"You're a Tom Waits Fan?!" and other Birthday Surprises.

Well, the night does funny things inside a man,
these old tomcat feelings you don't understand

All right. Krishna will tell you in case you don't believe it, but I actually giggled. I giggled.

The message my darling dear Krishna recieved after my date Friday was, "HE LIKES TOM WAITS!!!" And I think I may have repeated it. In any case, needless to say, Dude surprised me - pleasantly. And no, the pleasantness was not only because of his mutual affinity for Tom Waits, but other things as well.

Weak Handshake guy still has a weak handshake, but maybe he can learn. We met for coffee Friday night at Calhoun's first true coffee house. I'm glad for this "no-pressure" first date choice. I'm a little impulsive when it comes to men, and the fact that we just "met" (there was no picking up or dropping off) for coffee helped me to remember the appropriate boundaries that I always set for myself and have rarely kept to.

He had come straight from work, and was dressed nicely, his hair still in that ponytail, and not as Fabio-esque as my fevered imagination remembered. His manners were ever polite and he brought a box of Godiva chocolates. Score! He said that he was generally a flowers kind of guy, but he didn't know what my favorite kind was. Score two. When we got inside, he paid for my coffee. Score three. So Dude was looking favorable (despite another weak handshake) as we sat down for the "get to know you" chat.

He was super interested in my book and paid rapt attention as I spoke, which is amazing since I have no idea of how to stop once I get started. I discovered that he went to college in Atlanta at first, but graduated at Berry. I discovered that he, like myself, majored in a useless subject but is not sorry for it. I also discovered that he is a member of one of the oldest families in Calhoun/Resaca. This is monumental because I have never EVER dated a man who was actually from Calhoun. So maybe the gene pool isn't dried up. He likes to hike and camp (YES!), and he knows enough about Shakespeare to have a favorite (The Tempest).

But as all of my darling friends know, the true way to Jennifer's heart is through music. And he was actually the one who asked the question that I usually ask first: "What kind of music do you listen to?" I couldn't believe that those words were coming out of his, not my mouth. From that moment on, the conversation was all about music. And Darlings, the man actually has good taste! It's incredible to me that there is someone in Calhoun who listens to music that is actually congruent to my tastes. He loves Tom Waits, Morphine, Henry Rollins, etc. GOOD STUFF!!

In any case, we sat and talked for a good two hours before the kids at the coffee shop all but threw us out, then we stepped outside and he watched me smoke a couple cigarettes as we continued to talk. When it became clear that there was nothing else to do in Calhoun, we said good-night. Yes there were a couple little smooches. It was nice. :^)

We've agreed to go hiking next weekend. SWEET! There I hope to get into the meat and potatoes of his personality. He's very quiet, very soft-spoken, and placid, so it was hard for me to read him. It's definitely going to be up to me to draw him out and figure out what makes him tick. I'm still not quite sure of what to make of him, but I know my opinion is greatly improved, because despite his seemingly very shy nature, we had a good two-sided conversation and he was very personable. I was a little concerned about his basic manliness, but that was put to rest when he said he remembered checking out my ass when I worked at Barnes and Noble. He was a little apologetic about that admission, but I wasn't offended - I'm proud of my ass and I'm glad he noticed it. :^)

So I had a good first date Friday, and I'm looking forward to more. But Saturday (my birthday) could have been a little bit better. I ran around all morning getting my Mom's birthday present wrapped (hers is tomorrow) and getting ready for the fundraiser. I stopped by my folks' house for a little while, where they gave me my birthday money (and the coolest toy ever - an indoor frisbee). Then came the fundraiser. Ugh.

I'll be brief because it's so depressing. Basically, the fundraiser was a disaster. Only 40 people showed up where they had 150 last year. I ended up being stuck behind the concession table for much of the show. I did get to see a good part of it, though, because Bumper (another member of the board) is a remarkably good man and very kindly took over my duties. He and my cousin Joseph were the only ones who seemed to care that it was my birthday. Thanks to those two wonderful boys I did have a decent time. But we're all very miffed at our executive director, because he dropped several balls in several courts and those dropped balls were a large part of why we had such a poor turn-out. So now we're having an emergency meeting tonight to figure out what we're going to do. Bleh.

Okay, so in tribute to Weak Handshake Dude, here's some Tom Waits: