Date #7 - Lord of the Rings

Tonight was date #2 with Mr. Marvelous. Our first date was just okay, but since we'd had so many great phone conversations before it, I wanted to have a second date.

We decided to meet at Macaroni Grill... except that, as I realized about 30 minutes before date time, I realized that Macaroni Grill is closed. So instead we met at Ruby Tuesday. lOnce again he brought me a flower, only this time it was two yellow roses. I sort of got the impression that every date we'd have, the more flowers I would get. It's a sweet gesture, but considering the amount of doom I felt about going on this date I couldn't really appreciate it for what it was worth.

As I blogged in my last post about Mr. Marvelous, I had a completely different image of him in my head than the person who appeared in front of me on our date. You might recall that I thought he was this cute, shortish guy before I met him... but in reality, he's tall and lanky with a weird body shape. What I didn't realize was that he actually reminds me a bit of a hobbit. Broad face, pointy ears. Sort of like this, but with shorter hair:



I came to this unfortunate realization about 5 minutes into our date... try enjoying your salad when all you can think is, "Frodo! Frodo Baggins!"

Sigh.

So we ordered and I tried to put the hobbit resemblance from my mind. My meal came with a salad bar, which he told me I could go enjoy. (Yes, you read that correctly. Told me.)

10 minutes in and I'm already annoyed that he's giving me permission to go to the salad bar. This was gonna be a long night.

I made myself a huge and delicious salad, which I began to enjoy upon my return to the table. However, he kept making comments about how weird he felt watching me eat. So I moved the plate to the side and waited for our meals to come. But then he got all weird about having chastised me for eating my salad. Hello dude?! What do you want from me?!

20 minutes in and I wanted to kill him.

While we were making idle conversation, he wanted to know what my first impressions of him were. I guess I wouldn't have thought that was such a weird question if my first impressions of him were positive. I know he was just trying to give me a compliment because he liked my "spirit", but I was just sort of put off by the whole question.

Our food came a few minutes later - thank goodness, because the awkward silence was starting to streeeeeeeetch. Except that during dinner he talked about salmonella poisoning. And the silence began to streeeeeeetch again.

We finished our meal and the server brought the check. I picked up the tab because I knew I was about to break things off and figured a free meal would at least soften the blow. I got the impression that he wanted to linger and chat some more. I suggested we head out.

We walked out to the parking lot and I mentioned I was going to walk over to the bookstore for a few minutes, so this would be where we parted ways. He went for the hug/"I had a great time" combo. As we were hugging, I pulled out the "We're not clicking" line.

I hated the look of disappointment on his face. I hated that I put it there. He (understandably) cooled considerably upon hearing that I wasn't interested in seeing him anymore. I hate this part.

He kind of creeped me out at that point, so I wandered towards the bookstore and hung out for a few minutes until I thought he'd left. Seriously, I'm a 27 year old woman and I felt the need to hide? L.A.M.E.

Grade: N/A

Up next: Drinks/dinner with Teach - Woo hoo!