Great Places To Not Meet Women

I had lunch today with my friend Kim, who I hadn't seen in a while. We had some catching up to do, including of course relationship stuff. The first topic was of course the fact that her ex-boyfriend of three years not only now works one floor away from me but also moved into my building - specifically my floor. She's now seeing a mutual friend who, while I like him too, is on the polar opposite end of the political spectrum (she's campaigned for several Democrats, he's a hard core Bushie). I gave it until the '08 elections. But back to me and my relationships, or lately my complete lack thereof. Kim is now convinced she is going to get me to sign up with Match.com (maybe another contest will be "help Peter design his Match.com profile?").

I have picked up a few nuggets of wisdom along the way, specifically great places to go if you do not want to meet women. So if your goal is to avoid relationships and the inevitable disappointment and heartbreak, here are some great places to spend your time in the Twin Cities:

1. Grad School - Business school to be specific. Not only is over two-thirds of the student body male, that proportion does nothing but go up if you take Finance or Operations classes. Apparently most of the women go into Marketing or Human Resources.* Add to this the fact that most students are married and it's not looking good. Still I suppose it's better than undergrad. Our unofficial school motto at Carleton was "Where the men are men, and so are the women."

2. Work - Let me tell you nothing attracts the hotties like a conservative financial services company. Seriously I need to get a job at Target.

3. Any Bar in Downtown Minneapolis - I find it very humorous when women tell me about all the bars they go too that are just packed with women. I asked them which ones. For some reason, they can't tell me. Shocking!

4. The Grocery Store - One day my co-worker Paul tried to convince me that the grocery store was a great place to meet women. First off the grocery store is not far from the State Fair in terms of human evolution. Second, I would have no idea how to approach someone. "Say, I see you enjoy soy milk..."

5. The Gym - Another dead zone for meeting women, although this may have something to do with working out downtown which is more of a gay zone. Besides the fact that women don't even outnumber men in yoga class, most women in my experience don't like to be approached by strangers when they are sweaty and half-dressed.

6. Salsa Night At the Quest - Okay, this is a moot point now but in perhaps the epitome of lazy journalism, the City Pages voted salsa night at the Quest the Best Place to Meet Women several years running. Obviously these jackasses had never gone there because anyone who ever had knows that the place was wall-to-wall five foot tall Mexican dudes who appear to have been practicing salsa since birth. On the plus side, you could always find your friends no matter where they were in the club.

7. My Building - Dating someone who lives in your building is always a risky, so it's a good thing that the number of attractive women in my building roughly equal the number of paraplegics.

*Not coincidentally, these are usually the most "evil" departments in most major companies