When I was drinking, when I was with you

Sometimes, it really doesn't go how you planned. And sometimes, that's really pretty okay. So yesterday, John and I were supposed to go to Rhode Island. I am a big geek, and Block Island has this giant original fresnel lens, and I really wanted to see it in action. I still do. But that can wait till August or something. Anyway. To back up, I suppose, because I am near-incapable of telling a story without what I feel is the proper background, on the 4th, he and his brother rode their bikes over to pick me up, and go back to their parents house. I forgot how badly riding a motorcycle hurts my knee. Something about the angle, and how I have to use my legs to stay on. It's not even that long of a ride, I felt like a pretty big wuss. Anyway. At the house, we ate, all typical food, potato slad, macaroni salad, ribs, corn, such forth. It was good, informal. I always kind of worry about being an outsider, or something. I don't know. But his parents are kind of totally unfazed, and me showing up is sort of a non event. His dad was pretty solicitous and nice, getting me a chair and a plate and such, his mom jut kind of passed me a glass. I rather like the lack of fanfare. After everything was eaten and cleaned up we just hung out for a while. We were going to Roosevelt Island to watch the fireworks, but it was looking like rain, so we figured we didn't need to be ridiculously early. I went down to the basement and played with the ferrets for a bit, then back up to the kitchen to look at the fish tank there, with the seahorses. That was exciting. I don't think that I had ever actually seen seahorses before. I musst have seen them on tv at some point, and of course in illustration, but I'm not sure that I've ever seen them in person. Odd. Anyway. This is getting a lot more detailed than I intended. We piled into his brothers pathfinder, went down there, waited a couple of hours, got rained on pretty good, and saw a bunch of stuff explode. It was a good time. I think I still like the fireworks at the A's games better, but it was a pretty damn good show, and we were watching from a great place. We went back to the house, I was pretty tired and wanted to go home, but didn't want to say anything to that effect. John settled in a bit and made himself a sandwich, and since I didn't really want any of an untoasted cheese sandwich (and actually, I wasn't much hungry at all) his mom made and tossed at me a grilled cheese. I can't read her much at all, so I can't tell if she did it because she felt it was the right thing to do, because she likes me, or because she likes feeding people. Either way. We finally left and headed back to my apartment to sleep. Where we found Leslie had locked herself out. At the apartment, the front door has two locks, a lock and a deadbolt, and then you come up the stairs, and there's another door up there. It's kind of redundant, but whatever. I knew that it had a lock on it, and I had just kind of assumed that someone had a key for it. Apparently not. It was pouring rain outside, there was no way to get up to one of the windows, and the door opens inward, so we couldn't credit-card the lock, or take the hinges apart. Finally John just leaned on it enough, bent the jamb a little, and popped the lock out. Hooray.
We looked up ferry schedules to Block Island before going to sleep, they all seemed pretty weird, and a little hard to figure out, but we settled on an almost plan, and passed out. Of course, when we woke up, I didn't really want to go. I was tired, enjoying being curled up, and not really willing to move. So we lazed around until about 1, when John said "Pasta". And so we decided to go to Rhode Island, to find pasta. Silly? Maybe. I don't know, the lighthouse trip wasn't quite planned well enough, and this was perfect and weird and spontaneous, you know?
The drive up was uneventful, we hit some traffic but not much. I read aloud, we paused in Bridgeport to look a the outside of the condo he's looking at. I am unimpressed by the neighborhood, but reserve judgement until I see more of the town, and the inside of the place. We got to Newport at about 7:30, took forever to park, and started wandering. He was texting a friend of his who knows Rhode Island pretty well, asking for suggestions of places to go. We had passed a few italian places in a row while looking for parking, but they were kind of far off, and neither of us had eaten yet. No good. We went to the closest place that his friend had mentioned. It was great. The waitress was really nice , the food was fantastic, and we were both really hungry, and so actually fnished everything. We got spinach and artichoke ravioli, and calamari for appetizers. The ravioli were just about the best. They were I think breaded and fried? and crispy, with some sort of sauce. The calamari was solidly good, and came with a pretty good salsa type dip. I got linguini with red clam sauce. I wasn't quite sure about that, because I have very limited shellfish experience; baically I know that I like crab, dislike shrimp, and have never tried anything else. My mom is allergic to fish, so it was a really long time before I figured out that I liked fish in the first place, and I haven't really gotten around to figuring out if i like shellfish. Anyway. John got chicken alfredo or something. I forgot to try some, but he liked it. We were both pretty full, but I was curious about the desert menu, and they had creme brulee on it. Which I really like and haven't had in about 4 years. It was pretty fantastic.
We were all sorts of wiped out from the drive, and in mild food comas, and thinking about getting a hotel room and staying the night, but it's a tourist town, and everything seemed to be way expensive, so we just stopped at a bar for a while, and then headed back. The drive back was ridiculous. It was raining nearly the whole time, and there were stretches where it was so hard I couldn't see more than about 10 feet ahead. We stopped in Connecticut at a rest stop to pee, and get ice cream. There was this fantastic ice cream bar vending machine there, there you punch in what you want, and the lid of the freezer flips up, and this vacuum tube slides over, lowers down, suctions up the package, move it over to the opening, and drops it. I am easily fascinated in the first place, and it was midnight after a lot of driving. We hung out there for a bit, the rain had paused and it was actually a really warm, nice night. Then back on the road for another 2 hours. We found parking without too much aggravation (it is such hell to park in my neighborhood. I am so glad I don't have a car) though they would start ticketing for street sweeping at 9am. I thought it was kind of silly for him to come in, because he would have to get up that early, and he's working tonight at 7, until 7 am, and so should get a good amount of real sleep, and as nice as it is to have him here, neither of us sleeps very fitfully. He's like a giant space heater, and I steal blankets. But he made the point that he was already here, and that he's leaving to go on his motorcycle trip soon, and I am leaving for Camp before he gets back, so he wants to take advantage of the time we have now. Which was very sweet, and how could I tell him to go home then?
So he left a little before 9 this morning, I fell back asleep, and since I have nothing to do today, have been lying around watching Kids in the Hall dvds, and checking my email periodically. I should also fold my socks and put them away. I spent a day or so cleaning my room earlier this week, and now it's all nice and clear, and I'm making an effort to keep it that way.
I really like him. I'm excited about showing him around the Bay Area in august.