30 thoughts on dating

1. I'm great. Everyone should like me. I should just be able to pick one.
2. I'm a cold, unfeeling robot and I'm surprised anyone likes me at all.
3. I don't need a man. He would just get in the way. Being single is great. Masturbation is fine.
4. If he will cook, I will wash the dishes.
5. If I can be in a relationship by June, I will join the CSA again.
6. I can tell he likes me more than I like him and I just don't want to deal with it.
7. How kind of him to be so frank with me about his lack of interest in seeing me again. It really does make it easier. Excuse me I have to go cry in the bathroom.
8. Online dating seems such an unnatural way to meet.
9. Meeting a guy in a bar seems sketchy.
10. I don't want to date one of my friends; it might ruin the friendship.
11. I will text him once after the date and if he doesn't respond, it's his loss.
12. Maybe he's busy.
13. I should really just stop worrying about men and concentrate on what I want to do with my life.
14. I would like to date a man with the same name as me. I think it would be delightfully confusing for everyone else.
15. I should have cleaned my apartment.
16. Etiquette says hat comes off, baldness says hat stays on.
17. I can't say exactly why I didn't like him. He's really nice. We just didn't click.
18. Ugh. He likes all these books I've never read.
19. I suppose he was abducted by aliens. That's the only logical conclusion.
20. Somebody hold me too close.
21. Marry me a little.
22. I'm not interested in kids, but if my partner wants kids I'm open to it.
23. He just didn't react to things they way you would expect a normal person to react.
24. I hope he cancels.
25. I don't flirt. I don't smile. The best I can do is make eye contact and say, "How interesting."
26. I want him to be the smart one and me to be the creative one.
27. I liked him a lot, but in my head we've already had a relationship and broken up.
28. There's this one very minor thing about him that annoys me, so if it doesn't work out that's fine.
29. How can I be a good boyfriend when I don't even know who I am?
30. Don't beat him in Scrabble too badly the first time you play.

Going a bit overboard on the book data analysis

As an exercise in making charts in Excel, and to feed a data analysis compulsion, I've created these visual representation of my past nine years of reading. This is possibly the tip of the iceberg, so beware.

My reading tends slightly more towards male authors than female authors, which I thought would have been the other way around. In the above chart, individual authors are counted a maximum of once per year regardless of how many of their books I read (although I do try to limit myself to one book per author per year). In the case of books written by multiple authors, both authors are counted, except in one case of a compilation (Care to Make Love in That Gross Little Space Between Cars?: A Believer Book of Advice). 2015 is only so manly as it is because I read two books by two authors each (Good Omens and Welcome to Night Vale).

This chart clearly demonstrates a preference for fiction (everything before and including purple) over non-fiction (after purple). Included in my vague "General and Other Fiction" category are humorous fiction, mystery/thriller, short story collections, and young adult that doesn't fit into other genres (young adult fantasy is counted as part of fantasy, etc), as well as things that I can only think to describe as "plain old fiction." "Autobiographical" is a category that includes memoirs and collections of autobiographical essays (like David Sedaris and Sarah Vowell's books before she went full-on history), and I put Hyperbole and a Half in there too since that's where it fit best. Hiding in "Other Non-Fiction" are humor, geography, and self help.

Possibly more to come!