OT: Where can I meet a female companion with similar interests and personality /in person/?

[Brolin Empey]

I have been living alone in my apartment for 2 weeks.  I used Google 
Earth’s ruler feature to determine my apartment is only 480 m (direct 
distance;  road or walking distance is farther.) from my parents’s 
house.  I have actually gone grocery shopping alone and need to go again 
tomorrow (on Sunday).  I should have gone today (on Saturday), but I 
procrastinated. (fail)  It is still hard for me to go to bed early 
enough to be well rested at work the next day, but I am improving.  I 
think this is the 8th time I have moved in the almost 23 years since I 
was born.  This is the first time I have lived away from my parents and 
the first time I have lived alone, though.

I still have no female companion, but I wonder how much I really want 
one:  if I really wanted one, why do I not try harder to find one?  For 
example, I could actually attend the meetups in Vancouver for the 
dating/singles groups I joined on Meetup.com months ago, but I still 
have not attended any of them because I always make other tasks a higher 
priority.  I know priorities are everything:  if I do not make finding a 
female companion a high priority, it will probably not happen.  Then 
again, though, only 3 years ago, I did not think I would ever fall in 
love, nor have a girlfriend, nor have sex, but all 3 things finally 
happened in 2007. :)  Having sex is notable because I am not desperate 
enough to pay for sex and because living with my parents makes sexual 
relationships very awkward.  These things may not seem very notable to 
some people, but they are very notable to people who know me well 
because I am usually too shy and self-conscious to try talking to my 
female peers.  I also isolate myself from face-to-face/human contact 
with new people so much.  I know there are many offline events for 
dating and shared interests, but I have to actually make attending these 
events a higher priority than tasks involving being alone at home. 
There are always things I want to do with my computers which I have to 
wait until I have sufficient free time on the weekend to do, but if I 
want to make new offline friends, I have to make attending these events 
a higher priority than my solitary tasks.  My actions/choices seem to 
say I do not want to make new friends because I do not even try.  It is 
not as if attending these events is so difficult for me:  I own my own 
car, I can drive alone, I can legally use my GPS navigator in my car 
again (see below).  As long as I can find parking, this makes travelling 
much easier than relying on others, including public transit, for 
transportation.  However, participating in Internet communities from 
home is still much easier than travelling in the physical world.  And 
yes, I realise this is probably because I am more comfortable with 
participating in Internet communities because I have so much more 
experience with this form of communication.  I know we learn by doing, 
not saying, so I should attend many physical/offline events, even if I 
do not think they will interest me, to practise travelling in the 
physical world, but I still choose to stick with what I know best, which 
means isolating myself at home.  I already have more experience than my 
closest friend I know offline, Andrew Williamson:  I can drive a car 
with a manual transmission, I have kissed girls, I have been on dates 
with female peers, I have had sex, I have industrial work experience, 
even if I do work for my parents’s company, and now I am finally living 
alone and away from my parents.

Of course, it would be satisfying and pleasing to have a 
girlfriend/lover who understands me well and can relate to me, who 
shares my passion for my computing interests, who is both physically and 
emotionally close to me and who wants to share her body with me to 
satisfy both of our (or at least my) desire for intimacy.  Of course I 
have sexual desire/lust for girls, but I do not even have anyone with 
whom to share my desire for non-sexual affection, such as 
cuddling/snuggling, kissing, or even simply holding hands and/or staring 
into each other’s eyes.  Again, these things may not seem so notable or 
hard to get for some people, but they are very notable for me because I 
am so shy and quiet/reserved.  I was very close to my birth/biological 
mom Judy Patricia Reimer, but she died from breast cancer on 2002-10-03, 
when I was only 15. :((  That was the most difficult thing to ever 
happen to me.  It still saddens me:  I am literally crying for the first 
time in months because writing about her reminds me of how much I missed 
her after she died. :(  However, I still manage without these things: 
they may be required for long-term happiness and satisfaction in life, 
but are not required for me to function in society.

I received my Dell Vostro V13 laptop:  I am using Mozilla Thunderbird 
v3.0.1 on Windows 7 Professional 32-bit on brolin-V13 (my Vostro V13’s 
hostname) to write this message. :)  I love this laptop because it is so 
thin and light.  My largest complaint is the laptop display’s very poor 
viewing direction/angle:  it is extremely frustrating because the 
colours change so much even with the height distances of different 
postures while I am sitting at my desk.  This may be less noticeable if 
I was shorter, but I am 191 cm tall. :)  My laptop has only VGA output 
too, no digital video output, but VGA is still sufficient for using 
1920x1080 on a 23" Acer LCD monitor at home and 1680x1050 on a 22" 
Samsung LCD monitor at work.  I know it is technically inefficient 
because the computer has to convert the graphics frame buffer from 
digital to analog, then the LCD monitor has to sample the analog video 
signal to convert it back to digital, but the resulting image quality is 
still sufficient for me.  Furthermore, I was willing to compromise on 
video output to have the ultraportable coolness of the Vostro V13.  I do 
not know if there are any comparable (similar) laptops, other than the 
13" MacBook Pro, with digital video output?  1366x768 on my laptop’s 13" 
display is surprisingly usable, but I prefer to use an external LCD 
monitor for better viewing direction.  I almost wish I had chosen a 
MacBook Pro with an IPS LCD panel for much better viewing direction, but 
I thought it was silly to pay such a premium for an overpriced Mac when 
I would not even run Mac OS X on it:  I prefer Windows Vista or 7.  I 
was concerned because my laptop has no optical disc drive (ODD), but it 
actually does not matter because I still have not yet needed one. :)  I 
love having the same PC at both home and work:  it is so much simpler 
and more practical than using separate desktop PCs in both places.  I 
still have desktop (minitower, actually) PCs in both places, but they 
are headless because I can ssh to them from Cygwin on Windows 7. :)
	
I have finally exited the province of British Columbia’s Graduated 
Licensing Program (GLP):  in Richmond on Friday morning, I passed my 
first Class 5 passenger vehicle road test with only 3 mistakes:  2 
stopping distance, 1 lane position. :D  I did not pass the Class 7 
passenger vehicle road test until my 4th time. (fail)  I had been 
practising following all driving rules and parallel parking all week 
before my road test, but I was still afraid my driving examiner was 
going to ask me to parallel park and I was going to screw up because I 
almost never parallel park.  I was lucky, though, because I did not have 
to parallel park on my road test! :)  Following all driving rules is 
hard at first because I am so used to my habits such as speeding and 
rolling stops.  These habits are technically illegal, but many people do 
them;  I never never been caught.  I was actually stopped by the police 
for the first time ever a few weeks ago, but it was only for a roadside 
check (the police officer wanted to know what class of driver’s licence 
I had, probably because he thought I look young.  I answered “Class 7”, 
then he asked if I had been drinking because I cannot drink before 
driving (AKA drink and drive ;)) until I have a Class 5 driver’s 
license.  He also verified I had my magnetic ‘N’ (Novice stage of the 
GLP) sign on the back of my car.), not because I had done something 
wrong.  Part of the ‘N’ sign is stuck to my car’s hatch, though, because 
it has been on there for so long (2 years).  I used to remove it when I 
washed my car, but I wash my car so infrequently:  I probably have not 
washed it since October or earlier. (fail).  Now I can legally use my 
GPS navigator while driving again too.

I also finally have a relatively modern (from 2004) digital (still) 
camera again:  I won a used Canon PowerShot G6 on eBay.  I chose this 
model because I liked my cousin’s PowerShot G10 so much.  My mom gave me 
her old (2005) flatbed scanner because she never uses it any more 
because she uses the photocopier at work, but I still have not even 
tried the scanner to see if it works. (fail)  I thought I needed it to 
scan a personal document at home, which is easier than bringing the 
document to work to scan and e-mail or fax from work, but the recipient 
actually has access to the same document, so I did not end up needing to 
scan it.  This is the first time I have had a scanner.  It would be 
useful sometimes, but I have survived without a scanner until now, 
especially since I can use the photocopier at work to scan and e-mail 
documents to myself.