Alice in Regularland |

When is it going to be me time!

I would love it if for one whole people thought about me all day. People just waited on me hand and foot, always asked for my opinion and genuinely cared about what I thought, felt and wanted. And actually followed through with what they said they were going to do.

My coworker just shared some of his blueberry muffin with me. Delish btw.

Thats it. Just care about Allison. For one whole day.

This is the story of super oscar fish D-Style Jr. Aptly named after an ex coworker David, who went by D-Style back when he was a DJ in a past life.



To put thinks frankly D-style Jr is a super fish. He has survived not 1 but 2 near death experiences. He was originally put in a tank with one other Oscar, Twinkletoes, but he quickly out ate him during feeding times and grew to be twice his size, about the size of a adult palm, within 3 months.



The first near death experience started when the office staff left for the weekend and everyone forgot to feed poor Twinkletoes and D-Style Jr. So, D-Style Jr being the super fish that he was decided to become resourceful and found food elsewhere. Unfortunatly it was in the form of a Plekko fish. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Plekko it is the sucker fish that people get to suck all the algae off the tanks. The unfortunate part of this event is that the Plekko fish has several sets of large barbs on the front of it to prevent predators from eating it, like D-Style Jr.



So, on Monday morning my coworkers and I showed up for work and went to the fish tank to see if there had been any new changes. Imagine our surprise when we found our beloved D-Style Jr, laying at the bottom of the tank with half of a plekko fish sticking out of his mouth. D-Style Jr's poor gills had been stretched open so wide that they were starting to rip away from his face and his mouth had been open so long that it was ripping apart at the corners.



His prognosis did not look good. His eyes were starting to glaze over and he had stopped flapping his fins. When the afternoon started to roll around so did D-Style Jr. He was losing the ability to hold him self up and was starting to fall over onto his side.



It was at this point that I decided to take action. Now mind you I know absolutly nothing about fish .



to be continued.....

Everything I'm about to say is nothing new regarding long distance relationships and online dating. But I'm going to say it nonetheless.

In a nutshell, it sucks.

Here is a general play by play of the online dating process:

There is the whole weeding out process. Which is slow, tedious, repetitive and can at times feel very, fake. Mostly becuase when you find someone who piques your interest you will send them a message. And since we are human there is bound to be more than one person who piques your interest. Which means you are bound to be sending the same message over and over again.

Then, if you should happen to make a connection with a person after sending a few icebreaker messages, you ineviteably decide to talk on the phone.

The first phone conversation can either be viewed as:

a)extremly awkward during which you cant wait until its over so you can get to the next one where you will ultimatly 100 times more comfortable

or

b) entertainingly awkward becuase you kind of know this person but have never connected on any other level than email.

I chose b.

After talking on the phone for the mutually appropriate amount of time you will either agree that a) this is not going to work

or

b) you want to meet.

In the case of choice b, you are now faced with an entirly new problem. When, where, how and how long (often a factor when traveling long distances).

And then, you meet.

Its really the strangest thing to meet a person whom you know what they look like, you know what they sound like, you have a pretty firm base of who this person is and what they are like and yet have never actually met them in person. There is a feeling of awkardness unlike any other situation you could be in. Do you talk about things that you already know about them? Do you act like its no big deal and try to pic up where you left off?...

Or do you inevitably end up acting as if your meeting someone you have known your entire life for the very first time?

And then there is the ultimate suck. What happens if, (and we are talking long distance now) things work out. Becuase, lets face it, the idea is just as bad as if things don't work out. Then you are now faced with being in a long distance relationship. Where your relationship grows through interaction on the phone. Lets say the person lives far away and you are lucky enough that one or the other of you can can only see eachother once a month. If you date for six months you will have only spent time together 6 times. 6!

So then the question you have to pose to yourself and your partner now is, are you worth it? Are you worth the headache, the money, the time, the lack of physical interaction? Are you willing to go out on a limb and try to date someone that you will hardly see in person based on the idea that there is "something" there?

I dont know.