Nancy and I talked it over and decided to go out on New Year’s evening 1/1/11. One of the things that struck me very early about Nancy was what a strategic thinker she was. Both of us talked about how going out New Year’s evening should be ideal as everyone else in the world were probably recovering from New Year’s Eve. Sheer brilliance!!
So I gave what Nancy and I might do on our first date some thought. Yes, I really DID give it a bit of thought. Note to men out there: When taking someone out for the first time DO give it a bit of thought. There is no down side to doing this but dare I say plenty of upside! We had already established our mutual love for all things cheese related, including fondue, so I embarked on a bold plan to have us go out to dinner at The Melting Pot for a cheesy, delicious fondue experience. In addition to a cheesy dining experience I was thinking that one of the movies we had been discussing in our conversations with one another might be a good idea. Yeees, I know, dinner and a movie, sounds generic and safe but wait…..read on.
The next evening that we spoke I put forth my idea of dinner at The Melting Pot and going to see a movie (today, neither one of us remember what the movie was that we intended to see that evening). The idea was well received but Nancy also suggested that we meet up first for a cuppa coffee at a little place we were both familiar with called Bipartisan Cafe. I thought this sounded like a great idea so I said sure. Little did I know that there were doins-a-foot to provide Nancy an escape plan from the date juuuust in case I turned out to be a dweeb. Bipartisan Cafe would provide that litmus test but clearly THAT did not happen! Thank goodness!
A couple of days passed and each of us was getting excited for the weekend to arrive so that we could finally meet in person and see where fate would take us. New Year’s Eve seemed simply uneventful ahead of the grand evening I had planned out. Finally the weekend arrived… 1/1/11. The day was fairly normal as Saturdays go, sleep in a bit, watch a bit of football, run a couple of errands, you know, normal stuff. Toward late afternoon I started to give some thought as to what I might wear that evening and… wait a minute… what was that… I definitely had a butterfly flutter through inside of me… Whoa! Nerves! How cuuuute!
We were to meet at six at Bipartisan Cafe and I DID NOT want to be late so I got all gussied up and left in plenty of time to get there a tad early. Note: now there were a shit ton of butterflies in me. I arrived at Bipartisan and found a small table at the front corner of the cafe. A place where I could be seen as well as see. A couple of minutes passed and I pretended to read the Willy Week. Then it happened, Nancy came around the corner outside and into view. I remember that moment today as vivid as if it happened just a few minutes ago. Her eyes met mine and she instantly lit up in a smile that made me all a flutter. The thing I noticed most of all about her was that when she smiled even her eyes smiled.
She came in and we hugged our hellos and confirmed that we were, in fact, who each other thought we were. You know… Hey Nancy…hey Mike… Hi, how are you, sigh, lets have a seat, yeah, ok… I guess neither one of us had prepared an opening script which I suppose is probably a good thing. Anyhoo, we just started chatting about everything from Ok Cupid, to New Year’s idiots the night before, to what wonderful pie they had in the case. It was as if we were old friends that had met up after a long, long time between seeing each other. She was very easy to have a conversation with and our conversation flowed delightfully. Then I said, “you want a coffee or anything” and she was all over that as it was a really cold night and a warm cuppa sounded like just the ticket right about now. Nancy had also walked to the cafe so she needed some warming up.
I had made reservations for our dinner to be at seven thirty so after we finished what was a refreshingly delicious cup of coffee we decided to head out to have din. I found out later that it was at this time she excused herself to go to the loo but actually went there to text her bestie that she need not worry about rescuing her as I seemed like a decent fellow. Whew! The Melting Pot in Portland is smack in the middle of downtown and wouldn’t you know it the freeway heading into downtown had some sort of major traffic problem and looked like a parking lot. I made the split second decision to take an alternate route that would actually take us into Washington state for a bit and get around all that traffic. Brilliant right?!?!? However, Nancy made a joke at the time about me kidnapping her and has not let me forget about that “detour” to this day.
We arrived at the restaurant and it turned out to be an oasis of subterranean warmth and coziness on a terribly cold evening. We ordered our first course which was cheese fondue of course (do you see a theme here) and continued to share a meal
that was quite to our liking. Our seat was an intimate little booth somewhat off to the side of the restaurant (someone was watching over me) and it lent itself to wonderful conversation, sharing laughs, and at times giving each other a somewhat inviting gaze. Looking back there were times during that meal where I very much wanted to lean over and give her a nice soft kiss as the booth had us sitting in close quarters next to one another. However, I said to myself… eassssy cowboy, don’t be quite so forward just yet and continued to enjoy our just being together there in the moment. Courses continued to come, we continued to laugh, talk, and say a lot of mmmms. So much so that time just seemed to stand still but it was getting quite late and we had more than missed the movie that we had intended to go see. Ohhhh well!! (To be continued)
–Mike
