Alone in the naked city

I live alone. This is the first time I will have lived alone for more than three months at a stretch, and while I like having my privacy and being able to be as messy or as neat as I wanna be, the solitary life does pose some obstacles.

Dining, for example. I have been out to eat by myself once in the month I have lived here. A woman dining alone tends to get poor service (supposedly because we don't tip well, but this would tend to be an effect of poor service, so I'm not sure which came first here. anyway . . .). I always end up either wolfing down my food because there's no one to talk to to make me slow down or pushing my food around in a deliberate attempt to not gobble and leave in fifteen minutes, which then makes me feel like the waiter is watching me and wondering what's taking so long.

I don't mind going to the movies by myself, but some people do. There hasn't been anything I wanted to see at the Clerksville multiplexes, so that hasn't come up yet.

Going to a bar by yourself: I don't really go to bars normally, and it seems like going out drinking alone is either really sad or an invitation to drive home tipsy or both, so that's out.

Shopping alone I like, if only because I don't mind asking sales clerks whether these pants make me look fat. So consumerism provides a viable form of entertainment.

Good thing I have Netflix! They're throttling my rentals, though, which is annoying. I mailed four discs on Friday, and they claimed to have received only two on Monday, and they have staggered the shipments to one per day. Apparently this is common. Maybe paying for more discs wasn't such a good idea after all.