Our Birmingham Date

This has been such an eventful weekend! With my party Friday night and my date with Alex yesterday I'm exhausted. I know I've already blogged about my party, but I thought I'd give an update on my Birmingham date with Alex yesterday.

Alex is always stuck at the bar so when I started planning this date, I wanted to go all out since I'd be pulling him away from the bar for the night. About a month ago, I saw an advertisement on TV for "The Rat Pack" coming to the BJCC this weekend. Obviously, all of the original players are dead so I was a little skeptical about it. I did some research and read some reviews and this particular traveling show had some wonderful reviews, plus it was part of the Broadway Series and all of those shows have been amazing. Anyway, Alex and I are both huge Rat Pack fans. Being a dancer, I have always loved that time period and all of the music. I would have loved to been alive during that time period - guys wearing suits all the time, girls wearing dresses, going to shows and to dinner and dancing - I love it! A few years ago, for my birthday, Alex made me dinner at his apartment and when I walked in, he had the Rat Pack playing from his computer. Alex is a very multi-faceted guy and continues to surprise me every day. This was something I never expected. This is the guy that usually listened to the heavy stuff, but that night I learned that he LOVED the Rat Pack and to my surprise had many songs on his computer by them. Every once in a while in the car, Frank, Sammy, or Dean will come up on shuffle and we both start singing and we usually bring up the discussion about how we both adore their music. It's one thing that we do have in common :) So, when I saw that this show was pretty well reviewed I decided we had to go. I bought tickets and told him he had to get off that night so we could go see something in Birmingham, but I wouldn't tell him what we were seeing. We do a lot of surprises for each other, and most of the time we go on the honor system - you can probably peek around and figure it out, but if you do, you've ruined your surprise so I was hoping he wouldn't go searching for it.

After I booked the concert, I decided I'd take him to dinner beforehand and we'd make a date out of it. Besides our love for the Rat Pack, Alex and I also share a love of fine dining. We both love getting dressed up and going out to a fancy restaraunt. Since we've exhausted pretty much every location in Tuscaloosa, I decided to do some research and find a really cool restaraunt in Birmingham. I didn't really want to do a chain and I wanted an upscale, preferably Italian, restaraunt. I spent about two weeks researching to find the perfect place that wasn't too quaint, but not TOO modern that we would feel out of place. Since we were going to the see "The Rat Pack", I wanted something classic that would fit right along with that theme. After some research on the internet, I found this place called Nonna's Ristorante Italiano. Their website was very neat, the menu was gourmet, but not too over the top, and best of all the place was gorgeous and very classic. It was exactly what I was looking for! I called the place and got us reservations for 6:00.

As I mentioned before, Alex and I do a lot of surprises for each other and one of our favorite things to do is to drop enough hints that keeps the other thinking about it, but not enough for them to actually figure it out so of course, I hung this over Alex's head for the entire month. I had told all my friends, his friends, and even his parents and they all thought it would be something he'd really like so I was pretty confident about it. This time, since everyone else was in on the secret, they gave him a hard time about it too :) At my party on Friday night, Frank Sinatra started playing and he actually mentioned how much he loved The Rat Pack and everyone kinda smiled cause they knew about the date :)

I told Alex that we'd have to leave the house by 5:00 to get to the restaraunt by 6. I was ready about 4:30, but Alex wasn't even up yet. Thankfully it doesn't take him long and he called about 5 till 5:00 saying he was ready and he was heading to pick me up. A few seconds later, I get a phone call saying he can't find his house keys, which I had on my key chain because I had came back to his apartment on Friday night while he was cleaning up. So, I headed over to his apartment to give him his keys. It was a few minutes after 5 when we got to the car and headed out. He then remembered he forgot his jacket, so we had to turn around and get it. We would have been fine, but of course traffic was horrible so when we saw it was getting close to 6 and we were no where near, I called the restaraunt and pushed our reservations back to 6:30.

We got there about 6:15 and were seated right away. Alex ordered Procuitto wrapped Scallops and I got a seafood pasta. The food was absolutely amazing and we were completely stuffed by the time we finished. During the dinner, we actually started talking about the Rat Pack so I was excited about the rest of the night. We headed out of the restarant about 7:30 towards the civic center. I had printed out directions that said it was only about 12 minutes away, so we thought we'd be there in plenty of time for the show to start at 8. At this point, he still had no idea what we were going to see and I was going to wait until we got seated and the curtains opened to hand him his program. However, some how we missed the turn for the civic center, went way past and had to turn around. By the time we'd parked and walked to the civic center, it was like 8:15. I was so upset because I had meticulously planned this date and I was worried it was ruined. We checked in with our tickets and they handed Alex the programs. Not exactly what I had hoped, but we were so late I was just ready to get inside. While we were walking around the world to get to the portal for our seats, he was looking at the programs. I'm not sure he knew what exactly to expect when we got in there. He just kept saying it was awesome, but he wasn't that convincing yet.

When we got in there and got to our seats (third row on the end, which were perfect because it curved right up to the stage) we'd only missed two songs. Once we got in there, he was smiling from ear to ear and kept thanking me and saying "This is awesome" (this time I was convinced). The first act was absolutely amazing, the guys looked and sounded like the real players and it was neat to see what a show would have been like. Not only were they wonderful musicians, they were amazing performers and always kept the crowd laughing. During intermission, Alex got a glass of wine (he was so excited that you could drink wine during a show) and he kept telling me how he was loving it. We then decided after the show, we were going to do desserts at the Cheesecake Factory. During the second act, they did a lot of our favorite songs including "our song" so we had an amazing time.

I had made him turn his phone off so that he wouldn't be bothered by the bar all night so he turned it on when we got out of the show. Of course he had several messages so the whole way back to the car, he called people and I was excited because he kept telling everybody how amazing it was. So we got back to the car and headed to the Cheesecake Factory. I unfortunately did not plan this part so I had no directions so Alex called one of his friends. He told us directions but somehow we missed a turn or something and we spent a good while driving trying to figure it out, which was totally okay because we were enjoying music by the Rat Pack from the Ipod :) We finally figured out the directions and got to the Cheesecake Factory. Since it was almost time for them to close, we got a table right away. We ordered our favorite appetizers: fried mac and cheese, and spinach and artichoke dip. As always, it was way too much for us to eat but we tried! Alex ordered his usual "Well-Mannered" Dirty Martini. After we finished appetizers, we got a piece of my favorite cheesecake - the Godiva Chocolate Cheesecake YUM :) Alex was almost finished with his martini, and accidentally bumped the glass. The glass of course tipped over and spilled but when it hit the table it shattered into a million pieces! There was a waitress at the next table that was even like I have no idea how that happened - I can understand it spilling but I have never seen it explode like that. The manager came over and apologized and Alex got a full, fresh (and free) martini. Bless his heart, he couldn't even finish the second one but at least they didn't charge him again :) Alex, being stubborn as usual, insisted he pay for this part since I had paid for the rest and then we headed back to T-town. When we got back, we stopped in the bar to check on things but we were so tired, we didn't stay long. We went back to his apartment and attempted to watch a movie but we were both too sleepy to make it through the whole thing :(.

Needless to say, despite all the little mishaps, the date went wonderfully and we both had an amazing time!

Well I'm exhausted and it looks like Mardi Gras has exploded in my apartment with all the party decorations from the other night so I'm going to do some cleaning and get ready for yet another busy week (and my birthday on Wednesday :)).

Have a happy Sunday!

Maegan