I am a disappointment...

I was at the coffee shop in Inver Grove Heights yesterday, waiting for Eryn’s school to let out as I'm solo this week and she doesn't have after school care on Fridays.  Not to mention, I needed to pick her up and get her home so we could go to dinner before she went to see Tracy Grammer at the Landmark Center with my folks.  So I was sitting there working, as the whole reason for going to the coffee shop was to avoid the twenty minute late-day walk into work from the fifth parking lot, almost beyond the bunker, at 2:00 p.m. after my doc appointment, only to have to turn around and walk back out to go pick her up.  Seemed appropriate to use that saved forty minutes to do a bit of work if that was my rationale.  I could have used my handicapped permit to get within minutes of the door, but despite that it's good through December, I quit using it long ago in order to exercise the leg and because someone who's really handicapped, not merely uncomfortable, might need the spot.

Anyway, I was sitting there with my laptop and coffee when a very attractive Korean woman walks into the cafe.  I'd put her at about 28.  I looked at her and was surprised when she looked back at me intently, checking me out.  Then, rather then just look away, she gave me an obvious look of disapproval, as though I'd somehow let her down.  Really let her down. I actually felt sort of bad, like I'd disgusted her in a palpable way.  She hesitated for a moment, as though she were going to talk to me, and then she looked over my shoulder and visibly relaxed.  After she walks past me and sits down, I take a look, and realize she was checking out the guy at the next table who was much younger and, dare I say, much more attractive, than me.  If you're into muscled, hunky, mid- to upper-twenties types.

They chat for a while, and I realize that perhaps they're on a blind date.  So the disgust and relief are presumably over me as a potential date, and him as the obvious date.  I'd feel bad, but I’m rationalizing it by assuming it was my gold wedding ring which earned her disapproval.  Or that I was obviously doing work while waiting for her to show up for our date, rather than sitting around nervously.