Node is also -- and this is important -- fun.

JavaScript may not be your cup of tea, but CoffeeScript is a nice way to program. The community is great; pretty much all of the open source code is on GitHub and there's a strong "jump in and start hacking" vibe. You can do some really neat stuff with socket.io and a bunch of miscellaneous technology. Just jump in and start hacking. It's easy to learn a lot by accident this way.