We have conversations after the date, of course. Lots of them. There’s already another date planned but we fill up every spare moment until then with emails, IMs, phone calls. He sends so many texts that I’m thinking maybe I should have picked the unlimited text plan.

He’s making all kinds of future plans for us. He asks if I want to go on a trip to Mexico, and I say sure, I was in Cozumel once and I’ve always wanted to go back there.

He sends me links to Cabo, where he wants to go on vacation. I don’t really want to go to Cabo, but heck, if he’s buying, I might go. Certainly it’s not in my budget this year.

He’s got a pile of Groupons for things like a class on how to take a wine bottle, squish it, and turn it into a cheese board. And another one for an introductory canning class. There’s a beermaking class too but I don’t really like beer so we decide to skip that. One day, Groupon offers a deal on  a local trampoline place. He buys it for us to take our kids to.

We’ve got a lot of plans.

The date finally arrives. He has chosen a winery up in Woodinville that I have trouble finding, as it’s not so much a winery as it is a wine store with a restaurant attached, located in a strip mall.

At least I think that’s what it is. I’ll never know for sure, because it’s closed when I get there, and he’s standing in the parking lot.

He’s tall and awkward and looks older than I thought he would. He tries to come up with a Plan B, and he’s clearly very stressed about the whole thing. I am to follow him in my car, which I do.

For an hour.

During which time he calls me on his cell and we talk.

I’m not sure what we talked about, because the whole time I’m thinking, well, hopefully all this driving is leading to someplace special, because as it currently stands, I’m paying a babysitter so I can follow someone’s car through the suburbs and use up all my cellular minutes. And have I mentioned the price of gassing up my tank?

We get there. What is it with this guy and strip malls? We talked about Mario Batali and Alton Brown on the phone. But here we are: A Chinese restaurant in a strip mall.

The dim sum here is awesome, he says.

Except they don’t serve dim sum in the evening, the waiter informs him.

He’s crestfallen.

The food is actually pretty good although I suspect I am being generous – I want to like him and I want him to know about this amazing, secret hole in the wall place – it doesn’t look like much but it’s awesome! Only a real foodie would know it.

We talk and talk and talk until the waiter is running the vacuum under our table.

In the parking lot, he gives me homemade peppermint ice cream and homemade caramels. I taste the ice cream right there and pronounce it good – which it is, although if I were to make it I would have more chunks of candy cane in it. I don’t say this.

He rambles on about why his homemade ice cream is better than what you buy in the store (no fillers).

Like the phone calls and IMs and emails, this evening will not end.

I need to go home.

I say, are you going to keep giving me recipes or kiss me goodnight already?

Oh, he says.

He puts his hands on either side of my face and kisses me so intensely  that I completely forget where I am and who I’m kissing. I’ve got my arms around him and no idea how they got there.

Yeah, okay. I could do that again.

He texts me several times on the drive home.

A funny thing happened next. I had mentioned in my match.com profile that I have a book review blog, because I like to read. I haven’t done much with that blog lately – concentration seems to have fallen off my skills list – but the blog is still there and I still check the stats every so often.

It’s kind of fun to check the stats, and see the strange random search terms that drive traffic. My most regular readers seem to be my best friend, my father, and my two ex-husbands. The Departed didn’t read the blog when we were under the same roof, but suddenly, it seems to be his news source of choice*.

There are a lot of hits on my blog on this day, though. Something like fifty, or more. Someone has gone through and actually read every single post on it.

Somebody who works at Date #3’s company.

I’m impressed. He is too. We spend a lot of time discussing this. How he found it. How he used to have a blog too but it’s gone now.

You read a lot, he says.

I think, I read three times as many books as I review. Not every book needs my added commentary. What am I really going to say about The Help that hasn’t already been said?

I say, Yes, I like to read.

Reading can be a way of avoiding reality, he says.

I think, It can also be a way of avoiding reality tv. I don’t really like tv, which I notice he watches an awful lot of while he’s instant messaging and emailing.

I guess, I reply.

He sends me a link to his flickr stream. On it, there’s a picture of him in a suit. He’s cute. I like that picture, and tell him so.

He starts counting down until our date, via IM. I get regular updates, all day long.

*Probably because there’s absolutely no new information on it at the moment.