I've decided I'm going to start interviewing potential suitors through a committee. I hope to recruit the following individuals to aid me in the difficult, boring, and thankless screening process. I hope that the interviews will screen out the dim, self-absorbed, already engaged, and generally uninteresting men I seem to keep wasting my time with these days.

Mother Prosen: Through Mother Prosen, the gentleman in question will get a decent sampling of Baker/Fitzpatrick female insanity. He'll be forced to confront anything from ADD to odd questions about bowel movements and hobbies. This will be a pretty good snapshot of what my own neuroses will turn into thirty or so years down the road.

Michelle: Best judge of physical and emotional compatibility. Best friend of nearly ten years. Standing up to her indecent questions and laughing at her self-deprecating stories is a must.

Pumpkin: Nerd Alert! Will be able to determine if the suitor is a suitable nerd fit by asking him to finish the follow exchange:

"Fast ship? You've never heard of the Millennium Falcon?"

"Should I have?"
(Answer here)

Wilderness Survivalist (TBD): I'm not joking. I don't date men who can't start a fire, split wood, portage a canoe, fish, or otherwise enjoy the outdoors.

GRE Test Administrator: Well, not quite. But I'm a big, intellectual dork at heart, and a certain amount of compatibility there is necessary to my personal happiness in a relationship.

Applications will include a questionnaire and short essay. If selected for the first round of interviews, the subject will be asked to reserve at least a six hour period for questions from the panel and psychological testing. Interested parties should contact the KMJ Companion Project. Box 129, Minneapolis, MN 55406.


But all jocularity aside, I had a conversation last week with one of my roommates. I confided that when it comes to the opposite sex, I have ridiculously high expectations. She laughed and commented "Hon, those expectations aren't only for men you're dating." Touche.


That said, I've decided to narrow down my long list of requirements for gentlemen callers down to two main points.

1. Must be a baseball fan. At this point, I'll even date a Twins fan. (Although after Friday and Saturday I've had a little bit of the air taken out of my sails. Yost is an idiot and needs to get it together. Hardy is out with a strained rotator cuff. I'm so bummed I could cry. But I digress. Forgive me for the links, but I'm not sure how many people are Brewers fans) Baseball is my favorite sport, and a must in my line-up of summertime activities. It doesn't get much better than sitting in the backyard, listening to Ueck announce a game. If I can't share my love of baseball with someone we're not going anywhere.



2. Must love Jane Austen. Normally, there would be a checklist of books/authors the guy must enjoy. However, for the sake of simplicity I've narrowed it down to just Jane. Tolkien can be inaccessible, and most of the world has never read Theological Investigations, so I needed to get it down to something both accessible and deeply loved. When I have a bad day, I watch some of the A&E version of Pride and Prejudice and smile like a dope throughout the entire movie. During the scene when Darcy and Elizabeth walk to Meryton together, I usually cry and feel like my heart is going to explode. I hold Maggie's hand when we watch it together. I love Austen's wit and her sparkling dialogue. I hope to write like her someday (particularly in Love and Friendship. *pffffffft*) I need someone who won't just walk in, roll his eyes while I cry for the 3,000th time at the end of Mansfield Park, and then leave.

Gentlemen who meet these two requirements can skip the questionnaire, essay, and interview process. I'll be in my backyard grilling and listening to the game. If things go well enough, perhaps we'll find ourselves reading some Sense and Sensibility while we're both drifting off.

Until then I think I'm going to start collecting newspapers and cats.