Connor: Half the time I don’t really want the automatic closing of parentheses (or brackets), though. Maybe I’m just a control freak, but I prefer closing them by hand. :) (But I do see where they could come in handy.)

Your post sounded almost like I could have written it. :) (And here’s my moment of shallowness: I don’t really find blondes all that attractive. From a purely objective point of view, yes, many of them are quite pretty, but there’s something about brunettes that’s nigh well electrifying for me. But rather than think of myself as being overly picky, I try to look at it as a built-in homing device helping me find the right girl.)

Katherine: :)

Jacqueline: Glad to hear it. :)

All y’all: as an update, for the first few days I had decided to go on two dates a week (make up for lost time, I suppose), but yesterday I realized that that’s probably overkill. Not only would I run out of girls twice as fast, but I’d also run a high chance of getting burned out and stopping altogether. One a week should be enough. This week’ll be my third (and I already have a date), so as long as I can keep up my momentum, I should be fine.

Now, I don’t have any pending marriage announcement to make, but I can say that my perspective is slowly changing. The dry wadi is starting to flow again — just a trickle, mind you, but we’ll see if it doesn’t turn into a full-fledged river before long.

Thanks for that perspective, Ben. Boy, did I need to hear that. *sigh*

As long as you’re using a spiffy text editor that automatically closes each one you open, we’re good…

Your post reminds me of one I wrote over two years ago about being in the same quagmire. You think I’d be out of said quagmire by now… :)

Being wrong can be quite enlightening. And humbling.