Sunday, February 17, 2008

I was DHV'd today.

At church this morning, talking to a girl sitting in front of me:

Me: "That's a nice necklace, are those rubies?"
Her: "Well... not really."
Me: "Oh, well it's still really nice."
Her: "I did make it though. I make these all the time, I made this bracelet too. It's just something I do in my free time."


I guess it worked right, since it made her qualify? I just wish I had something to say back to that, kinda surprised me / knocked me back a few seconds. I guess it'll come with more practice.

Saturday, February 9, 2008

Two weird failures today.

I shot a match today, did pretty well. I shoot USPSA/IPSC by the way, check it out at www.uspsa.org if you'd like. Anywho, there were a few ladies there, and by ladies I mean 40 - 60, HB2-3 most of them. There was one, HB5ish maybe, she was probably a 7 or an 8 about 20 years ago, about 40 probably now. Anyway she was squadded with me, and long story short was complimenting me and making reasons to talk to me. She's married though right, so I feel like I'm kinda safe, so I thought to myself, "hey great time to practice game."

So later she doesn't understand my hand gestures, and I say "what the crap? you don't know what means? game over. we'll never last." And she shoved me. I was kinda surprised, with her husband there, thought this was pretty flirtatious but hey maybe she feels safe because of that and knows it can't go anywhere. I kept practicing my negs though, at another point I told her, "you know I wouldn't have to repeat myself if you would just listen. Talk less and listen more!" Then at diner (we all went to cracker barrel after the match) her husband is sitting next to her, and she says "Man, I want *THAT* for desert" and she points at the little advertisement sitting in between her and I. I say "woah woah, I'm not on the menu!" before realizing that, hey dummy, her husband is right there. So I glance over and luckily her husband realizes I'm just screwing around and not really trying to hit on his wife. But I see this as good, as my game is becoming pretty natural and fluid.

On the way out, I'm the first guy in line to pay our bills, and it's a cute girl, maybe 5 or 6, doing the cashier thing. I've noticed before that at cracker barrel they have little stars on their aprons, and this one has only 1 star. So I ask her about the star, she says they give them based on time there and you have to pass tests. She has a croatian accent, and I speak with her for a second as the credit card goes through and ALMOST press on, but chicken out and move off. I should have kept pressing, my anxiety was that my new friends would think I was weird hitting on her like that. But afterwards I realized I would have probably only gotten good rep from it, I know I would have only respected a guy who did that. If he got shot down I'd think he had balls for at least trying, and if he got the # then well that goes with out saying. At least I now have enough data to start creating a routine especially for cracker barrel girls. Give me a few weeks, and stay posted, I'll let you know when I field test it.

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Day One/Two/Three

I'm following the Rules of the Game, so I'm going to be posting my progress on here. I had been posting them on myspace, but I'm moving them here to save the "Hey what's the deal with this blog that I can't see?" message from every freakin' girl on my buddy list. So here they are.

Day One

Objective: Small talk with 5 strangers.

Mission:
1) Waitress at lunch.
2) Cashier at lunch.
3) Cayla May (stranger-ish... I never talk to her so I'm counting her).
4) Door girl at Books-a-Million
5) Girl at Wingstop.
6) Girl at my apartment complex office.

Results:
Eh. Nothing really, other than I should be more outgoing like this all the time. Still difficult to cold-start a converstation unless there's already some form of interaction there, such as a store casheir, or holding the door for someone. Need to practice on that more.


Day Two

Finally got it done.

Objective: Small talk 5 strangers, remember eye color.

Mission:
Accountant 1: Brown
Accountant 2: Blue
Guy at Bodacious: Brown
Guy in apartment complex: Brown
Lady at Brookshires: Brown

Results:
I think it forced me to look into the persons' eyes for just a split second longer than I typically do. I'm good with eye contact I think, but I might try to hold it longer than before now.

Day Three

Objective:
Call strangers and ask them to recommend a movie until you have three recommendations.

Mission:
Movie 1: The Eye.
Movie 2: Forrest Gump. (with tons of sarcasm in voice)
Movie 3: Juno.

Results:
Man... much harder than I originally thought it would be. Initially just tried random numbers, this didn't work as most of them were disconnected or no one ever answered. I pulled out the phone book, called persons around my area, most turned out to sound really old so I just said "wrong number" (my assumption is that old people are already confused enough, don't need some punk-ass kid asking them dumb questions). Then after I got a hold of the first guy, I stuttered getting it out. Felt very awkward. I have no idea why but it did... you'd think that knowing you'll never actually meet or even see this person would help but for some strange reason it didn't. Getting a hard time by the second guy helped for some reason, I guess it made me realize that it was probably the worst that could happen. Learning to talk to random strangers with a desired goal (i.e. #/k/f closing) will be fun it seems.