Before we left for Espagne, we had a delightful round of entertaining and being entertained. We had our friends and neighbours in the "hood, over for pizza and lots of wine...with fabulous appetizer contributions from Tomasz with great garlicy hummous and guacomole, Ritzuko's marvellous suishi, a wonderful salad from Joyce and various other tasty nibbles from the others. Petey, in fine form as usual, contributed to the life of the mind, with a handful of printouts about Estonians in honor of Carl...a new part of all our lives...and a most charming and delightful gentleman who has taken up with Leslie...as for the rest...Tom was loquascious, Mike, curmudgeonly as usual, Henning philosophical and Tomasz and Dan, quiet as they usually are. In the company of men, the women are quieter than we usually would be. The next night, we had another fabulous dinner at Linda Sorensen's delightful atelier in the hills.Melt in your mouth tandoori chicken and wonderful sidedishes and Patrice Walsh's incredible chocolate cake for desert. Linda is our most popular artist at the Wilno Station Inn and this was my first visit to her home/studio. Seeing her in her working environment was a real asset....her home is incredibly warm and inviting and full of tropical and sunshiney vigor...seeing the photographs that inspire her paintings and the beautiful environement she has created for herself really helps us market her art. Dinner was delicious and Terry Walsh was in his usual funny ascerbic mode and our neighbour Petey arrived wearing a tinfoil helmet to ward off the gama rays...it's been a long festive season for some of us.....made me realize how lucky we are to live in such a vibrant communtiy....madmen and lunatics and creative geniuses and deranged visionaries...but never boring!!!