Last night, Em, her roommate, and I were entertained at the bar by a very drunk girl sitting at the table next to us. Through the smoky haze and blaring music, she leaned over to encourage us to get up and dance, and then asked to inspect our ring fingers to see if we were single like her. Once convinced, she started yelling "Singletons! Yay!" and pointed to the guy sitting with her shouting "He's single, and he's f-ing hot! He's f-ing hot!" Yowza.

We laughed, decided to avoid future eye contact, and turned out attention to the Seth from the OC look-alike sitting nearby. A short time later, Drunk Girl stood up on her booth swaying dangerously to the music, and then wiggled from table to table, trying to get others to dance with her. Her mortified friends attempted to rein her in and then gave up to helplessly watched her progress. Drunk Girl stopped to chat briefly with the group at the OC table and learned that one of the lovely ladies sitting there was celebrating her 25th birthday. She shouted with glee, "You're 25 and your ovaries are still perky! DO YOU HEAR ME, her ovaries are still young and PERKY!"

Oh my.

Over the past couple of days, I've spent time thinking about blog topics that will shift focus from my glaring accident-proness. I suppose I could talk about current events, politics, travel, work, books, movies, music, etc. All interesting to me, and I do discuss these things from time to time, but truthfully I like writing about every day stuff more. If only I had great dating adventures like Breakup Babe, I would happily share the juicy details with you. Sadly, if I chose to write about my romantic life over the past few years, my blog entries would be of the short, dull and infrequent variety.

Lots of Seattle's singles claim that the scene here is tough (Google the "Seattle Freeze" and you'll get a sense of the attitude that applies to dating too), and me and my single friends agree. The other day, Em IM'd me a link to an article in the Seattle PI with the comment "I think not." Sperling's BestPlaces rated Seattle the #1 place to hook-up. Huh? The article acknowledges that most Seattlites will scoff at this rating (you can see the evidence in the linked blog discussions) and makes good points about how the set up of the bars here can make it difficult to start conversations, even if our environment is great for it. Also, I learned that 20% of those surveyed define hooking up as groping. Hmmmm. Now all I need to do is grab some guy's ass at the club in order to claim that I "hooked up" with someone. Good to know.

While pretty much everything I read rang true, and it's easy to place the blame on outside factors, I hate the idea of playing victim to a supposed bad dating scene. I could make a case for how normal and lovely I am (really!), so it's such a mystery that dating is a challenge (yeah, dude!), but I feel like that's beside the point. I'm first to admit that I'm a dating novice after nearly 10 years in a long term relationship, which started when I was a teenager. Last winter, I haltingly tried online dating and found myself out with a guy who claimed to not find first meetings awkward, but then proceeded to act incredibly awkward during our entire walk through Gasworks Park. I've had promising prospects that very frustratingly didn't develop into anything, and I've had pseudo-dates with great guys I wish I could feel more for than friendship. And, there are stretches when I'm not meeting anyone, and the thought of going out to a bar/club/party is exhausting.

While chatting about this article, Em and I agreed that there are many ways we could be a lot more proactive in meeting men when we're out in the world. Actually making an effort to strike up conversations with people is a good start. You know, become part of the solution rather than the problem, blah, blah, blah.

From this realization, the idea of Flirt Week was born. Sometime in the next couple of months (week still to be determined), we plan to go out every night with the explicit goal of talking to new people. We're getting in to the idea of visiting a new neighborhood each day. I can see us strategizing, examining a city map and placing pins, maybe with notes on little flags, in neighborhoods of interest. Em even suggested that we make it a rule to get at least one guy's digits every night, but that reminded me of the character in "Singles" who went around bragging to his friends about all the meaningless phone numbers he had stored in his watch. We'll see. Flirt Week is in the very early stages of planning, so more details to come as the idea takes shape. If nothing else, it could be interesting...and probably lots of fun!