Last week was not the best, between my confidence-shattering worst job interview ever, typically dispiriting variant singles' night, and this cold I'm fighting off right now. The basic lesson of the job interview was, "With an attitude like that, no one will ever hire you," which, yeah, I sort of already know that and I don't need some condescending twenty-seven year old snot who's the vice president of his company solely because God happened to smile on him acting like he's doing me a huge favor by pointing that out. I went into the interview sort of forgetting to put on my obsequious face, and it took less than five minutes before I let my chronic cynicism slip out. So I share a different corporate philosophy than the jackass interviewing me: I believe products should be designed as elegantly and efficiently as possible, while he represents everything that's wrong with the world and thinks software should pander to the lowest common (paying) denominator. I don't want to get into a philosophical debate here, like I did in the interview, so let's just leave it that I'm right and he's a moron.

Kind of the same thing at singles' night, except this time it was some insouciant dude pointing out how I'm hugging the wall like its pet hamster just died and I'm thinking maybe I can turn this rodent mortality episode into some sympathy lovin'. The whole conceit of the evening was that they handed everyone a sheet full of stickers with words like "ambitious" or "flirt" or "sexy eyes" on them, and then you'd go around labelling the other singles and start what's bound to be awkward conversation: "What? You think I'm 'delicious?' You pervert!"

I knew beforehand that this singles' night wasn't going to be my smoothest moment, so I brought Lisa along to diffuse the miasma of discomfort in the bar and to hopefully keep me from chickening out before walking through the front door. It wasn't crowded when we got there, and you'd think that might make a better environment for me, but the downside is that it makes me an easier target for people like Insouciant Dude. He started chatting with us and it didn't take too long before he cast himself as the self-help guru who was gonna get us some numbers — which, of course, means that instead of putting my feeble little heart and soul into actually meeting people during the evening, I'm going to have to spend the night placating this guy so he'll stop bugging me to get out.