​Every June, mud warriors from all over Southern California gather at Camp Pendleton for the annual Mud Run. Just taking part in the event is a victory. These folks, six months earlier, jammed the official website at 12:01 a.m. on New Year’s Day, vying for a space. By 9:00 a.m., they are all filled.

   ​Like dating, preparation is key to making this mudapalooza a success, and duct tape is the first ingredient. Swathing shoes and ankles in the stuff, one avoids the dreaded “I lost my shoe in the !@#$%& mud” phenomenon.  And who would’ve thunk a little mud would make you want a military man even more…

* There’s the former marine hunched over his girlfriend’s tennis shoes checking the tautness of her duct tape. His baby isn’t going to get mud in her sneakers if he has anything to do with it…

* Along the course, a marine blasts a steep hill with a fire hose. Participants stumble up this slippery mess as the military men yell at them.  But these guys are also the first to hold your
hand if you think you’re going to fall.

​* There is a five foot wall participants are expected to climb. A handsome man in uniform stands in the mud on one knee so you can step on it and climb over easily. (You are so tempted to loop around …)

* Toward the end, it gets quiet and you think the mud portion of the day is over. But boy are you wrong!  You come over an
embankment and blink because you cannot believe your eyes. In front of you is a massive mud sea with banners waving brightly

​a foot above it. At least 50 runners are crawling through the mud keeping their heads below the banners. To your left is a massive grandstand with spectators. Your first response: Are you frickin’ kidding me? A yelling marine assures you he is not kidding, and you join the hoards crawling across.

   For the next couple days you are finding remnants of mud where it should not be, but it’s so worth it…so very worth it. It’s worth
staying up late, jamming the website, all the miles of duct tape, being sprayed by those very handsome marines, and especially the
military families helped by your participation in the event.

Excerpt from The Spinster's Guide to Dating

   A Hike From Hell provides excellent opportunities for observing potential dates:

​* There’s the dude, completely outfitted in khaki wicking material, who says a lot of these people have overestimated their abilities and shouldn’t be here in the first place. Of course, he keeps
looking at you...

*And then there’s the guy plodding behind.  You talk about your social life and he responds, “This is a hiking club, not a dating club.” Wow...zero tolerance for dating...
​
​*And of course, there’s that annoying group surrounding you and pointing, just because your backpack is a little heavy and you’re turtling...

​*And finally there’s the one in front of you. He notices you are slipping on the rocks and offers a hand. By the end of the hike you’ve planned your wedding, the reception, but are still vacillating between strapless or spaghetti string...

   Yes, a Hike From Hell is a great way to meet boys. And sometimes, both the frog and the prince are wearing hiking boots.

   ​In San Francisco, there is a new genus of homo sapien. They wear wool caps, thick coke bottle glasses, tight jeans, plaid flannel shirts, drink Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, and look a little like pissed off lumberjacks. They call themselves hipsters.

​   At any Renaissance Fair, coming soon to your area, you have guys donning Norman Saxon tunics and medieval breeches, sipping from beer steins and brandishing turkey legs. They spew out a lot of “thees” and “thous” as they strut about their 20-acre
piece of the Middle Ages.

   California beaches contain your garden variety surfer dude. They wear Volcom t-shirts, O’Neill shorts, and Rainbow sandals. Their locals-only lingo is sprinkled with “brahs” and “barneys” sounding like they smoked a little too much of the evil weed in college.

   And then there are the Hawaiian shirt guys. This is their idea of dressing up and they’ve got one for every occasion. Oktoberfest
finds them festooned in their favorite beer bottles and these faux Hawaiians greet the holidays adorned in Santas and flying reindeer. They’ve taken resort wear to the extreme and desperately need to make a bee line back to the Mainland.
​
   So you see…you’ve got a veritable rainbow of men to choose from. They’ve all got game. All you have to figure out is which game you want to play….

Excerpt from The Spinster's Guide to Dating

    Remember when you used to figure if you never found a guy you could always move to Alaska?  The ratio was supposed to be like
100 to 1. It was like an untapped man cave just waiting for feminine exploration. Well, that’s all changed. Denver is the new Alaska or as my friend calls it: Men-ver!

   I have no idea if this is true or not.   It could all be an urban legend or a ploy of the Denver Tourism Bureau to get affluent women to vacation there. I have never been there on a scouting expedition, but one of us definitely needs to go into the trenches and report back.

   The best candidate would probably be someone from She-attle…

​     Why do so many men assume women are hitting on them? Talk to a guy in a grocery store and he’ll quickly refer to his wife so
there are no misunderstandings. Send a FB friend request to a high school acquaintance; suddenly a pop-up notifies you he’s married.  Talk to a guy at a party and he cuts you off;
he doesn’t want you getting all hopeful.  It’s absolutely the worst thing about being single. It’s unwarranted rejection and one
of the few times one is tempted to lie about her marital status.

There is a drain in the dating pool:

* There are 2,235,114,476 human males aged 18 to 64 on earth. Considering the average age of these males is 28, knock off a billion.  This gives you 1.2 billion eligible men.

*About 20% only speak Mandarin Chinese leaving
one with 960,000,000.
​
* Ninety five percent are geographically undesirable leaving
48 million dudes.

* Eighty percent have diametrically opposing values or are chronologically inappropriate (although this criteria gets more liberal as one ages...) leaving about 9,600,000 guys.

* Of the remaining options, 80% make poor wardrobe choices, have overbearing families, still live with their parents, or are in public detention facilities. Therefore 1.92 million contestants for your affection remain.