drscott | Weekend: LL fundraiser, dinner at 2223, etc.

Mark and John were over Friday evening. I cooked up some asparagus and chicken, with the usual greens/avocado/feta/tomato/nuts salad on the side. The homemade vinaigrette we've settled on is really good and better for you than premixed, having only extra-virgin olive oil and vinegars (balsamic and herb) -- no sugars and little salt.

Saturday we did some yard work. I continued trimming back the foundation plantings, preparing for the painters' arrival the week of the 24th. Much use of the electric hedge trimmer, making for bulging shoulder muscles.

excessor helped by doing the usual mowing and helping me get the trimmings collected into the compost bin for pickup. The bushes look sadly barren now, but they're unkillable. Then I took a shower to get the dust off, and it was off to the gym for a short workout before heading up to the city to meet up with Mark-Paul's-ex and Colin for drinks at Mecca (where the music was a tad too loud for good conversation) and dinner at 2223, where we spotted

glovercom's birthday party.

Sunday morning Mark and

excessor went through what were supposed to be Mark's boxes in our garage and packed much of his stuff in his car for the return trip to Palm Springs.

excessor was mildly embarrassed to discover some of the boxes of papers he had criticized Mark for not disposing of were actually his. Oops! Well, more trash for this month's unlimited disposal (Sunnyvale picks up any extra garbage and larger items two months a year -- we disposed of Paul's old mattress and box spring last week, since he couldn't find anyplace to donate it to.)

After seeing off Mark and Colin, it was off to John and Mark's for the Lambda Legal fundraiser. They had hired the same caterers as they used for the housewarming, and the canapes were great, if a little slow to arrive; there was a lack of protein and they were a little late in coming, so I was still eating when the program began. Throwing my image to the wind, I kept nibbling on asparagus while the speakers took the stage. One of the Lambda Legal lawyers gave a short but compelling account of why their work is valuable and should be supported, Mark as host and member of the board spoke briefly, and on the whole it was relatively painless. The donation forms were handed out, and then it was back to the usual schmoozing. The crowd was pretty much typical A-List, reminding me of the MAX crowd in the city -- mostly cleanshaven, skinny, white and Asian metrosexual sorts. Our little group of square dancers added some diversity, and I had a nice talk with

fyellin about privacy issues and the recent blog search kerfuffle. It was warm and I was happy to be the only guy wearing shorts. Toward the end I managed to introduce myself to a nice bearish lawyer standing by himself (about the only kind of situation where I'm good at starting a conversation.)

excessor joined us and we talked for an all-too-short time. Whenever we get around to having more dinner parties, he and his partner would be great guests.

One of the good things about my new life with

excessor has been cooking a lot more than I used to. I've added a lot of dishes to my repertoire and picked up the skill of getting everything done at about the same time, filling in idle spots while one dish cooks with work on others. It's really not much harder to make dinner for six than for four, so we may start adding new people to the usual Friday night Mark and John dinner.