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"So on Sunday I had my first truly blind date. No recommendation from a friend, nothing to go on but a single headshot and a few emails. I was pretty anxious about it, to tell you the truth. But maybe blind dating is just the thing for an over-analytical guy like me, right? This is what I was telling myself as I stood on a corner in the Lower East Side yesterday afternoon, sweating like a pig in the late summer heat while waiting for my date to arrive.Unrelated Newsflash: Tata will be flying back to NYC from London so we can continue our tradition of Halloween silliness. Brace yourselves.Things didn&amp;amp;#8217;t click from the start. The restaurant I recommended was packed so we had to walk ten minutes to an alternate spot, with my bike and her overheating dog in tow. We covered the usual conversational bases&amp;amp;#8212;family, a rundown of the different neighborhoods we&amp;amp;#8217;ve lived in, favorite restaurants and bars&amp;amp;#8212;but we were never really communicating, you know? It&amp;amp;#8217;s not that she isn&amp;amp;#8217;t smart or funny, we just weren&amp;amp;#8217;t a good match. I&amp;amp;#8217;m slowly realizing there is no substitute for face-to-face interaction. Witty emails and flirtatious text messages are great, but until that first in-the-flesh meeting you&amp;amp;#8217;re nothing but glorified pen pals. I&amp;#x27;ve always relied on the written word to express my most heartfelt thoughts, whether it be to family, friends or cute girls. While I still believe in the power of a knockout love letter, there is no substitute for real conversation, even for an incurable mumbler like me. Which isn&amp;amp;#8217;t to say I&amp;amp;#8217;m done with online dating and written wooing&amp;amp;#8212;in fact, I just signed up for Nerve&amp;amp;#8212;but I&amp;amp;#8217;m going to save my best material for the real world. Do you have any tips on how to identify good matches online? "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/sex-love-life/blogs/single-ish/2008/09/ryans-first-proper-online-date>