December 18, 2002 | 9:26 AM

 Holiday in Rhode Island by The Softies

Your eyes are like poetry
Your lips are so sugary
You�re altogether wonderful to behold...
I�ve been thinking about you and only you

Twee pop. Cuddle core. K Records alumni, the Softies exemplify that genre perhaps better than any other band inspired by Calvin Johnson�s utopian vision of candy hearts and stuffed bunnies.

The alternately shy, passionate, and despairing lyrics float like snowflakes over a vast expanse of shimmery guitar and earnest school girl vocals. Holiday in Rhode Island is a great big construction paper valentine of a record. Unabashedly sincere and unaffected, like a super smart seventh grader�s love letter to the geeky boy who sits behind her in biology class.

Although I wasn�t listening to this album at the time, it is the soundtrack for my memory of the vacation John and I took to Providence Rhode Island in January of 2000. We wanted to get away together and a little jaunt across state lines was all we could afford. It was the dead of winter and colder than a witch�s teat (I�ve always been oddly fond of that expression but anyway...) We stayed three days in a 1970�s era Holiday Inn and did nothing but fool around in bed, drink Luna Di Luna, shop for silly knick-knacks at OOP, and go swimming in the indoor pool. It ranks right up there as being one of the best times of my life.

I remember eating dinner in the tacky hotel restaurant and just staring at each other across the table in that super goofy way you do when you�re just so out of this world in love with somebody. We had been together for four years at that point, and had gone through a lot of shit so it wasn�t just puppy love or that first blushing crush. We were soul mates and we were really really happy.

It was heavenly.

It�s a couple of years later now and a line from this record haunts the chambers of my heart like a belligerent ghost

I wish I could draw a line
Through all of 1999
All except that moment in the spring
When I had everything.

In my case, it was winter of 2000, but you know�same difference.