Friday, October 23, 2009

Time Well Spent

Like many people, my inbox gets cluttered with plenty of bad jokes, most of which I delete soon after they arrive. This one, though, a list of practice exercises women can do to prepare for a mammogram, always brings me a chuckle:

Exercise #1: Freeze two metal bookends overnight. Strip to the waist. Invite a stranger into the room. Press the bookends against one of your breasts. Smash the bookends together as hard as you can. Repeat with the other breast. Set an appointment with the stranger to meet next year and do it again.

Exercise #2 Open your refrigerator door and insert one breast between the door and the main box. Have one of your strongest friends slam the door shut as hard as possible and lean on the door for good measure. Hold that position for five seconds. Do this again in case the last time wasn't effective enough. Then repeat with the other breast.

Exercise #3 Visit your garage at 3 a.m. when the temperature of the concrete floor is just perfect. Take off all your warm clothes and lay comfortably on the floor with one breast wedged under the rear tire of the car. Ask a friend to slowly back the car up until the breast is sufficiently flattened and chilled. Turn over and repeat for the other breast.

This morning, I went for the real thing and, as usual, it was no big deal. My appointment at the radiology center was for 7:30 a.m. and by 8 a.m., I was finished and headed to the office. Sure, it’s uncomfortable for a few seconds, while you get squished between those cold metal plates, but when you consider the life-saving potential of those plates and the images they capture, it’s really time well spent.

Sunday, October 4, 2009

A Tale of Two Jeffs: Lucky or Schmucky?

In response to my Rosh Hashana personal ad, which you can read here, I received a number of responses including from Guy #1, who initially wrote to me on September 21. For a few days we had a nice back-and-forth on email, including an exchange of photos. Then nothing until this email on October 1:

Hi Jane.

I hope you enjoyed the holidays. Sorry for the delay in my reply. I ran into someone from my past during the week and we are going to see what might develop, again. I expect being a NYer that you will understand. Thank you.

Best wishes,
Jeff
Based on my experience, such a note is fairly par for the course in the online dating world and I probably wouldn’t have given it much thought (although I did wonder what being a New Yorker had to do with my level of understanding) except that it was déjà vu all over again.

Back in June, in response to a different personal ad, I had an equally nice exchange with Guy #2. It started on June 25, included a photo swap and then, like with Guy #1, ended thusly on July 1:

Hi Jane,

I thought I had mentioned I was in real estate. Seven days a week is not uncommon! I ran into a girl I was seeing a few months ago and we decided to give it another try.... So at this point in time, I am off the market! There is only enough of me to go around for one at a time.

Take care.
Jeffrey

So, do you think these two Jeffs really got lucky and reconnected with old flames or were they just trying to be polite in their own shmucky sort of way?

You decide.