the onslaught of 9/6

After a fairly long dry spell I received six matches in one day. Three of them have already closed down communication, but here's the scoop:

# 0906-01 from Atlanta, GA - one of the closed. He's a writer and film producer and said he was interested in "pursuing other matches at eHarmony" per his closing message. Too bad, because he seemed sort of promising. Rating: 1 frog

# 0906-02 from Beaufort, SC - He's a little younger (33) and he's in the military, but otherwise seems pretty decent. He's a nice-looking guy, that's for certain. But I'm very leery of younger men. Rating: 1.5 frogs

# 0906-03 from Atlanta, GA - another of the closed. He's in advertising and is passionate about his job, so if he hadn't already closed me down I'd be okay with him. But no point in dwelling on it, since he's closed things down. Rating: 1.5 frogs

# 0906-04 from Macon, GA - the last of the closed, a high school teacher and coach. Teachers are another profession I'm partial to, but he wasn't partial to me! Rating: 2 frogs

# 0906-05 from Johnson City, TN - a loan officer who's got a heavy emphasis on spirituality in his profile. His last book was something about Lance Armstrong & the Tour de France. So not a lot in common, I don't think. But nothing glaringly wrong either. Aside from the fact I don't know where Johnson City, TN is. Rating: 2 frogs

# 0906-06 from Atlanta, GA - This guy didn't answer most of the questions on his profile, but in the ones he did answer he's pretty articulate. No photo posted, though, so I don't think he's very committed to the process. Rating: 2 frogs

eHarmony seems to have added some new features since I last logged on. The first is that if you leave questions blank on your profile, they don't post them. So instead of having a list of things with "n/a" in them, the questions simply aren't there. You can still tell there are things missing, of course, but I guess they figure it looks better than all the responses with "n/a."

The other thing they've added that I think is kind of creepy is a "final message" option. This means if someone closes communication with you, you have the opportunity to respond to their closing comment and try to keep the fire alive, as it were. Very scary! They are multiple choice options, and I can only suppose that they came up with these based on user input. Here are the five options you have:

- I have now posted my photo and when it's approved it should be available to you. I guess this one is for those folks who close down communication since their match hasn't posted any photos. That's one of the closed message options, so this one makes sense.

- I have completed all my Match Profile questions. This would be for those folks who left a lot of blanks. Curiously, you can't give "this match hasn't completely filled out their profile" as a closing reason, so I don't know how you'd know to use this one.

- Good luck with your search. The eHarmony equivalent of "Good luck in all your endeavors," the closing salutation for rejection letters the world over. I don't know why you'd even bother with this one.

- I really felt that we had potential. I'd like you to reconsider. We've now entered the city limits of Creepytown. I suppose I could see using this one if someone you were matched up with seemed perfect to you and they'd closed you down, but it seems a bit desperate to me. He'd have to be super-fabulous for me to bust this one out.

- I think if we met, you might have different feelings about who I am. This is the city hall of Creepytown for sure. I can't even think of anything to say about it, I think it's so weird.

I need to get together with Julie and get her to take some better pictures of me to post - maybe if I had a picture of myself up as a blonde I'd have better luck. Certainly no one lately has been interested.