Date 33 - A Day with Constantine

On Friday night Constantine and I made plans to hang out on Saturday. I mentioned I wanted to sleep in, and had errands to run, so we were set to meet at noon. Around 10, he texted me to see if I’d like to meet him at a board game café. The answer was an emphatic yes.

I did some laundry (For those of you keeping track of these sorts of things, this was only the second time I’ve done laundry in the 32 days of Lent. Ludicrous!) and had breakfast. I paced a bit and got distracted and looked up the address (but did not write it down) and drove Errol over to the café. I found parking, and decided to pay for it like an adult (boo) and then realized I’d forgotten the exact address. I went to the intersection, I knew the cross street, but wasn’t sure which side of the street it would be on. I wandered. I texted Giovanni (who had taken one of his dates there), I texted Constantine. He replied that the place was difficult to find. He came out onto the street and waved at me. Then he disappeared. I nearly didn’t find it. Just a small sign made out of blocks in the front window, and a tricky confluence of doors.

At last, I was in! I greeted Constantine, and the barista (who I will have to call Barry, but I never actually got his name). I ordered hot chocolate and a bowl of candies and Barry started the clock on our game time (because you pay by the hour).

We started with Bananagrams. I love that game, and we were relatively well-matched. He won both times we played, but it was close. Or maybe he’s really good at letting me feel like I could have won. Either way, it was good.

Then we played a language-learning version of Spot It, which was fun and I think more difficult than the regular one. There was also a weird game about catching prawns that was a lot like Spot It, but involved a squeak toy starfish. And we just rolled with it.

We went even quirkier with the next game, opting to play Exploding Kittens. We laughed, he won.

I taught him to play Sequence, and he caught on fairly quickly, but I managed to eke out my first win.

By this time, the meter on my parking was almost up and we’d been there for nearly three hours. Constantine settled the tab with Barry, and we emerged into the dismally grey day.

We couldn’t really think of anything else to do. Constantine is still fairly new in town, and I do not think well under scrutiny. We walked to Errol and chatted a bit more. Neither of us had plans or ideas. So I just started driving. I headed West, with a fuzzy idea of driving out to city limits and finding somewhere to take a walk. If Constantine was worried that I was kidnapping him, he was supremely nonchalant.

We talked and I drove. In a random suburb that I had a good feeling about, I turned. Just ahead was the entrance to a wetland park. The sun was shining gloriously out in the ‘burbs and we meandered through the park for hours. We talked practically nonstop the entire time. When I realized that I was starting to feel tired, and definitely had to pee, we decided to go get food.

On the way out of downtown we had passed one of the best Vietnamese restaurants in the city. So we retraced our route and stopped there for dinner. I had curry and (Wonder of wonders!) managed not to spill any on my white shirt. Yay! Constantine paid for our dinner, and we returned to Errol.

All the cool kids are playing it

Again, neither of us had plans or ideas. So I drove. I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do, but I had food in my belly and good company, so I drove home. I put the kettle on and we had tea and talked. I took out my crib board and taught him to play cribbage. He is terribly bright, and caught on quickly, but he also brought some questions to my attention that I’d never really thought about before. Turns out cribbage is a weird game, if you think about it. The counting system is odd as hell, and some of the rules seem totally arbitrary. Maybe I’m just a bad teacher. Still, we made it through a couple of games before my roommate came home.

We switched games after a while to a simple one where one person draws out the title of a song and the other person has to guess what it is. Constantine’s art skills far outstripped mine (bad stick men, for the most part), but it was a lot of fun. Any of the drawings that I do (like Emily playing Jeopardy, or Constantine as a wizard) take a lot of time and usually a copy-infringing amount of tracing. It takes a real artist to draw out Smells like Teen Spirit in under a minute and have someone guess it. Kid’s got skills.

Probably my only good one



3 song titles here, if you want to guess them

When I could feel my energy levels totally winding down, I asked if Constantine wanted a ride home. Subtle, I know. He said he’d prefer to walk, and he hugged me goodnight. I thanked him for a lovely day. It was nearly 9:40pm. My math-inclined friends tell me that was more than a 9.5 hour long date. People run marathons in less time than that. Weirdos.