot of time working on those painting homework assignments today... those things are an enormous pain in the ass.  Well, okay, they're not that bad but they're way too time-consuming... I can't see how some people can just sit down and paint something in hardly any time at all.  It just takes forever, even without lots of colors to worry about (we're doing black-and-white paintings right now.)  I'm not sure how I'll get my color painting done in time for class tomorrow, since I'm not even entirely done with the last of the black-and-white ones yet.

And randomly, some guy mentioned that he saw me talking to a girl earlier (...well, that's not exactly the way he put it at first, he used some weird slang term I wasn't familiar with so eventually someone had to "translate" for me) and asked if she was someone I was going to ask out.  Of course, I had no idea which girl he actually meant, since I talk to a lot of girls... but assuming that it was today, I have a pretty good idea of who he meant.  The guy could've at least given a basic description of her or something (I mean, hair color alone would've narrowed it down a lot!), "a girl" could be pretty much anyone.
I also have a pretty good idea of what the answer to that question would have been if I had any idea which girl he was talking about at the time it was asked... but who knows if that will ever work out at all.  I'm kinda worried that this particular girl just isn't really interesting in dating and that kind of thing at the moment, which is kind of worrying considering that she's one of the two that I'm really looking at as far as the "girls I would potentially ask out if I ever actually became able to ask a girl out" list goes.  And of course, the other top candidate for actually-trying-to-ask-her-out-ness also has several things about her that make me a bit worries about my chances of going on dates and such with her... at least they both actually seem to like talking to me, though.  That's already a huge step up from high school (and most of community college!)