Weekend Party at the Monkey Shack
Jul. 2nd, 2007 02:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fr_defenestratoFor the second year in a row my friends Delinda and Lance hosted a weekend-long party at their place in or about Warwick, Pennsylvania (near Pottstown). It was nothing short of miraculous, what happened with the weather: from the steam bath that was mid-last-week it went to high 70s and sunny during the day and 60s at night all weekend, without excessive humidity. It was a joy to be outside in this verdant setting, and even more so to be amongst a group of utterly splendid people.
Rode up Friday night with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
peregrin8 and misterdarkness on Friday night, with the trunk of the latter's whee!hicle and most of the back seat full of camping stuff, foods and foods and foods, and P8's faboo drum, leaving a small but comfy nest for me. Traffic sucked through much of upper Maryland, and 202 in Delaware and Pa. is never any fun. But we arrived at the Monkey Shack (I dunno the derivation of this name) without incident and I set up my tent in the dark, under a shady tree so as to be able to sleep in next morning. Thence to the beer. Lance played DJ much of the weekend, and on Friday night he began with a variety of Latin pop and other stuff he had picked up listening to David Byrne's Web radio station, among others. I heard just a ton of interesting music throughout the weekend.
Saturday morning I made thrice-barfed eggs for brunch. I had made three varieties of hommos the day before: kalamata olive, extra garlicky, and hot pepper (cayenne); also lemon tahini dressing. I had brought lots of stuff to make even more foods throughout the weekend, including two lasagne, but plenty other people brought ton of food as well, so I scaled back my operations to almost nothing... a little accompaniment salad of tomato, cuke, and onion in balsamic vinaigrette and that was it. When I woke up from my nap on Saturday evening and went into the kitchen to start the lasagne, there were not one but two crock pots on the stove with meatballs (one of them "meat"balls, which were really yummy) and it became clear there just wasn't any way people were going to consume all the food that was already made and ready to eat, much less another 8-10 lbs of pasta casserole. Anyway, among other things that left the "gorgonzola-stuffed figs" untried, but most of the figs got et by themselves.
Our friend Arthur (for whom I am occasionally mistaken) brought his cello, which was a lot of fun to attempt to make go... as was P8's drum. Late Friday night Mr. D and Arthur and I were the last up and Arthur and I (to Mr. D's chagrin) got onto doing bits from Messiah: nearly a habit with us by now, and not a particularly good one in that have yet to get through a whole recitative or aria from memory. Saturday night a bunch of us spent a couple hours around the campfire making music, with Mr. D busting out his portable electric guitar rig for the first time (its primary destination is Burning Man). And we got some few things sung, including (at P8's behest) a one-syllable-off version of "O Lord, Won't You Buy Me a Mercedes-Benz?" and some unaccompanied Zappa from "We're Only In It for the Money." At some semi-late hour Filthy Hippie busted out a bottle of Chartreuse (the good kind, 110 proof) and we few enthusiastic Chartreuse heads proceeded to get silly drunk.
As a result, (a) there's not much more to say about Saturday night, and (b) Sunday morning was kinda grim, actually: I tried twice and failed twice to get up and function, ending up comatose both times on the living room couch in the Shack. The third time, 11:30 or so, was the charm. Lance made waffles. Waffles made happy tummies. Folks drifted away mostly two by two (or more in the case of famblies). I packed up my tent and stuff fairly early so as to laze the rest of the time. The drive home was far less impeded and so far quicker than the ride up. Dan did all the driving; my contribution was my EZPass, leftover from the last time I had a car and still billing to a credit card.
Returned to a cleaner flat than I left;maestro_live had come over to clean, install a new toilet seat (old one had broken), rig up a dimmer switch on the reimagined lamp that readherring busted at the last 'thon (it was torchière; now it is swag), and empty the fly trap on the back deck. ("BTW," he wrote to me today, "there are not words to truly describe changing that flytrap.") Got to bed reasonable early and up for an appointment this morning with my primary care doc, mostly to check my Hep B viral load to see whether the change from Epivir/Hepsera to Truvada (for insurance reasons) has had any kind of deleterious effect. Ol' Doc Stearn told me with some enthusiasm that there are brand new antivirals coming out, entirely new classes of drugs that are proving very effective at controlling viral hepatitis... of course, if and when my current regimen is deemed inadequate these new designer drugs are likely to be as expensive or more than the Hepsera that my insurance wants me to pay 20 percent for. In any case my viral load has been undetectable in every test for the last 3 to 4 years since I was diagnosed, so we'll see about this here Truvada stuff.
Oh, almost forgot: Thursday night I met up withjcruisedirector for dinner (a very modest dinner, at Subway) and then accompanied him to look at the latest room in his domicile search. This place, at the St. Clair, 1717 T St. N.W., was gorgeous. The apartment is that of a 50ish (a very vibrant and attractive 50ish, BTW) gay guy whose deafness must be from birth, judging by his speech. The basement apartment was immaculate and well appointed, the room had tons of closet space, and the price was right, even with an additional $fitty in the summer months for the outsize air conditioning bill. The guy said he had a couple other people to show it to and would let JCD know by Saturday night. I haven't heard back from him today yet whether the news was good or bad...
Rode up Friday night with
peregrin8 and misterdarkness on Friday night, with the trunk of the latter's whee!hicle and most of the back seat full of camping stuff, foods and foods and foods, and P8's faboo drum, leaving a small but comfy nest for me. Traffic sucked through much of upper Maryland, and 202 in Delaware and Pa. is never any fun. But we arrived at the Monkey Shack (I dunno the derivation of this name) without incident and I set up my tent in the dark, under a shady tree so as to be able to sleep in next morning. Thence to the beer. Lance played DJ much of the weekend, and on Friday night he began with a variety of Latin pop and other stuff he had picked up listening to David Byrne's Web radio station, among others. I heard just a ton of interesting music throughout the weekend.Saturday morning I made thrice-barfed eggs for brunch. I had made three varieties of hommos the day before: kalamata olive, extra garlicky, and hot pepper (cayenne); also lemon tahini dressing. I had brought lots of stuff to make even more foods throughout the weekend, including two lasagne, but plenty other people brought ton of food as well, so I scaled back my operations to almost nothing... a little accompaniment salad of tomato, cuke, and onion in balsamic vinaigrette and that was it. When I woke up from my nap on Saturday evening and went into the kitchen to start the lasagne, there were not one but two crock pots on the stove with meatballs (one of them "meat"balls, which were really yummy) and it became clear there just wasn't any way people were going to consume all the food that was already made and ready to eat, much less another 8-10 lbs of pasta casserole. Anyway, among other things that left the "gorgonzola-stuffed figs" untried, but most of the figs got et by themselves.
Our friend Arthur (for whom I am occasionally mistaken) brought his cello, which was a lot of fun to attempt to make go... as was P8's drum. Late Friday night Mr. D and Arthur and I were the last up and Arthur and I (to Mr. D's chagrin) got onto doing bits from Messiah: nearly a habit with us by now, and not a particularly good one in that have yet to get through a whole recitative or aria from memory. Saturday night a bunch of us spent a couple hours around the campfire making music, with Mr. D busting out his portable electric guitar rig for the first time (its primary destination is Burning Man). And we got some few things sung, including (at P8's behest) a one-syllable-off version of "O Lord, Won't You Buy Me a Mercedes-Benz?" and some unaccompanied Zappa from "We're Only In It for the Money." At some semi-late hour Filthy Hippie busted out a bottle of Chartreuse (the good kind, 110 proof) and we few enthusiastic Chartreuse heads proceeded to get silly drunk.
As a result, (a) there's not much more to say about Saturday night, and (b) Sunday morning was kinda grim, actually: I tried twice and failed twice to get up and function, ending up comatose both times on the living room couch in the Shack. The third time, 11:30 or so, was the charm. Lance made waffles. Waffles made happy tummies. Folks drifted away mostly two by two (or more in the case of famblies). I packed up my tent and stuff fairly early so as to laze the rest of the time. The drive home was far less impeded and so far quicker than the ride up. Dan did all the driving; my contribution was my EZPass, leftover from the last time I had a car and still billing to a credit card.
Returned to a cleaner flat than I left;
maestro_live had come over to clean, install a new toilet seat (old one had broken), rig up a dimmer switch on the reimagined lamp that readherring busted at the last 'thon (it was torchière; now it is swag), and empty the fly trap on the back deck. ("BTW," he wrote to me today, "there are not words to truly describe changing that flytrap.") Got to bed reasonable early and up for an appointment this morning with my primary care doc, mostly to check my Hep B viral load to see whether the change from Epivir/Hepsera to Truvada (for insurance reasons) has had any kind of deleterious effect. Ol' Doc Stearn told me with some enthusiasm that there are brand new antivirals coming out, entirely new classes of drugs that are proving very effective at controlling viral hepatitis... of course, if and when my current regimen is deemed inadequate these new designer drugs are likely to be as expensive or more than the Hepsera that my insurance wants me to pay 20 percent for. In any case my viral load has been undetectable in every test for the last 3 to 4 years since I was diagnosed, so we'll see about this here Truvada stuff.Oh, almost forgot: Thursday night I met up with
jcruisedirector for dinner (a very modest dinner, at Subway) and then accompanied him to look at the latest room in his domicile search. This place, at the St. Clair, 1717 T St. N.W., was gorgeous. The apartment is that of a 50ish (a very vibrant and attractive 50ish, BTW) gay guy whose deafness must be from birth, judging by his speech. The basement apartment was immaculate and well appointed, the room had tons of closet space, and the price was right, even with an additional $fitty in the summer months for the outsize air conditioning bill. The guy said he had a couple other people to show it to and would let JCD know by Saturday night. I haven't heard back from him today yet whether the news was good or bad...
