BBQ

*one of my most recent dates..

my gf les and i went to a fireside one night where afterwards we had refreshments and "mingled" so they say. a guy started talking to me for about 5 minutes or so and right off the bat, i knew i wasn't interested. but he was nice. since we were leaving, he asked for my number, although he had only known me for a total of 5 minutes and didn't ask me any details about my life. i gave it to him, but was not really looking forward to anything. eventually we planned a date that i was not looking forward to. so why did i go, you ask? because i knew i should, that's why. i was complaining a bit to les on a girls trip before my date, positive that the date would be full of awkward pauses. she gave me the awesome advice of just let it be silent if it turns to that. love it.

so i begrudgingly head off on my date with BBQ (let's call him that). i forgot to add that his plans were for us to go to the asian cultural center downtown then get some dinner. he ended up being late so in the car he says "let's do something adventerous...how does dinner first sound?" um...ok. i decide to let him choose the place as long as it's not seafood. i give him a couple options of things i like and he ignores all of them and wants to go to a really good bbq place he knows of on the east side. i'm pretty easygoing so that's fine by me. so we drive a good 45 minutes east of my house only to pull up to....Famous Dave's BBQ. um...what? as in the bbq CHAIN Famous Dave's? As in, there's one 15 minutes away from my house Famous Dave's? If he didn't know the area I would understand, but he had lived in the are for awhile. (he lived by me). we head inside, me laughing in my head the whole time. he eventually asked me if i had eaten there before and i assured him i had, and actually there's one right by my house and p.s. this is a chain restaurant. i'm definently not against chain restaurants, cause that's pretty much all i eat, but this guy was killing me that he didn't know. anyway, food was pretty good, conversation was ok. and yes, there were awkward pauses and yes, i let them happen. i stared at my free yummy meal until he decided to talk again. i would not be a victim of filling the silence again! after that, we headed to tempe marketplace cause i had never been and he assured me it was really "cool." this only lead me to find it was full of your run of the mill target, barnes & noble, joanns, etc., etc. nothing special. we walked around there for a total of 15 minutes, perused barnes and noble for a total of 5 minutes and left. so basically we drove almost an hour for me to go to Famous Dave's and Barnes & Noble. awesome.

the whole night, we talked about nothing really. he didn't ask too much about me. he never asked my age, he never asked my last name. i brought up the fact that i had kids and he never once asked about them. that's what sealed the deal for me. he didn't ask their names, age or anything. i honestly felt like he did not care at all. i remember conversation about cats and his dream of being a concert pianist. that's about it. 

i still see bbq every now and then at firesides or singles activities. we periodically say hi, but i mostly try and ignore him. (rude, i know). and everytime i see famous dave's i snicker to myself.