Went to a wedding in San Francisco last night. Lovely ceremony, including a few guests doing a beautiful live performance of one of my favorite Magnetic Fields songs, "The Book of Love". It was amusing to hear people in the audience laugh at the funny lines, as I had to remind myself that not everyone knows that song by heart. The brides were beautiful, the toasts were heartfelt, and the bar was open. What's not to like?

Most of the guests were friends of the brides from various dancing communities (Many kinds of dance. There was even Morris dancing at the wedding. Complete with stick-clattering. 'nough said), so I had doubts about, ah, my ability to enjoy table conversation. Dancing doesn't do much for me. I recognize this as a failing within myself, a place where my critical/aesthetic faculties are broken, so there's no need to chime into the comments with explanations as to why dancing of whichever variety is really quite wonderful; I've heard it all before, and it doesn't help. I just don't get dancing, whether I'm watching it, doing it, or talking about it.

Fortunately, there was only one brief bit of "Oh, you can do the English country dance, really it's easy," in which I managed to refrain from answering "I don't care if it's easy -- fear of failure isn't the reason I'm refusing to take part." But that passed, and then I realized I was seated primarily with a different demographic -- the folks from Last Gasp, the publisher/distributor where one of the brides works. I finally met their leader Ron, whom I only knew previously by reputation and from his appearances in Dori Seda comics. I wound up talking a fair bit to local underground literary legend (and Last Gasp editor) Bucky Sinister. It perked me up to hear someone at the other end of the table bitching about publishing, the sophomore-book slump, the small press vs. the big press, etc., so I introduced myself and joined in. It was fun, and I had a better time than I was expecting. Really a good night.

I didn't get a lick of writing work done yesterday, though (the wedding was earlier than we thought, so part of my afternoon disappeared). Today isn't looking all that promising writing-wise, either --Heather and I leave for our writing group meeting at 2, and it usually runs well on into the night. Ah, well. I'll be virtuous next week. Being social animals is important, too.