Last night we had a nice relaxing dinner with visiting friends. I’ve known Frédérique since my first week of graduate school at Emory; we suffered through orientation together and have been friends ever since. That’s well over a decade now (I’m not saying how much more).

Way back when, she met and married Clark and they had Louis, who’s a couple of years older than Ben.

They are fun to be with, fun to spend time with. I’ve missed them tremendously since they moved to New Jersey/New York last year.

Freddie is the one who has turned me on to all this French music I’ve been obsessed with lately (especially Alain Bashung, “Madame Rêve“!). When they moved, she gave me a giant monster plant from Martinique, which I’ve managed to keep alive, as well as a dresser and a couple of lamps, and a chair, and end tables for Ben’s room and all sorts of other things.

She is amazingly talented. She translated some of Salvador Dali’s work for her dissertation, and she does all kinds of other writing – art criticism and history, even an opera. She’s always got a couple of projects going. One of my most memorable conversations with her had to do with art in which someone is sticking out their tongue. She’s so French, so fun, so creative. I always have a lot of fun talking with her.

John had just returned from the Artificial Life XI conference in England (among other things, he got to go to Stonehenge!) and I was working, so the dinner was carryout – rolled sandwiches, potato salad, stuff like that. I brought cookies, John brought fruit tart, and they brought Boston Creme cake – so it was all about the desserts.

Freddie and I also had a couple of hours together on Saturday for some girl talk. How I’ve missed that!

This was a day last year where we trounced around wearing furs for the “Save the Poor Abandoned Furs” project, membership: 2. Actually, I have friends that would be mad at me for joking about it, for owning fur, and for wearing it (sorry, I love fur – not siberian tiger or anything, but…).

I love uncomplicated time with real friends. It’s such a treat to relax and know that your friends just like you as you are. The night cooperated by not raining so that we could socialize out on the deck.

As light faded, I tucked Ben into bed and brought out candles and we spent a couple of hours talking about politics and art and relationships and neural networks and I don’t remember what else.

It was an easy, fun, relaxing, enjoyable evening. Loved it.

P.S. I should have taken photographs Monday, but I didn’t think of it. These are all from previous times together.