So so so. Where was I? The cousins party was enjoyable, a little blip of family (nucleus, londons, little-seen collegiate cousins) and just otherness. In sequence, it was nicely symmetrical, bookended by the car trip with Carla and Josh (their relationship is exactly one day younger than mine) and nights at Delia's (Japanese dinner the second), with the centerpiece of the weekend clearly being a long swim (2/3 or 3/4 of a mile?) in the gorgeous lake at Ellin's place in Pound Ridge. Bathing suits and croquet and hard lemonade and septuagenarians.

I finished Lanark and started Into the Wild, which is a rather quicker read. Makes me want to be out there again. Sri 'Laska.

Brandon (tall spiky blonde from Three Against Four) and his girlfriend Dia came by Sunday (after a grocery-shopping dog-running odyssey in the Cambridge vicinity) for movies and dinner. A lengthy discussion of which movies to see (so much is out), and finally we headed for a theatre in West Newton, where Dan and Mami saw Amelie (at our urging, since they hadn't yet), Brandon saw About a Boy, Dia and I saw The Importance of being Earnest, and the girl at the counter gave me a discount on a chocolate-dipped frozen banana. The movie was entertaining, but not fantastic; the banana was pretty good, especially when it softened up a bit. The last five minutes of Amelie, which we snuck into, are the end of a fabulous film.

Dinner was the bounty of our Bread and Circus visit in the afternoon: salmon rubbed with some cajun salt stuff (saltay!) and corn with lime and chili powder, both done up on the grill outside, and both unbelievably tasty. We sat on the front steps eating, drinking wine out of the bottle, and watching a slug that crawled up onto the first step. It played with Dia's finger for a while. We fed it a few kernels of corn, which it readily devoured with its fascinating circular maw. It had a disturbingly large cavity in its side, which tiny aphids would periodically crawl inside. It tried to eat the corn remnants off an eaten cob.

Dan went to the hospital. He has gone several times in the last days: he cut his hand open Saturday on Beaner (the dog)'s tooth, went in and got four stitches. It was getting infected, so they opened it up again Sunday night. I stayed at home and watched Office Space, which was fun but not as original or irreverant as I sort of expected (certainly not as Beavis and Butthead). But I did go to bed before he came back from the hospital at 3:00. Yeesh.

He went in again twice today (Monday): in the afternoon and then again at 11 pm. Sounds like it's now starting to improve though. Hopefully he'll be able to play JBE gig on Wednesday.

I cleaned another bucket from the Neve (12 modules, 5 knobs each) while a flurry of activity went on around the house: Benny Herson's here to work on "The African Stuff," roommate has visiting guest, production assistant Alli was around again. I listened to Hank Williams and Aphex Twin, did laundry, read my book, played around with an effects unit as instructed. Talked to Benny about music and teaching.

Then bussed over to Becca's (via a long hot walk down Mass ave.) for dinner (orts! sweet yogurt salad dressing and cheeseless pizza-ish stuff. very tasty: baked sweet potato and guacamole.) And we danced the tango by fullmoonlight on a footbridge over the river, amid a crowd of standers and dancers. Some of them very good. Mara Gotscik happened by, dogwalking. A lady gave us tango pointers. Rebecca's friend Cynthia gave us free ice cream afterward.

There was some verbal sparring with Ruth back home and on the way over here, but mostly affable, just exhausted. I'm tired these days, I think.

I wish the milkman would deliver my milk
in the morning