“Shit or get off the pot” is one of my mother’s favorite sayings.  She usually uses it in reference to my father when he won’t make a decision about something, which is often.

According to Wikipedia it’s a vulgar derivation on the expression “fish or cut bait.”  I prefer the more colloquial version of the phrase – it’s a lot more illustrative of the point than any fishing allusion.

So this is what’s been on my mind for the past two dates that I’ve had with Harry…

Okay, so I know that everyone and their brother has something to say about the whole “Facebook Phenomenon.”  When Mark Zuckerberg was doing his thing at Harvard, my boss was a grad student there and was one of the first people to have an account.

I came late to the party – I’ve only had an account for about a year.  The reason I started the account was to keep in touch with one of former student who was traveling around the country.  It was fun to see her photos and hear about the daily antics of her life, things that would not make it in to an occasional email.

fter opening the account, Facebook kindly pointed me in the direction of all my email correspondents who were also on the system.  So I existed in a small circle of Facebook “friends.”  Then Facebook was good enough to start connecting my with high school classmates.

This is when it started getting weird.

I always think of the third and fourth dates as the “decision point” in a new relationship.  Either you’re ready to move forward and get to know the person some more, or your ready to drop it and pursue other people.

It can be a difficult time, because you don’t know each other that well or where each of you stands in the other person’s thoughts …

So first things first … never judge a man by his graying temples.  Harry is not 45 as I guessed, he just turned 40.  Forty still seems “old” to me, but isn’t it a human instinct to think of ourselves as younger than we actually are?

Anyway …

As mentioned in the previous posting, I met Harry at a dinner party two weeks ago.  He emailed me the next day, having searched for me online knowing only my first name and place of work.  We went to dinner last Tuesday night.   My first date in two years – seriously.  We started with drinks and then had dinner – where we sat in a cozy corner booth.  A couple of times he issued a gentle, momentary touch on my arm to make a point in our discussion.