It’s a small world Part I: Internet stalkers?

It was just a typical school night and I decided to check my OKcupid account before drifting into the dream world. I noticed that I had received an instant message at some point and opened it up. And then, I felt my jaw drop!

hey there
this may be a random question, but do you blog about your dates?

UH OH!

I needed to know more! But didn't want to blow my spot so early in the game, either. So I responded:

Random question, indeed. I have a friend who blogs about her dates.

Why do you ask?

(Not exactly a lie...but not completely the whole truth, either)

He eventually emailed me back:

I don't need to be a mathemagician to guess the number of people in Seattle who use the alias coqueta and are nursing students (I actually used to be a mathemagician... then I accidentally took the square root of a kid at a party. Horrible horrible tragedy, remainders all over the place. They took away my license after that :-) ).

I forget how I initially found it, but I've been following the 100 dates blog pretty much since the beginning. It's quite entertaining and when I saw your profile I wanted to see if you were one of the local mini-celebrities behind the blog."

Hmm....a funny guy, huh? (And maybe a bit nerdy...who makes algebra jokes?! But, nerdy is good, don't get me wrong) Anyhow, he didn't sound too threatening, so I fessed up.

Then, I asked him how we found the blog:

I suspect I was googling for Seattle date ideas although, I do know one or two of your followers.

I had no idea that we had any dedicated readers (well, besides our closest friends, families and classmates, who feel obligated to humor us in our dating adventures)! Soon after, however, I realized that I could see a map of where our readers were accessing the blog from...and as it turns out, we're an international sensation! Apparently, we have readers in Yemen, UAE, Norway, India, Malaysia, Brazil...AMAZING!!

(FYI--if you're reading this and we don't know it, feel free to become a follower or at least leave a comment!)

Anyway, returning from that tangent, Looking for a Spark (LFAS) and I did eventually talk more in-depth with our quasi-internet stalker. And, as it turned out, he and LFAS actually have some history of a friendship from years past! But, he didn't even know she was the other writer.

I guess Seattle is smaller than I thought!

And, I suppose I need to change my alias on this blog and/or the dating website. Ooops!