"Dating in any Large City is Difficult"

Tax Day.  The combination of Armageddon and finish line at any finance firm.  We here don't get to have the same celebration as accountants .... nah, we're only in the middle of producing quarter-end reports and communiques.

But at least the requests for Realized Gain/Loss and fee statements cease.  Clients go on school break vacation.  And the frantic accountants take their yearly 9-month break from frantic phone calls.

(And McCormick & Schmicks offers $10.40 dinner specials and endless happy hour tonight. And there is one of those just down the street from here.  Score.)

That said, it's my lunch hour but there are still 3.5 hours left in Tax Day in this office.  Blogging is not the priority.

So I take this time instead to wimp out and share something from yesterday's Salon.com Broadsheet blog (and the incomparable Mary Elizabeth Williams) that is so awesome, as usual, that I want to put the entire piece in pull quotes and post it here. Since I can't, here's the link, and here are the vitals which, I believe, speak for their inclusion in this space

Title:  "The Tyranny of Dating Choice"

Sub-title: "We have more romantic options than ever -- is it making us miserable?"

Lede:  "The romantically pathetic urbanite, the one with a full dance card but an empty love life, is as familiar as Seinfeld or Carrie Bradshaw."

Summary Quote:  "When faced with choices, humans tend to give the thumbs down to the first third of their options before making a decision." 

(You're supposed to ponder what this means to someone who dates in a large city and has the possibility to meet a couple hundred-thousand potential dates in any given year. Yeah. And then do the math.  I showed this quote yesterday to the Young Scientist who replied, "Have you hit your 30%? :-))

Best Quote : "First, let's get rid of the idea that playing the field is a miserable, self-defeating experience. For some, dating a thousand people before landing on that mythic one sounds nightmarish. For others, it's pretty freaking awesome."

Second Best Quote:  "It's easier to keep up the appearance, even to oneself, of being on a romantic quest for true love than admitting, yeah, actually, I might prefer what I already have. Being in a real relationship with a fellow flawed individual isn't all picnics and reliable sex; it's also challenging and fraught with annoyance. It's not for everybody."

Quote My Parents Will Probably Call Me On:  "Maybe, however, it's time ... we freed ourselves from the notion that dating has to be some conveyer belt of hopeless suck, something that people who get around more are doing wrong."

Discuss!