Single in the Shire

A short while back, I was blogging about how men are getting stupider and stupider. It’s official. It took a month but I found the third example.

The same charmer from the haunted house blog was to join me at the Maryland Renaissance Festival today. He confirmed these plans on Friday and again yesterday. The National Book Festival was this weekend and I kind of wanted to go to the second day but I was willing to go to RenFest for him.

When I go I always get there close to when it opens. It’s common knowledge about Cherry. I texted my date jokingly about if the famous procrastinator was going to make it. He texted me back 45 minutes later that it didn’t look good. 

20 minutes later I get a phone call. He’s not going to make it. The earliest he could be there was noon and the latest he could stay was 4:30 and it just didn’t seem worth it to be there for four hours. Glad to know seeing me at all this week just wasn’t worth it. Very informative about where I stand.

I told him that he was the reason I came, I had other things I could have been and wanted to be doing, and I just lost a day off my pass. He hemmed and hawed and didn’t really apologize so I said, “Well, I guess there’s nothing left to say” and hung up on him.

I knew he wasn’t an early person, didn’t live nearby, and had an evening commitment. I figured he wasn’t going to be there for more than four or five hours. I guess I was the only one with any foresight because he had ample time to cancel and didn't. I love the RenFest but it’s suddenly less desirable when you’re shanghaied into being there.

It was still one of my favorite places to be and I know several people who are there almost every weekend so I tried to make the best of it. In doing so, I got to catch a band that was on their final day, get an adorable new cape, had a Rennie* a photographer tell me how pretty I am (which my date has never done), and catch up with several Rennie friends. I also got reminded why I love RenFest people so much.

I was stopped by a woman in garb who was interviewing people about their high points and low points of the day. I told her that it was early so the high point was probably yet to come and the low point was when my date bailed. She said he wasn’t worthy and I should go and find another date there. 

At one point I was sitting by myself people watching before finding my friends and one of the wandering performers came by and gave me a little show of contact juggling (links below). I got my own private performance. It was neat. I’m a dork. 

Later I was venting to my BFF on the phone while I was waiting for my friends to find me and two gentlemen heard me say, “If he does this to me again, I’m done. I don’t need this crap.” One guy said, “Stay strong!” My voice carries so this happens more than you’d think. I ended up explaining exactly what happened. One guy said he’d have been here for four hours if he’d had a date. The other guy said he’d have been there for 20 minutes. I’m young enough to be his daughter so no phone numbers were exchanged.

As for my date? It's 9 PM and I have not heard a peep. One friend wants me to give him another chance because he seems like such a nice guy. Another thinks he needs to make it up to me. I lost track of the people who thought he behaved like a jerk, asshole, and/or douche bag after five. 

I’m not beyond giving him a second chance but I’m not eager to do it given his reason for bailing. We'll see what he does over the next few days. I doubt he spent much of today thinking about me or what he did. 

As for making it up to me, I’m not an idiot. Would it be nice if he made it up to me? Of course. Have I dated enough to know better than to expect such behavior? Absolutely. I don't know if and when I'll see him again but any plans I may make won't be any I can't afford to break.

UPDATE: I did hear from him three days later. He didn't realize he was trouble! My friend texted him saying "You either need to call me or call her and apologize. Otherwise, it was nice to have met you." Less than 10 minutes later I had a text with an apology and a promise to call. He called, we talked, and he knows why it was a big screw up. We fine but not great.

*Rennie = A hardcore Renaissance Festival person. They attend almost every available weekend and are always in garb.

Visual reference on contact juggling:

Single Ball

Advanced

Current Music: Undo It by Carrie Underwood

Field of Screaming, Shaking, and Hyperventilating

Target has a candy and decoration section. Seasonal costume stores are springing up. One of my dogs as a costume. Halloween season of scare is upon us.

One of the big attractions on Halloween is haunted houses. Field of Screams in Pennsylvania has one of the earliest openers which my current paramour wanted to attend. My date has been acting in haunted houses for years in his hometown and is doing it again this year. As a veteran, he doesn’t see this as a scary enclosed space; he’s taking notes and critiquing it in his head.

I don’t watch horror movies because of my hyper-active imagination. I’m somewhat high strung and can startle fairly easily. I don’t enjoy being scared. My gentleman caller knew I was apprehensive but I don’t think he fully appreciated what that meant until after we got there.

The haunted hayride was broken so we went to the insane asylum themed house. We were part of a larger group and I quickly learned that the people that get picked on the most are the first, last, and most reactive. I quickly stuck my fearless date on the end and stayed close to the couple in front of us.

The girl was losing it, hard. If I reacted by jumping and making a small noise, she jumped higher and shrieked. Once I reacted, I got left alone. I liked her. The air flow wasn’t great so it was warm and stuffy but it was pretty bearable.

I was doing fine until we got to the end of the creep clown room. You know the stuff they make bouncy castles out of? Imagine two walls stuck together and you have to push your way through. I was thisclose to grabbing one of the actors in a clown mask and saying “Get me the fuck out of here,” family friendly language be damned.

My date held my hand and talked me through the castle of claustrophobia and I still came close to hyperventilating. After that my nerves were shot and we were maybe halfway done. I hadn’t lost the girl who screamed so I was doing OK until my date stopped to look at something and called me back. We hesitated long enough that we lost the other couple. Since I was the only one of the two of us who reacted to anything, I was getting picked on.

After that each time I saw an exit, I stopped and thought about it. I was trying really hard not to wimp out. We finally got to a point where I could feel fresh air behind the door. It’s a black and white checked room, I manage to dodge the clown with the chainless chainsaw but found my path blocked by another guy with a chainsaw.

I had no fight left in me and I wasn’t supposed to touch the actors (but plenty of them touched me which was totally unfair). One of the guys actually prodded my leg with the chainsaw. Not funny. Not cool. If I’d had more energy or fight, I’d have probably kicked him in the chest and he’d have deserved it for cornering people and giving them no way out.

I left sweating, shaking, and not too far away from hyperventilating and/or crying. I made my date sit there and hold me until I calmed down enough for him to do the second house by himself. Then I we got a funnel cake because I earned it dammit.

Our deal was that I’d do a haunted house for him and he’d go to a hockey game for me. With the current NHL lockout, I was traumatized for nothing. I wonder if I can rope into a road trip to a Hershey Bears game…

Current Music: The Greatest Show Unearthed by Creature Feature

Baltimore Comic Con 2012

I really enjoy this con. It’s not like Otakon, Shore Leave, or Dragon Con where it goes on all day and into the night. It ended at seven but I got to meet the creator of Holiday Wars, a web comic that he was able to get published. It turns out he’s semi-local so he was really fun to chat with.

The Kill Shakespeare guys were back! I got to tell one of the creators that I won a nerd-off because we recited Shakespeare to each other at last year’s con. He was very proud to have been a part of that.

I discovered a lot of new writers and creators including Love and Capes about a superhero and his girlfriend who discovers his identity, the Perhapanauts, a team of famous monsters (Big Foot, a Chupacabara) and some meta-humans who go after destructive monsters, Gray Rights and Thrifty Shades of Gray, collections of one panel comics about aliens, FUBAR, a zombie WWII anthology and The Escape Goat, a goat magician with a 2,000 year old assistant.

I also got to meet Tom King the writer of A Once Crowded Sky, a superhero novel. He was selling hardback copies of his book for $15 and signing them. I was so stoked because I’d been waiting to get his book. I’m so glad I did. When I went past his table later, he was totally sold out.

There were also a lot of crazy costumes. Bane (of Batman fame) as a pimp, a RennFest style pirate, Ramona and Gideon (from Scott Pilgrim), Abe Lincoln & John Wilkes Booth, and a bath salt zombie (my date). I was Red Riding Hood from the Fables series. I might enhance the costume next year by wearing cut-offs, a baseball tee, and high tops since Red Riding Hood partakes in baseball later in the series.

It’s one of the smaller cons but it’s still fairly young as far as cons go and they’ve gotten Stan Lee for the last couple of years. Lee’s very picky about what cons he goes to and he has chosen to come to our con multiple times so I think our con has a bright future.

Current Jams: Vampire Club (Twilight Version) - Voltaire

Relationship Status: Awkward Turtle

I was at Baltimore Comic Con yesterday. I was with several of my friends including someone I’d been dating for the past month or so. My gentleman caller and I were off on our own talking to the people from Blind Ferret Entertainment he knew from other cons.

The guys were familiar with my gentleman caller and they noticed the familiarity and flirting between him and I.  One of the Blind Ferret guys asked “So what’s the relationship status between you two?” 

We became the epitome of deer in headlights. Neither one of us wanted to say the wrong thing so we didn’t say anything for about 5 seconds. I finally broke the silence with the ‘awkward turtle’ hand gesture.

We all laughed. After we resumed wandering around the con again, I said “Since this conversation has been forced upon us, what do you think we are?” We agreed that we’re dating and will revisit this at a later date. We had to agree on something since we both find this story so funny that it deserved to be retold.

We’ve only known each other about a month which I think is too early to define the relationship. We enjoy each other’s company, have similar interests, and plan on enjoying those similar interests over the next couple of weeks. We'll see if it continues to go somewhere over the coming weeks.

Current Music: How To Be a Heartbreaker by Marina and the Diamonds