Two days before I’m supposed to meet Mr. Unusual, and I have still not heard from him with a specific time and place. I had mentioned a general area in Seattle that I would be in, along with a general time that I would be there, as The Child was taking her middle school entrance exams.

I’m okay, to a point, with last-minute plans, but in this case, I’m a bit annoyed, because it’s rare that I have such a large chunk of free time, and on the Seattle side of the bridge – and if I don’t have plans with him, I’d just as soon have plans with someone else. Specifically, a long-time friend is in town, visiting her mom, another long-time friend.

And I’m waiting like a high-school girl for someone who pencils things in to decide whether or not I’m ink-worthy.

I don’t think so.

I send an email.

“Hi, I have you down on my calendar for Saturday but no specific time or place. Please confirm details, I am just now coordinating my day, thanks.”

That sounds like something a Vice President would say. I am, actually, a Vice President but don’t feel like one at just this moment. More like someone masquerading as one: It’s what I want to be when I grow up.

He replies within fifteen minutes.

“Yep, I meant to send you a note last night and ended up dealing with a laptop disaster.

 I think you said you are dropping your daughter off at (school).”

” is across the street from the police station, sadly there isn’t an interesting story about why I know that’s where the police station is).  The bagels are very good there, though bagel shops at 9AM on a Saturday can be zoo like.

I look forward to meeting you.  Sorry for not being more chit-chatty, work has been zany.  I hate all of the accounting work involved with closing the books on a year.  The good news it was a great year.”

There are two weeks in between when Mr. Unusual and I make our penciled-in plans and the actual day of the plans. I know a lot about him, and after Match#4 doesn’t quite work out, I’m looking forward to chatting with him.

One evening, as I’m sitting on the sofa, a message pops up in my email: Mic Management has sent me a connection request on linkedin, the professional networking site. At first, I can’t quite place the name, and then I can’t quite place the professional connection, and then I read the message.

” It looks like you’re a pretty good sleuth. I look forward to meeting you.”

I stare at my iPad and think for a minute and then I realize: I had been to his linkedin profile, which popped up on the list of google hits when I searched his name. I go to my own linkedin profile, and discover something I had never known before: There’s a list of people who have looked at your profile, along with their profile pictures and a link to their own resumes.

His linkedin picture is the same as his match.com picture.

So is mine.

I panic briefly and then realize, well, this isn’t so bad. He knows I graduated cum laude and went to some top schools. He knows I’ve worked at some top investment banks and some top people there have said some first-rate things about me in a public forum.

I feel like a goof, but I’m not really looking too bad here. And it would be hard for him to be offended or mad about this because his match.com profile opened with the statement, “I am probably one of the most curious people you will ever meet.”

Really, we have an awful lot in common.

And, as much as you can read tone into an email, his tone seems more amused than annoyed.

I accept his “connection request” so that I can reply but then discover I can just reply to his email directly – it’s provided me with his actual email in the “reply to” field. So I respond:

“I can’t decide if I’m amused or embarrassed but since your email made me laugh, I’ll go with amused.”

I spend the rest of the evening, and much of the next day, bringing my linkedin profile up-to-date, and finding out what other handy features they’ve added since the last time I visited.

So, I know a few things about Mr. Unusual, apart from the fact that he’s a man who makes plans he has no intention of following through on. First, he lives in Seattle. Second, he has an unusually spelled first name.

One of my hobbies is genealogy, and here’s a fun little fact: people with names like Zipporah are a hell of a lot easier to find than people with names like Mary.

I go to Facebook. I enter his first name in quotes to restrict results to the unusual spelling of “Mic.” I restrict the location to Seattle.

Oh, look, a 1930’s Chesterfield ad picture.

Same guy. It took me about thirty seconds to find him.

But he’s fairly smart, and he’s mostly got his Facebook page locked down, except for a few photos. I leaf through them. He doesn’t appear to be married. He has a young son, which he had mentioned in his match profile – a cute little boy.

And then there’s a picture of him being interviewed on Fox News. There’s a Viagra logo on the screen, which he makes a joke about and some of his five hundred Facebook friends make further jokes about.

Married was one reason to be secretive, but that doesn’t seem to be the issue here. This is someone who maybe has a bit more to protect – maybe some justification for not giving out too much information?

Since I now have his full name, I just go ahead and google it, and much to my surprise, I get dozens of hits: A website, an Amazon author page, and some interviews on YouTube, among other things.

It turns out that Mr Unusual is a business consultant with a bunch of patents and a published book on his list of accomplishments.

I watch a couple of the videos. He’s well-spoken, well-dressed, and confident – all the things The Departed was not, but more to the point, the kind of person I always pictured myself with, but never seem to end up with. I guess my first husband was like that, on the surface, and it’s true, we looked lovely together in pictures. You can’t see narcissistic personality disorder in pictures.

I like this guy. I email a link to my father, and he likes the guy too. Confident, he says. Intelligent, I say. I’m not nervous, either, because I think: I can hold my own with this guy. I’m a Vice President at an investment bank. I read financial press and investment reports and deal with Harvard MBA’s all day long. And we have similar interests – fine dining and travel.

This, I think, is a good match.