Better than a Hermit

Dear Advice Girl,

I've been dating a new guy for a few weeks, and he is swoon-worthy. He's just my type: a returned Peace Corps volunteer of the dirty hippie variety. He also likes to do fun things, like go to concerts, go to folk festivals, host parties and watch Shakespeare plays (I swear, I did not make that last one up).

So what more could I want, you ask? Well, he is SUCH a social butterfly that I rarely get to spend any time alone with him. If he calls to go do something, I have no way of knowing if it means him and me, or him and me and 20 of his closest friends. The only way I am assured of spending alone time with him is if his friends pass out before I do. Yes, my dating habits have turned into an episode of Survivor -- outwit, outplay, outlast.

I know he likes me for the *ahem* obvious reasons, but I am a PLANNER. I've had fun for the past few weeks with his spontaneous nature, but I'm not sure he's ever going to make the same concessions for my slightly obsessive-compulsive nature. Tell me, Advice Girl, is there any hope for a woman with three calendars and a guy who doesn't know what he's doing five minutes from now?

Lonely Luva

Dear Luva,
Advice Girl understands, she really does, but having also been a victim of a few if-you-insist-on-dragging-me-out-with-other-people-i'll-just-sit-here-and-watch-the-game-during-dinner dates, she has to remind you that more social is better than less. (Yeah, that really happened to Advice Girl. You can ask her Advice Friends.) But still, she understands your need for some "quality time" alone with Mr. Friendly. (No, not THAT "Mr. Friendly." Sheesh. Well, okay, maybe that Mr. Friendly, too ;-)

At any rate, Advice Girl recommends taking control of some of the planning for these get togethers. And not in an "I planned this party and ha! you're the only one that showed up! fancy that!" kind of way. But more of an "I'd like to make you dinner at my place" or "I have an extra ticket to this play" kind of way. (Not-so-subtle message: This guest list is capped, thanks.) Good luck.

Contact Advice Girl

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Will Advise for Krispy Kreme

Help! I love Advice Girl's advice, but with my busy life and with so much stuff on the internet, I often forget to check Advice Girl and miss her best advice when it's still red hot. Is there a way I can be notified as soon as Advice Girl dishes out some of her insight? Can Advice Girl give me a call when she answers a new question? Or come to my door? With doughnuts?


Dear Adviceless,

All right all right, it’s been a while since Advice Girl has done this (she tends to have Advice Guy manage these sorts of things), but here goes.

First thing you'll want to do is go to www.google.com/reader. It'll ask you to login, so if you don't have a google account, you'll want to create one now. (Trust Advice Girl, it's quick and painless, and no, you don't have to switch to gmail to use it.)

Now, Advice Girl, you might ask, if I'm going to go to this site every day to check whether you've updated, why don't I just go to your site? Ah, Advice Girl would explain, this is the brilliant part - you can rig this up for many other sites, allowing you to monitor your favorite blogs, Washington Post articles, comic strips, and more.

Just look for the handy orange icon on any web page, click on it, and copy-and-paste the address of the new window that pops up into the "add a subscription" field on Google Reader. This will cause Advice Girl to get her own handy link under the "Subscriptions" heading on the left side of the page. And when(ever) she has a new post, it'll get all boldy.

How was that? Too much too soon? Advice girl promises it's quite easy and a great way to corral all your regular reads into one place. Not to mention stay up on Advice Girl's annual blog updates.

Advice Girl Returns

Dear Advice Girl,

Do you still have your advice column blog? I need help. How do you reverse the tragic mistake of accepting friend requests from two trashy in-laws? They are treating facebook like MySpace. I am not interested in receiving the pudding they have flung at me nor comparing my knowledge of WWII tankers. I don't want their creepy sex poems showing up on my news feed. I also don't want them writing on my wall.

Dear That's Why You're Not on my Restricted List,

Thank you for allowing Advice Girl an annual update to her apparently-still-active blog account. Rest assured she has spent this sabbatical studying all the advice columns her RSS reader could handle. Unfortunately, yours is a growing problem, and Advice Girl wishes the powers that be could spend a little less time lil'-green-patching and a little more time on friend list crowd contrl. Now, everyone knows about making lists of people who only see limited aspects of your profile. What Advice Girl really wishes for, though, is a way to request being put on someone else's list. As in "Please, I don't need to see your high school banter or vaguely homophobic status updates, I just need to have a way of getting your most recent email address in case of emegerncy. Thanks." At any rate, Advice Girl has come up with three fairly unsuccessful methods of dealing with the madness, and she is happy to share these with you now.

1) Ignore and then eventually decline obscure relatives' friend requests. This usually results in their thinking that they have not yet tried to friend you and subsequent re-friending attempts. Advice Girl has not yet determined a solution for this.

2) Choosing the "Less About Trashy In-Law" option on the News Feed tab. This does, in fact, provide you with less about Trashy In-Law, but tends to leave Advice Girl with a vague sense that she's missing out on something she should know about. Even when that tends to be drunken-pics-I-was-tagged-in, she still feels it her Advice-ly duty to stay on top of these things. If only to keep her sense of superiority sharpened.

3) Actually, Advice Girl apparently only had two methods to share with you. (Advice Girl is not that good at math.) She would like to apologize for any inconvenience this shortened reading experience may have caused.

Oh wait, Advice Girl did remember her third option. Friend Pruning. Sometimes you just gotta go through and get rid of the unsightly parts of your facebook friendship tree. Best of luck.