A Guide to Nerd Guys Meeting and Dating Women: Date Preperation
Ok, I”m back on the dating advice. Enough for now on the good and bad movies I have seen. I am stuck in a hotel in Portsmouth, NH and am feeling the need to make myself feel important.
You’ve made the call, and gotten her to agree to a specific time and activity for your first date. You are totally ready and all you need to do is pick her up and enjoy an evening of fun and romantic possibilities, right? Wrong.
Like we used to say in the Boy Scouts, Be Prepared (or, as my friends in the Marine Corps say, Proper Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance. Take a lesson from ex-Marine Frank Castle, the Punisher (shirt image courtesy of the comic book t shirt category). 
Your preparation should begin as soon as you get off the phone with your future soul mate. First thing you need to do is make reservations at whichever restaurant you plan to eat at (by the way, if the place you are taking her too does not take reservations, set the Way Back Machine about 45 minutes and pick a different place. Also if the place you want to go has any kind of “theme costume” for it’s employees, especially clowns or anamorphic animals). Even if you know for a fact that the place will be dead empty and there is no problem with getting a table, always set a reservation. You look more sophisticated better prepared. Same goes with movie or show tickets.
All the rules we went over in terms of dressing and grooming apply double now. Get a haircut if you are due.
Get your car washed. Even if you are just meeting her somewhere, you can never tell where the evening may take you, and you don’t want her seeing a car that is in danger of losing velocity from the wind drag of all the detritus adhered to the outer surface of your car. Get the oil changed, and make sure you have a functioning spare tire (having to change a tire is not a bad thing during a date, and can make you look undeservedly rugged and masculine. However, nothing looks lamer than sitting in the car waiting for a tow truck and/or walking along the freeway rolling a flat tire to a repair station).
Two critical mistakes novice daters can make are money and gas. Do not make her wait in the car while you pump gas into it or pull cash from an ATM. You will look like a complete incompetent moron and totally piss her off, but not in a good way.
That pretty much it. I am sure some of you thought I was going to talk about bringing condoms, but honestly I don’t think most of you are at the level where you can expect to close the deal on the first date. In fact, I usually don’t bring them on a first date as to bring them seems really presumptuous.
Changing a couple personal policies
So when I started the site I said I wasn’t going to upload any shirts without doing complete descriptions. However, that is starting to mean that shirts are piling up and can’t be viewed by the fans, like this comic athletic shirt from the X-Men t-shirts section, and can go a couple weeks before I get to it. So from now on I will put them up as soon as I can and put the word “pending” on the description. That will allow me to spend the time I think they deserve and get the quality of descriptions I have now come to expect from myself. I pr0mise to get them done as quickly as possible.
The other thing I am doing is breaking away from t shirts. I recently ordered some amazing Star Trek, Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman coffee mugs, lunchboxes, and assorted knick knacks. Once I figure out the shipping I will have them up soon.
Busy day of running around with not a lot to show for it. I can’t seem to find those stupid wire cube devices. I found some online but the shipping is crippling. I’ll keep looking I guess. I need to get some before our next event, which is looking like KublaCon, the biggest gaming event in Northern California May 28th-31st. That gives me about five weeks to square it away. I think it’ll be good.
Someone has a case of the Mondays
Stayed up too late last night and woke up sluggish. Our pickup missed a couple boxes and I opted to ride my bike to the post office and drop them off (gotta get some kind of exercise…). In spite of the fact that the sun was out it was kind of cold and somehow I was riding into the wind both directions. Then, on the way home, in spite of being in the sunshine I somehow got rained on. Weird. Anyway, came back to the office and found a whole slew of tech problems and a huge pile of new shirts that need descriptions. Bad karma day, which I get about every year and a half. I think my best plan is to turn off the phone, stop with the email, and just sit here at my computer working on new t shirts.
Anyway, other than that things are great. Getting ready for WonderCon, which means I need to order a lot of t shirts. I think I will be bringing posters too. So much for eating this month. LOL. Anyway, I’m trying to figure out which shirts to bring. I think it seems obvious to bring comic book tees, but I think everyone will have those. I am looking at bringing some of the more obscure shirts for the more discriminating nerd.
Anyway, I am going to sign off before I complete my bad karma day by saying something stupid. These days usually end by about 5pm, so I am looking forward to a good evening. So long.
