1) First, a doughnut brunch. Fresh and hot homemade doughnuts made by the host right there in his own little fryolator thingy, prosecco, berries, ham, sausage, and mostly very few people I know. Conversation covered travel plans, South America, driving directions in Maine, and New Year's on Cape Cod. Someone was wearing a marvelous cologne, and it reminded me of a bit of dialogue from my beloved Rope:
Janet: "You smell dreamy! What is it?"
Brandon: "Oh, a bottle of that swill you gave me last Christmas."
2) Then a much larger open house, full of friends too rarely seen - and also prosecco, Egg Thing, and a sumptuous array of carbohydrates. At one point a friend and I carried our glasses to the top of the stairs for a quiet chat. I ended up staying much longer than expected.
3) This evening has been full of reminders that it's Mercury retrograde - lots of problems with communications:
- First, after sending an email, I get an auto-response that it's been rejected because it's considered spam! Why, why?
- Next, a second problem on Flickr I'll call "sexy spam." An account identified by a photo of some nubile tween girl has tagged me (and about 900+ other Flickr users) in comments under a photo from an account identified by a photo of a different nubile tween girl. This is the second time in a week it's happened to me, but apparently it's happening to other users a LOT more. Someone on the Flickr forum reminded us all of the theft of a lot of Yahoo! data a couple years ago. Damn Russians . . .
- This sort of "sexy spam" thing is what hounded me off Ello about a month ago.