Memery!

Sigh. Still sick. Showed up at work for a few hours, and then went home instead of going to the departmental outing. Am grumpy because really wanted to go to said outing. Am also missing free food.

You can tell I'm not feeling well because I'm actually passing up on an opportunity for free food.

And now, memery!

( avrelia asks me about historical or traditional fashion and rats )

( londonkds tagged me with five things that make me happy )

( cychi's question on more rat stuff! )

( Top five silly vids for Yoon )

( Favorite fruits for amphibiouswords )

And now I cheat and make you guys comment even more! Muahaha!

"List two (or more, I guess) fictional characters from books or TV shows and I'll give you my take on the relationship (whether friendship-family or romantic) between them. And I saw someone else do this at the time and it was fun: feel free to include characters even if you don't think I know the source material, and we can see how much I've picked up through fannish osmosis."

I play with dating things

I make a confession: I have joined eHarmony.

Wait, wait! I am not insane! Actually, I was lured in by their giant-ass questionnaire (it's too much like a meme to resist). Furthermore, refuse to pay, and even more importantly, I seriously doubt that I am ready or willing to start dating right now.

The scary thing is that they start throwing matches at you even if you haven't paid and really have no intention of paying! The really scary thing is that I have absolutely no idea how they came up with those matches, given that every single one of them looks extremely generic. I mean, honestly. I can't remember how one is different from the other, except this one person put his most important quality in a person as "piety" and the most influential person in his life as "Jesus." Now don't get me wrong, because I have nothing against Christianity. But given how I answered questions and the like, I reeeeaaaally don't think me and this guy would be a good fit, seeing as how I am not exactly pious, to say the very least.

One guy even jump started stuff and did the "asking close-ended questions" step. Apparently eHarmony works so that you can't actually browse all the profiles -- they match you up with potential people who show up in "My Matches." If they look interesting, you can progress to asking close-ended questions (multiple choice, which I did answer, because again, memeage!), then to seeing their entire profile, then to open-ended questions, then email, I suppose. Very structured! Weird.

So since everyone else's profile seemed quite bland, I decided to put all the potentially off-putting things first in my profile, half to ward off any more people deciding I'd be a good match for them based on some random multiple-choice questionnaire that I did while half asleep, half in case anyone who would really be interested in me would see and much geekery could ensue. So I have things like love of rats, knitting, fandom person, genre book reader, and etc. put down. I almost sort of feel that if one is going to do the online dating thing, shouldn't one put down all these potentially off-putting things in the very beginning? Because there are people who find that kind of stuff attractive, I'm sure, and if you don't put it in the forefront, then there may be unexpected surprises and the like. Plus, wouldn't it heighten the chance of meeting someone else who liked that so at least you could geek out together?

Er, or am I just completely wrong about the entire dating thing?

Anyhow, I feel like an undercover anthropologist! More reports later, if anything funny happens!

Leone, Laura - Fallen from Grace

I feel like I should have liked this book much more than I actually did. I mean, it stars a male prostitute, formerly a street kid (aka, potential for loads of angst), who is nice and not and a struggling writer. Both Sara and Ryan are nice too. I like nice. I mean, they feel like a real, honest-to-god couple, who decide that they're in love not because of the sexual tension oozing out of every pore, but because he likes her sense of humor and personality and she likes his kindness and etc. And I like that Leone doesn't romanticize what Ryan does or what happened to him when he was a teenager.

It seems like I should like this book in all ways -- I like that Ryan isn't all big and macho, I like that his status as a prostitute isn't used as some excuse to give Sara the best sex of her life, as is so often the case. And I like that Sara is nine years older than him and how that isn't a problem. And I like how there aren't words and words and words on how Sara is gorgeously beautiful.

And yet, for some reason, the book never really clicked together for me. I think part of it was because the romance didn't feel like the crux of the book; it almost felt like an aside to Ryan's journey away from prostitution and toward a better sort of life. It wasn't that it wasn't a good romance, it was that it was never in doubt for me, there was never any real conflict. And what conflict there was centered more around Ryan and his job than on Sara, so much so that it seemed to play more into the idea of this as Ryan's book. It very much is Ryan's book, and while a good deal of romances are on the hero's traumas and the like, usually the heroine is much more involved in the resolution. Hrm. I mean, I suppose Sara was quite involved in the resolution, it was just that ... I dunno. Lack of spark or something?

Links:
- pocketgarden's review