friendship and nature and old stuff and cats!

this post got long. whoops

i spent nearly the whole day yesterday with my best friend!! i had a rly nice time :-) i don't think ive had a day like that in quite a while

id been craving some outdoors time, so i suggested that we go to a park. the weather ended up being a little rough for that (heavy storms in the morning and afternoon), but we managed to sneak in during a gap in the rain so we could walk a short trail. there isn't a lot of greenery in my area yet, but there were some interesting mushrooms and patches of moss. the branches and logs crisscrossed in rly interesting ways, too, kinda foreboding and intricate. the trail looped around the graveyard, where i learned that people leave coins on gravestones sometime

we had a funny moment where we both heard bird song, took out our phones at the exact same time so we could try to merlin ID it, then stopped our recording at the same time. truly in sync. we had a nice conversation on the way there, too. we talked about things like what it means to miss someone, what it's like to experience faith/belief in a higher power, and some dorky nerd stuff (as always)

then we went to a main event: an antiquing place that, despite seeming large to me, was apparently the smallest one in the area!! it was organized by seller: each vendor had a locked case or an alcove you could wander freely. they were roughly organized by type, but especially the unlocked ones were a mishmash of different things back to back (or sometimes even within the same booth). i saw an enormous amount of cool things. id never been antiquing before, but i can see why my friend likes it. it's autistic paradise. i rly enjoyed looking at collections of jewelry and poking through stacks of kids' books. i wanted to get my headspace kids a plushie, but i couldn't find anything that suited them. they mostly had bears on offer, and they're not super into bears. maybe sometime i'll get lucky and find a sea creature. that they'd really like

i was charmed by this sign about testing radios

and here's the stuff from my haul!

this last book (below) is my favorite of everything: it's a kids' science book from 1973, and it includes the library due date records from the 90s!

then we got takeout together and hung out at his place. my friend recently got a sunroom added to his house, so we sat in there in the evening with the lights off while the rain pounded on the roof. really lovely atmosphere, all dark and blue with the sun having just set. im excited to sleep in there on some of the warmer nights

oh! my friend got a distortion pedal, which was a gamble since we couldn't test it before buying it. but it worked! it sounded really good, and im excited to hear him use it more. we made vague plans to teach me how to play bass sometime in the future. it would be really cool to learn an instrument with no pressure to do well or have an end goal other than experiencing the process

and that was my day!! i was tempted to ask to sleep over, but i wasn't prepared, and i knew it would be smart to get good sleep. we'll see each other again on tuesday, and then we'll be quarantining for a while. it was nice to walk around places and hold hands and just talk for hours. it's v rare that we get to do that