She wrote back! And included her email address. 
And I got another ‘smile’ tonight.
And something else is blinking, which I must investigate…
Good for you!!
It’s good to see you taking action and nice to see some positive results. Let us know how it goes.
Hey, I’m a girl and I love to profess my fondness for sf and gaming, does that mean guys think my profile is fake? That would explain…
Oh, wait. Damn! It’s always all about the frakkin’* photo*! 
Update: we’ve started exchanging email!
She writes very well, unafraid to use the language to its full power. Somehow I never really noticed how much I missed that in daily life; it’s very seductive.
I haven’t gotten any other ‘smiles’ from women I sent smiles to, though I got one from someone else near my age, and one from a 20-year-old in Indianapolis (probably a scam).
Ahem, can we have an update, please? The rest of the posters are being polite, not wanting to be nosy you know, but I have no such compunction. Give!
I’ve been up north visiting my father, but I’m back, so here’s an update.
We met on Saturday. I brought a micro-picnic, and she brought some stuff, and we had lunch on a park bench on Philosophers’ Walk (between the Royal Ontario Museum and the Royal Conservatory of Music, next to the University of Toronto). After that, we walked down St. George Street to the library, where we visited the science fiction collection.
Results? No sparks, alas. Maybe a cool friend, though. She had just quit from her job to resume temping and also take time to write. She had to leave early to go to a wedding. After we parted, I took the streetcar to the beach and are some of the rest of the food, then went home. The weather has been (and is being) superbly-beautiful here, so it was a good day.
I have decided that I need a greater number of women passing through my life, though, to increase the chance that I meet someone I hit it off with. I’m not sure what I’m going to do about it, though.
This is difficult advice to give when considered that I don’t always follow it myself. I can, however, testify to its validity and effectiveness: your chances for meeting people of a higher social norm aren’t likely to come from internet meetings. I’ve had a few, so I speak from that experience as well. I really think the best approach to meeting a woman you like is to make friends with women you don’t like. Not only will you develop a better report with women in general, but you’re bound to make connections with their friends and find women you do like.
I’m not trying to downplay an internet rendezvous, but I tend to think exposure to more women at one time increases your odds. Dating is, after all, a numbers game above and beyond the element of courtship itself. I’ve had some of the greatest hookups and “sparks” with people I meet within moments of meeting them … conversely, I’ve found no spark whatsoever with women I met from the internet that I’d spent quite a lot of time “chatting” with. The aspect of the internet serving as the medium adds a layer that I’ve noticed time and time again is more of a hindrance than a benefit. Some people will swear by it, but I’ve lost a great deal of faith in the internet personals approach after attempting it so many times. It has lost whatever small amount of appeal it held in the first place. Sitting behind the comfort of a keyboard to work on social skills? Meh. Kinda like playing a baseball video game to improve your swing.
Try saying hi to a girl in a bookstore or museum and just see how she reacts and what happens. No pickup lines, no schemes, just hi. You might be surprised at how quickly you can break down the approach barrier just by confronting it this way, offering a simple hello to a girl you wouldn’t have otherwise had the nerve to speak to. Whether or not anything results from it is neither success nor failure, but the experience of having done so and learning from it … a lot more interesting than internet dating. 
Time to see whether Cerowyn would be interested in that long-delayed Extended TronnaDope he mentioned to me a couple of months ago…
Just going up to strangers and saying Hi? Yike. I’m not sure whether that would be a good idea in Toronto, home of the paranoid. But I like your idea of stepping back a little and just being more social in general, anamnesis. It is not my first inclination, so I’ll just have to use some willpower to make it happen.
It isn’t ‘walk up and say Hi’, it’s more gradual.
First, spot the attractive person.
Gradually make your way over near that person without making a beeline. Take a couple of minutes to do this.
Once near the person, find a way to get in their way politely but unavoidably; then apologize like you’re the biggest oaf there could be while making eye contact. Smile while doing this, maintaining personal space. If they smile back, this may go well. Take it from there conversationally.
Since there’s no way to know if these people in public are at all looking for love, I vote again for an online service or singles group. Serendipity and fate are all nice ideas and romantic and all, but…I live in a harsher world.