I had a great weekend. It was quite intensely social, and the introvert in me is now begging for some high-quality solitude, but it was a wonderful weekend.

On Saturday, Daniel and I attended Avi's Un-Valentine's/Housewarming/Yay-My-Novel's-Done party. Avi and Rom were fantastic hosts. And lots of fun people were there: Zed, and Jed, and Mary Anne, and Susan, and Tim, and Heather, and Frank Wu. And other people who do not, to my knowledge, have web pages, like Ben, who plays Balinese gamelan and is therefore cool in my book, and Alice(I think), who lectures on Near Eastern history and is also cool in my book, and Zed's girlfriend, who is not really named Pocahontas and is cool in my book. And Diana from my Clarion class, who is truly fabulous in my book, was there too!

And there was much talk about books, and writing, and music, and movies, and neo-Babylonians, and it was Good.

On Sunday, I was back at Avi's for a critique group meeting, while Daniel and Clarion Diana went shopping for a wool coat. (Diana is going to England in two weeks, and as an L.A. native, has no coat capable of coping with an English spring.) The meeting was good. I continue to be embarrassed by my ability to just not spot certain kinds of plot holes, especially in longer works. On the other hand, other members of the group have quite rigorous plot logic sensors, and I suppose if we all spotted the same things, there wouldn't be any need to have more than one person crit your work.

After the meeting, I hung around at Avi's, until Diana and Daniel returned victorious, with not one, but two, wool coats. And Diana's friends Sunny and Justin came over, and we ordered Zachary's pizza, and talked. We teased Diana about her current crush object, and attempted to analyze unspoken verbal cues in flirting. (All the men present agreed that if a woman told him that he made her feel "safe," that he would read that as the woman saying, "I don't want to sleep with you." But explaining why was harder.)

And then it got late, and Daniel and I toddled home and went to sleep.

A fun weekend. I wouldn't mind spending more that way.