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For Fat Tuesday, drop off your favorite post from your blog at Carnivale of the Mundane!

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Who's got next?

By now, you should know, I lack game.

What can I say? Some guys have it. Some guys don't.

I don't.

Somehow, I get the wrong f-word with any female I'm interested in.

Friends.

Geez, even saying it gives me the shivers.

So, imagine how surprised I was when a girl I've been interested in (and, yes, to the next question, she's Jewish) broke up with her boyfriend. I gave her grieving space for some time, but then, like a lion stalking its prey, began slowly moving in.

One night, we were at a friend's party. She and I were standing together. She had her arm around my waist and I was combing her long locks with my fingers. She looked in my eyes, leaned in close and said:

"So, tell me about your friend, I___."

Are you fucking kidding me?

So I spent the next I-don't-know-how-long-but-it-felt-like-forever listening to her tell me how great my friend was, how interested she was in him, and how she was hoping he indicated some interest in her as well. All with one of the worst fake smiles I've ever mustered.

And during this conversation, she indicated my apparent flaws. My eye color (damnit, I like my blue-green eyes!) and the fact that I'm not bilingual. I don't understand the bilingual thing. I talk to people in Canada, England and Australia on occassion and I understand them perfectly.

Nevertheless, there I was. Discovering a whole new realm of hell.

The only way it could have been worse would have been if she had started singing, "It's a Small World After All."

So the search continues.

In the meantime, if you know any women who are cute, Jewish and local...

...or better yet, if you have Sasha Cohen's number...

Is this the right meeting?

My name is BA. And I'm an Olympaholic.

I'm not sure when it started. Probably 1984, when I lived in Los Angeles and went to a number of the Olympic events. It may have started earlier, when my father, who was a college gymnast and women's gymnastics coach would watch gymnastics with me, correcting each mistake made by the Olympic gymnasts and predicting, with uncanny accuracy, their final scores.

Ever since then, I've been addicted to the Olympics.

It doesn't matter what the event is (although, I must admit, I'm not partial to figure skating...although that Sasha Cohen, hot and Jewish, keeps me somewhat interested), I can watch it and immediately be intrigued.

However, recently, this issue took on a life of its own.

I discovered curling.

And, simply stated, I've found a new high.

For the uninitiated, curling is sort of like shuffleboard, where two teams of four compete sliding 45 pound stones down a sheet of ice. The scoring system is a somewhat complicated, but involves who can get the closest to the center of a target-type series of circles.

Ah, it must be like horseshoes you say... Oh, how wrong you are.

Curling is actually more akin to chess than to horseshoes. While there is certainly a level of skill required to place the rocks where you want them, the real gift is in calculating the strategy to accumulate the most rocks near the "button" by the completion of the "end," or when all the rocks have been thrown. If you get there before the "end" had ended (yes, that was intentional), it doesn't matter.

So, thank all that is holy for Tivo and Microsoft (yeah, I know, I didn't think I'd ever thank them for anything) for CNBC's Olympic curling coverage, because without that team, I don't know how I could catch all the sometimes-slow-but-always-fun-action. And nothing is more entertaining than watching financial reporters and pundits attempt to comment on curling...that's worth watching alone.

Unfortunately, overachieving Team USA's men's curling team was eliminated from gold or silver contention yesterday by our much beloved, but curling-reviled neighbors to the North. So, after the bronze medal game, I'm going to be forced to go cold turkey.

I wonder what curling withdrawal symptoms will be like...

For Valentine's day...

There are a number of women I care about, some of which have plans Valentine's evening, some of which don't, but all of which I'm thinking about. So, for each of my Valentines, and you know who you are, I offer you the following poem by an anonymous author.

I kept crossing out words until all that was left was you.

Have a happy Valentine's day.

Was this how Bill got into trouble?

When I was in law school, I had a single apartment. Unlike undergrad, where roommates often get in the way and where studying was less frequent, I felt a single apartment would offer me the solitude needed for marathon study sessions. So, because I was often the only person at home, friends knew they could call me late at night and, unless a female voice answered, it wouldn't be that big of a deal.

One evening, I called my friend V_____. V_____ had gone to undergrad with me, but left for graduate school in Canada (see Sass, I know someone else from Canada). V____ and I had always been fast friends and often engaged in the verbal jousting that tested both intellect and flirtation. V____ told me that she couldn't talk at the time, but promised she would call me back.

I ended up falling asleep and was awoken to the sound of my ringing phone.

"Heeelllooo," I said in that sleepy weariness between the world of the sandman and reality.

"Hi!," exclaimed the exceedingly cheery voice on the phone.

"Hi, how are you?," I asked V____, still drifting in and out of consciousness.

"I'm gooood! Were you asleep?" she asked, still exceedingly cheery.

"Uh huh," I responded, fighting to keep myself awake.

"Want me to come over and cuddle?"

I understand, at this point, I probably should have realized that this was not V_____. I mean, V____ lived in Canada and I was in Florida. But for some reason, I thought not only that this was V____, but that she was fucking with me. So, in proper fashion, I played along.

"Of course, I do! Hold on a second. Let me wake up."

Then I put the phone down and rubbed my eyes. I sat up to fight off the sleepiness and, finally, picked up the phone.

"Okay, I'm back."

"Okay, so you want me to come over and cuddle?," she repeated. There was a high pitched giggle in the background, that I realized had been there for most of this conversation.

Now, that I had awoken, my dreary voice was back to normal.

"Sure," I said maintaining my side of the charade, "do you know where to go?"

"Wait a second," there was a pause and in my mind's eye, I could see this girl figuring out this wasn't the voice of the person she had intended to call. She returned, serious as a heart attack, stating, "Is Tim there?"

"Uh...sorry, there's no Tim here."

"I'm sorry. Wrong number."

"No problem. Does this mean you're not coming over to cuddle?"

[click]

And while I considered the fun I could have had with call return (a/k/a *69), I went back to sleep with a smile, knowing I had just given two college girls one hell of a story to tell.