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Okay, I know I said I was never going into an online dating venue again, but I got lonely and had a momentary lapse into hopefulness. Geez, nothing's changed. It's still slim pickings and lame men out there.

I received an e-mail from a man who, for all appearances in his photo, is gooooorgeous. (Yeah, yeah, that's assuming the photos are really him. No one knows you're a dog on the Internet.) He's 50 and widowed. He winked. I returned the wink. He wrote and asked if I'd like to correspond and asked me to tell him a little about myself, beyond what's in my profile. So I wrote a few paragraphs and asked him to tell me about himself.

In response, I got a letter that began like this:
Hello Dear. i hope this note will not come as a surprise rather a piece of golden tone i am writing to win ur love and ur heart. my name is J**** S********, 50 yrs old and a single parent.
On my search for companionship, a woman who i will like to spend my life with, grow old and grey with,a soul mate, a best friend and some one to accept and love me regardless the age difference and distance.

Sound good so far? Well, except for the "ur" and the lack of proper capitalization and the incomplete sentences. So why am I grousing. It was cut-and-pasted! He's sent the same "heartfelt" letter to every woman he's corresponded with. It actually goes on for another five paragraphs, rife with misspellings and sloppy punctuation.

So I wrote back that while I felt we had some things in common (widowed, adopted), I was attempting to move to DC or Ohio and would not consider living in Florida again. Oh, and I threw in something to the effect that I would have preferred to have received an original letter rather than something cut-and-pasted. I really wanted to pull a Dr. Phil and say, ". . . and how's that workin' for ya?"

To those of you readers who are in stable relationships: You may not think your relationship is wonderful, and you might think the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. Trust me; it's not.

Tomorrow I'll give you a better example. This is not someone I'm interested in, but someone who is generous with his thoughts and experience and giving me lots to think about as I try to determine where to go.