Janet McI. Williams is perfect. Her students flock to her with this sort of incredible devotion born of countless hours of nature walks, poring over natural history texts and sketches, lovely little chats and peanut butter sandwiches. They are brought together with the love of something both arcane and universal, and they keep coming back. A 1999 graduate was back Friday morning, and she and I were at first the only students on the walk. Others gradually trickled in, and we spent the time mostly talking about sounds rather than sights; whistles and rasps and squirps, and a circling, soaring red-winged hawk flew over several times. In my hour and a half of legroom, I made enough dough for two pie crusts, but I supplemented with half as much again after class got out. A sorting out of recipe ideas and a trip to the co-op for ingredients (three blocks of gruyere, a yam, bacon!) and there was already no question of finding time to practice or read before dinner was over.

I made three quiches, cobbling together recipes from the VegEpII, the Moosewood, various online sources, and my own harebrained ideas. Number one was the most ordinary, but essentially without a recipe: spinach, bacon, and sauteéd onions. Two was a liberal adaptation featuring garlic-basil feta, chêvre, and broccoli. Three was the most experimental, but the one that most closely followed a recipe - sweet potato, carrot, and corn (my only substition - for cranberries), with a generous amount of sugar - the VegEp said it would be "sweet and savory," but I think it falls pretty indisputably in the latter category. It was dubbed a dessert quiche, or a cornbread pudding. The first obstacle was pre-baking the crusts. I tried to use our new candy thermometer to ensure that our inconsistent oven wasn't putting me on too much; but I'm not sure how well that work. I was supposed to line each crust with foil and weight it down with beans or rice, but rather than use up those precious commodities, Rae suggested I just stack them inside one another, with a saucepan on top (I weighted that down with a candle.) Before the eight minutes at 450° were up, tons of smoke had started leaking out of the oven - it wasn't the crusts, but some gunk on the bottom of the stove, which I had a semi-successful time scraping off. That accomplished, the crusts looking somewhat the worse for wear, I moved on to trying to parse out fillings. As this was going on, also, I was cracking up at wsrn, where Rob had succeeded a professor's soul show (James Brown to the O'Jays to Alicia Keyes covering Prince) along with his 'sister' Lil' Cox ("she knows it's not hip-hop, but she wants to hear some Moxy Fruvious" "brigi-I mean lil' cox") and wreaked idiosyncratic havoc on the twiddlers and noise effects. I supplanted that with Oranges and Lemons, and then a bit of Party Music, which is quite good.

All through the preparations, people showed up fairly regularly. Ben was first, checking in around three o'clock with a stack of 50 discs to burn, and took up occupancy in my room. I hadn't invited him before, but he stuck around for dinner too. Then Alyssa, with a person, as promised - Claire, a woman too, which helped a bit with the gender balance (she also helped a bit with putting up posters and other handimanstuff.) Joel went out shopping with Rae (seems to be taking over for me) and in the interim his twin Jacob arrived, fresh from New Haven, and with no idea what he was getting himself into. Then the rest of my roommates, and Mark Angelillo and Buffalonian Ed Stehlik, he of the kinky perhaps doomed hair, fortuitous dip encounters, cercle iterating, quiche-party inspiring, bearing Genuardi's cheesecake and Oreo ice cream. With Gabe (impeccably arriving about fifteen minutes before dinner - not unreasonably late at 9:20 for an 8:00 invitation time), we made eleven, certainly our largest dinner-party crowd ever. I love these things not least for the way that everyone shows up expecting dinner, and then ends up helping to prepare it before they can eat. The energy was so high and rampant, especially after Ben suggested some salsa, and Cubanismo! had the whole flat bootyshaking, even when the kitchen was full to the brim with seven or eight people at a time, all reaching for different jars and cupboard doors and implements in an intricate tangle of arms and spirit.

We ate at our leisure too, entertained by Claire's attempts to re-enact eating yogurt with spoon and no hands. Joel whipped up some puttanesca spirals for the vegan, and Alyssa and I concocted a last-minute green honey salad that Ben called "great" in his last entry. There were also three and a half bottles of wine consumed - one provided by Gabe and two by my folks (I had to stop Claire from going for a fourth.) I had several glasses as well, which made things even more amusing. Ben's subtle suggestions controlled the flow of the evening - he requested [P-]funk to replace my dinner-Blakey, and then ChemBros after that (forgetting about Hot Fudge Petar Split); as well as deciding the game for the evening: lunch money. It took a while to get off the ground, with a large unruly group (and flagrantly drunk Nori, who whined needlessly later about her flirtatious tendencies), but it made a predictably spirited game, with Ed and playground pimpstress Joeletta teaming up against the unrepentant SupaDyke, while we all picked sensei Rebecca off early. I made a serious of African references, starting with the [Nigerian] Stomp, and made "bah-yah" the catchphrase for the game ("and close." "and you hold!"), managed to stay in the game until right until the end, despite much early loss of life and a cruel backstabbing kick from my sweetheart MaryBelle - I probably would have won if I hadn't neglected to trade in all five of my attack cards when I had one life left and it was down to me and Joel. And that was accompanied with the most appropriate little-schoolgirls-beating-each-other-up soundtrack: Bis' Teen-C Power and Intendo. Stars came on after, with the gorgeous "Tonight" among others. We were rather tired, so as soon as Ben finished burning his last CD-R for the night, we put the bed to another use.

someone tell me why i do the things that i don't wanna do
when you're around me
i'm somebody else