Last night was the Feast of Words. I've been planning it for weeks, ever since I found out The Hobbit would be in town this weekend. It went off very well - I had originally intended to prepare Osso Buco and read Billy Collins' poem of the same name. However, the local restaurant didn't have veal shanks, so that was impossible. Instead, I faked it and made jambalaya instead. (I still read that poem.)

The Hobbit provided several excellent bottles of wine, and read a bit of Iago's lecturing Casio about wine. nephandi brought really amazing cod-and-potato fritters, and read a cod-related piece of Ben Franklin's autobiography. My upstairs neighbor, Filthy Charles went with the fish theme, and read an essay on how to catch a Great White Shark from the Action Hero's Handbook. Lastly, we had rocky road ice-cream for dessert, and cacofunny recited Weird Al's "I love Rocky Road" - though it took us a while to figure out that's what it was, we all thought it was a serious poem.

Several invitees did not attend, in some cases without explanation, warning, or apology; and this despite asking people to only accept the invitation if they would really make an effort to attend. While this is vastly insulting to me - it did serve the purpose of illustrating to the Hobbit something I've been kvetching about since I moved here two years ago ... there are simply different standards of etiquette here in LA. I could simmer over the insult offered, but instead, I'm going to concentrate on the good; Mark and I will be laughing about this illustration of the flake-factor for years to come - and that's even better than if everyone had showed up after all.

Today we're seriously well-fed from last night, and brunch on the boardwalk. I'm feeling torpid and lazy - a lot like a cat on an electric blanket. I have first hand evidence of what that looks like, because my cat has figured out how to turn the electric blanket on for herself, and happily occupies it as soon as I leave the apartment.