some days, it's a good day to yawn. that was yesterday. oh, actually, that seems like such a long time ago. i was going to write this then, but other things intervened. so rather than a confusing partial jump back before true narrative start, i'd better just pick up where i left off. which was, let's see, thursday night.

i spent substantial periods of time on friday, saturday, and sunday cleaning up my room. more straightening than cleaning. it was never all that disordered, really, and hence i didn't change all that much, but it was a slow, constant, occasionally regressive, and fully satisfying process of picking things up, reallocating homespaces for items, making much use of the shelf in my closet, and so forth. post-party, i was able to replace the faulty blue string-lights with a red string, but i switched half of the red bulbs for blue.

friday was a one-thing-leads-to-another afternoon (in the way of all good fridays); mostly things led to the susie ibarra workshop in the afterlunch. that was made strange by a handful of obnoxious and inexplicable men in the audience who asked inane questions and told susie how she felt and were basically demeaning. she took it fairly well, and i think things got better in the latter portion, when i engaged her in a discussion of music past and present, as context and influences. she was reluctant to address groove (or rocking out), and made intriguingly little distinction between playing for herself and an audience. her freeform/conscious improvised pieces were really fascinating and magical. i played briefly too, at the end.

the next order of business was coordinating my way in to philly, with alyssa at the wheel of laurel's ride, to meet with my mother. after the parking hurdle, we came upon the lady facing towards the window upstairs at alma (which you might have noticed from my review i thought was fabulous.) that was really great. ma et moi split the grapefruit/scallop ceviche, sugarcane-skewered ahi tuna with some spinach and stuff, and a braised crispy duck dish which included the foie gras flan i mentioned. all of these things were perfectly delectable. food can be so transcendent. (if also, as mentioned, so dull.) conversation was good too - jargon [problematize, like], cycometrics, hetlands. the return trip featured the terrible jersey trap, but we did make it back of a piece.

it was raining and it was hard to find the party, but we did catch the tail end of stef/zab's eroticookie do, the part where they were watching hedwig in the sccs media lounge. i liked (the second half of) the movie much more than the last time i saw it. mom liked it too, and so did dale and others. hum, hum, it's late.

saturday, oh yes, we had breakfast and shopping. a goodwill goldmine. there was a fantastic pair of pink sneakers that were sadly a size too small for me. but i did find a pink jacket and a brilliant pair of pink pants and a tight little white and pink striped shirt that turned out to pick up the blacklight. mark also got a pink jacket, of exactly the same cut as mine, and a pink shirt to wear with the pink pants he borrowed. at the party, ben borrowed my pink ruffled tux shirt. but nobody wore my favorite pink shirt from trinity. we also bought two orange (well, yes) armchairs for the hall. the theme of the party, by the way, was "orange vs. pink: who will win." i put up big pieces of posterboard in sharples to that effect, but they were gone by breakfast the next morning. mark said at the end that orange won. too bad kate duffy wasn't there. i hate pink.

next stop was bjs, where we spent over ninety bucks but thirty of it on two black lights and the rest on a lot of food, such that we only then needed ice and sherbert (genuardi's) and ginger ale (target) for the punch. the produce guy was, sadly, no help, and neither was the party store where swatties get a discount apparently. that was a lot of shopping for one day, with your mother tagging along and listening to chillout and tobin between stops. it was gorgeous out too.

next item: susie ibarra's performance, as predictable, was neither very performative nor very grooving (only the first and last selections had definable grooves, and they had some difficulty keeping them together.) there's no question about inventiveness or virtuousity though. mom had a hard time with it, and i did too in places. ben's good advice: "you can't think of it as music." he networked while i simultaneously spoiled and arranged my dinner.

which was, as he said, "sausage-heavy" - but not necessarily a bad thing; with matt, joel, ben, ester, me, and my mom, the dynamic was about as you'd expect. political, rubin irrepressible. jewish issues and so on. jappetizers and sushi, with orts.

and then the party. like, nobody was there for the first, like, forty-five minutes at least, after we'd blown up the balloons, cut the fruit, strung lights and pumped willets full of "brainfreeze," "just a friend," and the lrd mix of "sleep on the left side." p-funk, blackalicious, and tom tom club wasted on an empty room. but it picked up, as it always does. it just took longer than typical, dunno why. also, we never had any PAs. who cares. it was a hit, i think - they dug the clothes, the tunes, the space for dancing. thank goodness for dry saturday. the technics worked beautifully too. highlights: early "around the world." "are you gonna go my way." a great "big yellow taxi" mix (finally). "lazy" > "disco 2000." "around the way girl" > "boogie on reggae woman" > "worst comes to worst" > "i forgot to be your lover" > "enjoy the silence" [instrumental remix, ben's doing] > "i'm a vampire."

that last was when it was mostly just rabi and roban (and ben and me.) she held up her braids when l.l. said "i need a girl with extensions in her hair," and she and i swooped and spun as claudia sang "i have ever so much money, i'm gorgeous and i can fly." the two of them were there for almost the entire party. hooray. jedd, too, gets big dancing points, as usual. who else? freshman groups, birthday-addie sans chums, people loitering outside, the L3ers, mary harrison and co. (incl. breakdancers) at the bitter end to get down to my blackout and macy 12"s. and my mom, about whom see ben's entry. and hannah and crew.

hannah. okay, this part was cool. maybe halfway through, she disappeared behind a curtain, not conspicuously or deliberately or anything, just to get some air. i happened to notice, and so went around outside and climbed in the window and we kissed. fantastic! funny thing was (or one them) - it was only maybe twenty feet from where alyssa and i kissed for the first time. and exactly two weeks after i said to myself: "two weeks…" another funny thing - the first person to find out was my mother (the next morning), because she asked.

it would have been nice to see more people, but on the whole the party was absolutely successful. music was great - mark, ben, and i for the most part switched around after only one or two songs, flowing very organically. we seemed to have the right amount of food, if too much punch maybe. and there wasn't even much cleaning up to do. we were in bed by 2:30.

i must stop this entry soon, because it's late in several senses. sunday, then, briefly: breakfast outside with ester and skelly; the arboretum garden and a taxi for mom; superterrific make-up yoga class, only seven people and focus on 'restorative' asanas, relaxing and deep breathing; practicing and dinner; and some time with the girl: we lost her earring (it's since been regained) in the nason garden, left lang before klezmer, and hung out here for the duration of quiet is the new loud, which of course prompted a discussion about scandinavia and travel. she thinks i'm weird. she thinks she's normal. i'm not writing about this now.

how can you lie there and think of england
when you don't even know who's in the team