I awoke not long after 7am, unable to sleep any more. So I took a shower and went to the White Spot (the only place open) and had a cup of remarkably good coffee and then to work. Evan had done Bn's night shift for some weird reason.
The phones attacked me mercilessly while at work. People were losing power and having to reconfigure their Windows 95 machines after the crashes that resulted. I wasn't being too helpful either. One woman must have called me back a dozen time. It was difficult to concentrate on my projects, which mostly concerned the Blue Penny Quarterly. I also updated the Virginians For Wilderness and Lobster Liberation Front Homepages. The latter is a frequent victim of neglect and relative HTML primitiveness (relative to my other pages).
At home I managed to nap until about 11:30pm.
So we three set out on foot, stopping by Liz West's apartment above the shops on University Avenue on the way. Liz West has an ancient house cat that is too cool for the likes of dorky little me.
The party on 15th Street was related to a UVA fraternity known as SERP, with which Jaques DeBouffert the artist/movie-maker/friend-of-the-Dynashack is affiliated. Last time I had anything to do with SERP was Halloween night, 1996, the most miserable night of my recent life. As you may recall, that was the night that operatives Big Fun battled with SERP in hand-to-hand combat on the no-mans-land in the front of the fraternity. Tonight things were much more civil and much less interesting. On the porch there was a keg of Natural Light, the single most horrible beer on God's green earth, and in the kitchen was a kiddie pool filled with hot water for chilled feet (everyone was required to take off their shoes). On a couch, I chatted some with some anonymous girl who was very enthusiastic about my status as an artist. She continued chatting with me while some diminutive frat boy climbed up on her lap facing her.
It wasn't such a great party, so Elizabeth, John and I headed back to the Dynashack. I was wide awake, but John was tired and he passed out. These days I can't just hang out in Elizabeth's room alone with her like I used to, so I went to bed. It was by now three or four in the morning.