An Odious Time is Had by All

Nah, it wasn't odious...it was just plain splendid when Paul had the rest of the night's crew--Sue, Rich, Joe, and me--over to his place last Friday for some good readings and home cooking.

Yep, that's right: home cooking. Sue may have been the first to break the pizza routine by mixing it up with different forms of take-out, but Paul now has the distinction of being the first crew member to serve a home-cooked meal on a Coffee Crew night. Granted, Sue has made cookies, Rich has made pasta, and Snitter has made trouble (more than once)--but this is the first time that the main meal was prepared in-house. Specifically, we munched tasty tacos and mexican specialties. Our host (Hauppauge division) not only knows a thing or two about space ships, he also serves a mean spinach salad.

Never one to put all his eggs in one basket, Paul made sure he had a secondary noteworthy act to ensure that he would get a good mention in the blog: he presented us all with gifts of friendship. Pewter dragons from his decorative collection, specifically. It was very cool and we all thank him for it. He said he was cleaning out his decor a bit. Rich is already eyeing his Tivo, hoping that he'll be generous enough to give that away, too.

Speaking of Rich, he read part one of a story that chronicled the development of his passion for what I like to call "The Swamp & Space Underground." Sue read more about her family members from when she was growing up--the ones names Giggles, Sneaker, Eek, Sleek, etc.--in a little tale about her pets. Both readings were interesting, and the parallels are quite remarkable: one of Sue's cats was orange and one of RIch's favorite pasttimes was watching Godzilla movies. Umm....

My contribution this time around was another new one for the crew: we read some recent song lyrics I had written and I started things off by playing the crewers the rough initial demo of the tune. Variety, man! Anything creative flies at the Coffee Crew.

We'll start off with Joe and Paul next time, as, I recall, a familiar discussion about the merits of art & subjectivity vs. objectivity kept us from getting to everyone. Regarding Paul, I seemed to recall that he was going to read, but opted to hold off for another week. I wrote him to assure the accuracy of my memory and he confirmed that my recollections were correct, saying, "I had intended on reading my script for the Star Trek Spoof, but was sidetracked by the uplifting conversation of Saddam Hussein, his insane sons and their creative torture tactics..." I had forgotten about that happy discussion, and I can't seem to put 2 and 2 together and figure out how we got there from Rich's commentary on space nerd culture, but I know it happened.

For those keeping score, this was gathering # 22.