Sorry if anyone has read this - I just joined here and had posted under "Day 2s" before realizing it would probably fit better in field reports. Story about a Grouper date I went on with two friends and Day 2 with one of the girls:

So last Thursday I went on a Grouper date with two of my buddies. For those of you who may be unfamiliar with this service, Grouper is this site where you link it to your Facebook, you answer a few questions and they have an in-house person who matches you with a girl who they think you'll go well with. The wrinkle is that each of you brings two friends so it's a 3 on 3 blind date. Neither of you know who the other is or what they look like - they just tell you when and where to meet, have a bunch of bars and lounges that they work with. Each person puts down $20 to ensure they show up and that covers the first round of drinks. Pretty decent service; I've gone on one before that went fairly well.

Ok, so last Thursday I go with my roommate who has been bugging me to do this for months and another friend. Both of them are kinda on the quiet side so I'm definitely the most outgoing of the group. We meet the girls and have drinks, order a bunch of appetizers (oysters, sliders, etc) and just chat. The girls are cool but it's pretty clear that one of the girls (HB9) is clearly the best looking of the group. Everything goes pretty smoothly and after a while we're ordering Patron Cafe shots and ribbing the waitress when she comes over (chatting up waitresses and making them friendly with us is one of my go-to plays) So we're just chatting about random stuff and I catch the HB9 has been kinda stealing glances here and there. Couldn't tell if she was doing that to my friends as well but I took it as an IOI. Anyways, somehow it comes up that they like going to strip clubs and did it with a group of guys a month or two back. Well, one of my buddies loves that kinda thing so we ask the waitress for the check and decide to go to this burlesque place around the corner that one of the girls knows. We tell the waitress what we're doing and she tells us that she might meet us there which was just hilarious. The girls go to the bathroom and while they're there I go up to the waitress and get her #, telling her I'll text her and she can meet us after her shift. Didn't really care about meeting up with her but did it moreso because when we left, predictably, one of the girls (actually the one I liked, luckily), says "we forgot to get that waitress' info!" to which I responded that I had already taken care of it and pulled her # out of my pocket. Pretty solid move if I may say so myself. We go to the burlesque place, I order drinks for everyone and we're sitting at a table in the back, all talking but me and her are also having a private convo on the side. I tell her that I have Rangers season tickets during one of my stories about hockey and she tells me she's never been to a game. I tell her I may have an extra seat to a game this week and get her #. So far, everythings going pretty well. The girls and I had texted the waitress to meet us out earlier and she asks me if she responded. I say no and she goes "I bet she's not going to get back to you." I say "ok, lets make a bet - if she gets back to me by midnight you owe me a drink. If not, I'll get you a drink." We shake on it and, by midnight, no text so I separate her from the group, get a drink with her, teach her how to make a rose out of a napkin at the bar (DHV), etc. It worked out pretty well that the waitress ended up texting me at 12:30 so even though I "lost" the bet I still got a return text.

So we end up leaving around 12:30 and we split a cab; my friend and I planning on getting out at our place, paying the fare and having them go on their way at a reduced rate. So, we're about halfway there, I'm in the passenger seat while my friends in the back with the two girls. The night was kinda hazy at this point but somehow the girl decides to dare me to take my pants off in the cab. No way am I about to be shown up by this girl so after the driver makes it clear he doesn't care (awesome cabbie), I take my jeans off. I tell the girl that its going to be a very cold walk for me to my front door (it's about 15 degrees in NYC at this point) and she should give me her pants. To my surprise, she actually takes her pants off and we make the trade. I get out of the cab, put her pants on, she gets out to give me a hug and I head home past a very confused doorman to my apartment. Got home and texted her a picture of me in her pants last night and she responded that she and her frined were using my pants for pajamas and they were super comfortable. Woke up the next morning badly hungover and missing my favorite jeans but with her pants on my dresser. I had set up a time bridge to Tuesday when we're supposed to go to the Ranger game at Madison Square Garden. Waited until Saturday to confirm it by making a joke about how the waitress texted me the next day and was trying to hang out and asking if she was ready for Tuesday. She responds "ready for the hockey game, not ready to give back my trophy aka your pants." I took the trade and that text as a big IOI - even if it was a spur of the moment dare, if she was disinterested I'd assume she would not have given me hers but would have just kept mine.

So went out with the girl yesterday and it went pretty well. We met up at a bar before for a drink and then walked up to Madison Square Garden. She had never been to a hockey game before so there was a lot of explaining on my part and some kino when leading her through the arena. Even let her borrow my Rick Nash shirt though I told her she wasn't allowed to steal that one. Anyways, though I asked her to bring my pants back I didn't bring hers, saying she never asked me to bring them. In reality that was my plausible deniability to head back to my place after the game. So after the game we came back, exchanged pants and then I suggested we have some champagne on the roof. Our building is 44 stories with 360 degree views of NYC so we went up there and had some champagne. It had recently snowed so part of the roof had a couple inches of snow and somehow we got on the topic of her taking self-defense classes. I told her I used to do judo and she asked me to teach her some moves. Anyone who's done any judo throws knows many of them end with you on top of the person so naturally I half-did them first to calibrate, then I asked if she wanted to see them at full speed and she said yeah so I tossed her (made sure to have her land gently of course) and then k-closed from there. It broke a personal rule of mine to never k-close on a first date but I justified it to myself because we did go on a group date beforehand, plus I just really wanted to. Anyways, I walked her to the ferry and kissed her goodnight, then sent her a teasing text afterwards.

Seems like a pretty solid evening, and in some ways it did go exactly as I had hoped but there is one thing that's kind of confusing me. When we were together Thursday the vibe was really great. Then, when I was texting her in between she was very different from most girls that I text with (granted, New York Jewish girls are abnormally into texting but whatever). Weird response time, not a lot of excitement and kind of blah attitude overall. So much so that I despite all the IOIs from Thursday I half expected her to flake but she came and it seemed like everything went perfect. However, texted her something half teasing but telling her to get home safe last night, she texted me something funny back, I texted her something funny...and no response. My current notion is to wait for her to text me, but she is also leaving for a weeklong trip to the Carribbean on Saturday. Debating if it's worth sending a text or better to play the waiting game and gauge interest, or if I'm just reading into this way too much and she's just a bad texter. What do you guys think? I've analyzed it and feel like I've played it pretty well so far but for some reason just not getting the between-dates response I'm accustomed to.