I have to admit this idea is not originally mine-- I first saw it joked about in the television series How I Met Your Mother <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Duel_(How_I_Met_Your_Mother_episode)>. The idea is that on first dates, you often know it's not going to work out within the first couple minutes. Sitting through an entire date knowing this can be no fun, not to mention a waste of time ...

I'm a big fan of alcohol. It's ubiquitous in our single culture, and tends to lead to a pretty good time. Beer's a whole bunch of posts, but I'll leave them for another time. Right now I want to share with you some of the finer points of making mixed drinks. First off, when most any 22-year-old speaks of a mixed drink, they're probably not speaking of Old Fashioneds or Dry Martinis. "Mixed ...

The quality blog Get Rich Slowly had a post about a month ago regarding the time in your life right after graduation. As it matches my demographic well and has some good information, I thought I'd pass it along

File this one under finances-- might not be too interesting to some of you, but I thought I'd share. I've just been considering buying a new toy. It's $160, and there's no way I could say it's a necessity. My thinking got to be, what's this money worth to me? What would I be doing with it if not spending it? Obviously, there are tradeoffs-- it could be a nice dinner or a couple nights out ...

RSS readers-- if you'd like an invite to Twine, email me at tom.d.hamilton@gmail.com. --- Hey all, Just ran into a few snags with the feedburner exposure. I picked up a handful of subscribers outside Twine, who of course couldn't click through to the password-protected pages. The above message (which should appear in the rss feed) is part of the solution, though a couple people who'd contacted ...

Just a note-- this twine-blog is now available in your favorite rss reader, just add the url http://feeds.feedburner.com/hbl3. It can even be shared with your non-twining friends! tom

At any given time, I'm usually dating 3 or 4 different women. Sometimes the number will climb due to luck or a lot of free time, and when I get really busy the number drops, but in general I'm seeing a lot of people. All of this started when I came to a simple realization-- I can be pretty high maintenance. When just starting off seeing someone, I tend to want to talk to or see them almost ...

Just wanted to add a quick notes about gimmicks men use. Over the weekend, I saw a guy with a toy low rider that he'd put down on a table and have bounce. This is obviously an extreme example, but people seem to think they need some hook to go out and meet people. There are lots of different things people try to use as a gimmick-- small things like a witty T-shirt or unconventional style ...

In my last post, I tried to cover the general mindset and attitude of meeting new people. I'll do my best here to cover the places I've had the most success meeting women. Reflexivity would suggest that these are also places to meet men, but the only proof I have is that these would be places to meet me. First off are the places you commonly go. You probably shop for groceries, occasionally ...

The single most common question I get from my friends is, "How do I meet new people?" Of course the answer depends on a lot of things-- what type of people you're trying to meet, what your lifestyle is like, etc. On average, I meet and date one new person a week. With this, I probably come across a person I'm interested in having an established, romantic relationship with about once a month. ...

I'm going to take a break from the relationship posts to go in a different direction. This blog's to be about more that just that one aspect of life. In your early 20s, there are several things that may be going on in your life financially. You may have some college debt and after going through a period of your life with little income and lots of means for recreation, you may have amassed some ...

There is one single point that most of this blog will revolve around. It's very simple, and very important. It can probably be distilled down into the phrase Be Honest, but it's a little more precise than that: I've seen over and over men and women portraying something false in order to establish or progress a relationship. It can take many forms and sizes, but typically it's the man showing ...

Had a first date with a woman I'd met in a parking lot. I'll go more into depth about dealing with first dates and where I tend to meet people later. For now, I'd like to talk about how it ended. It was a fine date. Nothing great. In retrospect, she did a couple things that bothered me-- showing up late, focusing way too much on herself... but she was plenty nice enough to warrant a second ...

I went out tonight. Hit some bars I like with a friend, and generally was looking to meet people. Thursday night might not be the best time for this, but it's certainly not the worst. Looking around, I got to thinking: --- I'm not sure where I first heard it-- it may have been Loveline <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loveline> or some other late night radio show... but somehow I got the idea ...

Welcome! This is a blog I've been meaning to start for a few months now. Most of my blogging has been pretty random personal stuff, with followings only by my friends. It's hard to establish a wide following when your posts bounce around all your interests and come sporadically. It's my intent to get two new full-sized posts a week with this thing, all falling in line with the theme. If I can ...