My weekend with Jessi, Jewel

It's a fact that even Ripley would find hard to believe: I'd never been to a Jewel concert. I can say that in the past tense now, and it feels really good.

Here's the skinny: Last month Jessi (some of you know her as the girl I've been courting with varying degrees of success for months) instructed me to make sure I had January 23rd and 24th off from work. Why? Well, I wasn't totally sure.

All she told me was that she wanted me to attend the wedding of her friend from work on the afternoon of the 24th -- that was the extent of my information on the subject. I knew the who (though I didn't really know her), the what and the why. I didn't know the where, and that was a little odd.

That was the first mystery of many.

I kept asking why I needed free time on Friday, and she wouldn't sing. Finally Friday rolled around and she picked me up around five in the afternoon. That morning she left me a list of things I might need that included a passport or birth certificate.

Ok, who gets married in Canada (to my homosexual friends, my apologies)?

And so, we hopped in Rhonda (that's what we call her two-door Honda Civic) and headed south on I-75. Still listening to the Heroes soundtrack I got her, we arrived at the entrance to the Detroit-Windsor tunnel, paid the toll and answered the first of many questions from the border patrol.

The first one was the only one I cared about, though:

"What are your plans for the evening?"

Since Jessi was driving, it saved me the embarrassment (and possible incarceration) of shrugging my shoulders. Jessi told him that we were "going gambling", something I know now she doesn't even do -- unless you count dating chumps like me.

We arrived in Windsor around 7 p.m. and promptly made our way to probably the nicest restaurant I've ever been to. It was called Park Terrace (here's the virtual tour), comeplete with a dining area that overlooks the downtown Detroit Skyline, brighter than normal because of the North American International Auto Show at Cobo.

(Apart from the menu prices, this was my kind of joint. Everything they served was described in French and English. It gave me ample opportunity to show off my far above average French /r/.)

There were only five people in the restaurant at the time, so it was pretty quaint for a Friday night. The food at the Park Terrace was way out of my league, but I managed to eat some of it -- neither of us was as hungry as we should have been.

Somehow we managed to eat dessert (I always have room for cheesecake) and then our waitress, Dana, broke Park Terrace's zero tolerance no pet policy when she let the cat out of the bag.

Neither of us had our cell phones, so Jessi asked Dana for the time. It was later than she thought so she promptly asked how far it was to Caesar's Casino by foot (about four blocks as it turned out).

"You guys going to see Jewel?"

Not my Jewel. Not the Jewel that I've been in love with since I was 17. She wasn't in Windsor that night, was she? I knew she was supposed to be in Mt. Pleasant on Saturday, but I had no idea she was just a frigid quarter-mile swim across the Detroit river on Friday night.

Jessi, who told me earlier in the evening that we had to be at the Casino before 9 p.m. in order to get free five-dollar vouchers (she's an excellent liar), played it cool.

The look on her face was perfect. It was as if she was feigning embarassment that she took me to gamble in Windsor without knowledge of the concert. I took the bait, hook, line and sinker. I was actually trying not to make her feel bad for not knowing about the show, even though there was no knowledge on my side of the table.

After she paid the bill -- Lord only knows how much -- we ran (literally) down Riverside Street to Caesar's. The only problem, of course, was that I wasn't in as big of a hurry as she was. By this time it was past nine, and I just knew they wouldn't give us our five free bucks (and I was sure it was Canadian, any way).

We got to Caesar's and I nearly lost Jessi who, again, was running faster than me. I was, however, fast enough to breeze right by the 19-and-over sign that elicited a "stop young man!" call from a security guard. (Getting stopped for an I.D. check at a 19-and-over joint is a new low for me.)

Jessi made it to the box office, a country mile away from the actual venue, where she had two tickets for Jewel's acoustic set on reserve. She had been planning it for a couple months, and was sick that I would somehow find out. Apparently she had only told two people about it -- her mother and Jim Pope.

It was probably the most thoughtful thing anyone has ever done for me.

For as much money as she spent on the evening (I shudder to think of it), it crossed my mind that she must have paid off a roadie to have a seizure backstage or something. We were 25 minutes late and didn't miss a minute of the 90-minute set. And while she was paying him, she must have paid Jewel to sing my favorite song first (after a warm-up).

Throughout the show, I took stock of the males in the 5,000-seat auditorium at Caesar's and, much to my surprise, none of them looked like they wanted to be there. I wish I could have seen the faces of the people behind me, when Jessi told them that she surprised me with tickets to the concert. Their faces probably looked like the border patrol agent's on our return to Michigan. He asked where we'd been, and Jessi told him.

"Are you a fan?" he inquired. "No," she said. "But he is."

He tilted his head down to see me in the passenger seat and looked somewhat mortified. I was just sure he would tell us to pull over so some Homeland Security agent in his regimentals could check my manhood.

If you care, here was her set list for the evening:

1. Somewhere Over the Rainbow
2. Near You Always
3. Carnivore
4. Everything Breaks Sometime
5. Last Dance Rodeo
6. Life Uncommon
7. Hands
8. Boy Needs a Bike
9. Race Car Driver
10. Standing Sill
11. Perfectly Clear
12. The Shape of You
13. Intuition
14. Foolish Games
15. Little Sister
16. You Were Meant For Me
17. Who Will Save Your Soul
Encore
18. Angel Standing By
19. Chime Bells/Yodeling