a progressive date

You can stop me if you get sick of hearing this phrase someday, but for now, let me have my moment: I went on the most amazingly wonderful 9 hour date with Eli today/tonight! Its 1:30 a.m. and I'm just getting in!

It happened like this: Eli and I were texting this afternoon as I was trying to get a bit of work done, but was feeling incredibly distracted by the amazing day that was alluding me outside. We were sending back in forth those typical "whatareyoudoing?" texts, when he asked if I would be up to going on a walk at a local nature center. We agreed to meet at 4:30 and I literally didn't start fretting until 5 minutes before I had to walk out of the door when I realized that I was wearing a similar sweater to the one I wore on our first date, and that my jeans looked awkward with my tennis shoes, and that I just had to change clothes!

When we arrived at the nature center, we found out that it had closed early for a special event, and ended up heading to a huge park in the middle of the city. I dug around in my trunk until I found a dollar store frisbee that I always keep, and we headed to a clearing to toss around the frisbee and to talk. We're both excellent frisbee throwers, if I do say so myself, so we started challenging ourselves by throwing with our left hands until we mastered that as well, and then decided to walk and talk towards a soccer game that we saw going on earlier. As we approached, the guys were packing up, and we ended up in the parking lot near our cars watching people play with radio controlled model airplanes for a while.

From there, we decided that it'd be fun to grab dinner and a movie, since there was a new comedy out he was interested in, and we were both hungry. We had a great dinner, talked about some serious somber issues, and made it to the theater minutes before the film started. The movie was hilarious and we laughed and laughed, and he did this cute thing, where he'd lean in really close to make comments on the movie to me. I swear, every time his forehead touched part of mine, my heart would flutter.

The movie let out around 10 pm, and I figured that the night was over...but as we were walking towards the parking lot, he asked if I'd be up for playing a few games at Dave and Buster's and I happily obliged. So, we played and laughed like kids, and again, my heart fluttered every time he'd touch the small of my back, or put his hand on my shoulder to pull me in for a comment.

When we'd spent all of our money, and cashed in our game tickets, he said "What next?" and then suggested that we go out for drinks at a bar. So, I suggested one of my favorite places, that is super-casual since neither of us was dressed up.

I introduced him to his first frozen screwdriver, and he informed me that it just might be too "girlie" for him to consume in the future. We talked a lot about school and kept staring intently at one another throughout our conversations until I'd get nervous, smile, and look away before resuming eye contact.

We stayed at the bar until 1:00 a.m. and then he walked me to my car. As we were walking, he asked me if I had any idea when I woke up this morning that I'd have such a full day. When we reached my car, he gave me a huge hug--so that our frozen ears rubbed against each other, and told me that he had so much fun with me today.

The feelings are so mutual,

-L