okay

My friend H. is coming over for dinner and we're going to discuss the whole not date/not not date/predate issue.

Ha! I just realized what pre-date without the hyphen looks like! Now we know where we get the word "predator."

I will let you know what we decide.

It's occurring to me now, when I should be shopping for food, that maybe the question of "is it a date" needs (such as it is) to be posed twice: before the encounter, and as the encounter begins. So before the encounter, you may arrive at some conclusion, and it determines how you conceptualize the meeting to come. And then as soon as you get there, the date/not date counter gets set back to zero, and the encounter unfolds with its own indications of whether or not its a date.

And then there is after a date. Skipping past how you've initially conceptualized it, what appeared to have been a date could turn out to not have been a date after all.

Okay, I just previewed this post. Am I seriously like this?

Now I'm thinking it's not a date.