Went out for drinks last night with the HB7 from this FR: http://redd.it/looya

Had a few things in mind that I wanted to put into practice. Most importantly I wanted to make sure to kino, which I failed to do (I'll get into more detail with that), make sure to have her talk about herself most of the time and talk about emotional/personal experiences (success), and do some push/pull (also fail, cause I have no idea how to do that.)

We went to a gastropub only about a 10 minute walk from my house. We live on opposite ends of the city and I initially suggested a place sort of halfway for both of us, but she's new in town and said she's been there and would rather try a new place so I switched to this place. So she came all the way from the other side of town to go out with me...seems like a good sign to me.

She was late, but it wasn't a big deal because I was just waiting at my house for her to text me when she was close. Not like I was waiting at the bar. She apologized when we met up and I said "I don't blame you too much, it's not your fault you're a girl." She laughed. We started walking and I asked if she'd been to this part of the city yet, talked about where she was from originally...she just moved from Savannah cause she went to school there, told me it's different than the rest of Georgia, I compared it to Austin, TX...she said that was accurate. Found out she's three years older than me (26)...this surprised me because she seemed 21/22 at the bar. I won't go into that much detail but the conversation seemed to go well on the walk over.

I'd been to this place a few times before but it had been awhile...I was thinking there was a circular booth up front but I remembered incorrectly because it was a circular table with individual chairs. I sat first and she sat across from me. Shit. I was afraid of this happening...so no kino opportunities. I probably had some later in the night that I didn't take advantage of though. We went out to smoke at one point...definitely could have thrown some in here but I'm still such a newb. And we went for a walk around the neighborhood at the end of the night because I'd been talking about how this area has a lot of bars/restaurants/shops etc. It was cold when we left and I said something, she said something about it being colder than when we got there. I'm thinking here I could have locked arms, said something like "Let's share body heat"? I even thought of this when we were walking but didn't do it. Blah.

I don't even know when opportunities to push/pull come up so I was clueless in this area. She did talk a lot about herself though, and we got to personal topics...family, dreams/goals/aspirations, traveling, books/movies, growing up/getting older, marriage...just to name a few. So I think I did okay conversationally, though there were a few ~30 second silences here and there. I was also really honest with her and told her how I used to be shy, how two years ago I wouldn't even think to come and talk to her at a bar like I did last week...she said it was good that I did. Talked about how down south everyone talks to each other, is super friendly compared to big northeastern cities where people are more closed off. This was probably one of the better conversational threads.

Early in the night she asked if anything fun to do was coming up. I told her about my friends band playing a show at a pretty big venue Saturday, she said she's probably not doing anything. Also brought up the art museum and how it's free the first Sunday of the month, she volunteered her schedule, said she might be able to go early in the day. This was only 15 minutes or so into the date and she seemed to be open to making plans to hang out again, seems like another good sign?

Walking her back to the subway I brought up my friends show again...but didn't explicitly ask her to come. She said she's probably not doing anything. We got to the subway and had the standard "this was fun" chat...she initiated a hug. I told her I'd text her.

So I'm not really sure what to think of this. Failed with kino but definitely got a good emotional connection going in the conversation. But also didn't push/pull. At this point I figure I'll try to get her out again and this time really ramp up the attraction building (kino and flirting), lest I risk falling into the Friend Zone. Hopefully I haven't already. Thoughts? I'm 23 and this was probably my first formal date...outside of going to movies and shit with girls in high school, and "chilling" with girls in college. I was nervous as hell at some points but overall I don't feel too bad about it.