Jess sat at my computer. She and Jeremy and I had been in the computer room for at least an hour, talking about movies and families and life and cats and anything else that came to mind. We'd gotten past the important things and onto things that matter, like recommending new music to friends. Somewhere along the line, Geof had wandered in and joined us.

"Should I queue up anything else while I'm sitting here?" she asked.

I gave a recommendation, and Geof laughed. "Get to it, DJ Jazzy Jess." We all rolled our eyes, and then I muttered, "And what are you, the Fresh Priest?" For that I got a high-five from Jess and a "That's 'Fresh Pastor' to you, Ames!"

So, yes, I had everyone over tonight. Call it my own strange, instinctual reaction to dealing with the news about Dad. I knew that Jess was coming in tonight, and it seemed like it would be a nice idea to see if any of the other local folk would be interested in having dinner with the three of us.

"I've wanted to do this for a long time now," she said. But, it went without saying, she couldn't arrange for this kind of surgery until she had insurance that would cover it. Despite the fact that it was obviously medically necessary.

"I think it's a good idea," I said.

"Yeah. I mean, it'll do a lot for me, both physically and …"

"Self-image?"

"Yeah."

For as long as I've had the privilege to know her, Eleanor's made jokes about her breasts. Taglines like "Eleanor: the breasts of three women!" and jokes about her bras abounded. Deep down, though, I know she was frustrated with the way she looked, and handled it the best way she knew how—through humor.

Before the advent of test kitchens, lo-carb diets, and Twinkies, there were recipes, but they were not recipes as we know them now. I recently read an op-ed piece on Salon which decried the modern recipe as a prime example of our faddish love for scientific precision taking over our willingness to be experimental or inventive.

I'll say this: I don't hate the holidays. I hate the blues that come with them, every year, like clockwork. I've struggled to write this week, and I have a feeling that it's not going to get much better between now and December 26th.

This week—and the past two days in particular—have been difficult, through a convergence of events; some expected, some not. I knew that this December would be difficult for me, and there were times this year that I said to myself, "I have to enjoy what I have now, because I know what's coming." With Jessica's leaving Huntsville this morning, the last of that 'summertime' ended. Heather is now a resident out in D.C., and Jess is now back in Mobile (temporarily, until she begins grad school next fall).

The theatre is divided into two sides, and it was obvious which side was showing The Movie, for the line was meandering through most of the vestibule. The local crew has theorized for ages about what it would take to get all of the 20something Huntsvegas crowd into the same place. Bars, hockey, and clubbing never seem to make it happen. But last night, it seems, the entire even-slightly-geekish bit of the population was at the movie theatre.

Phone call: "We'd like to come over and stay. We'll get up at three and go outside to watch the meteors. Since you live so far out of town, yours is really the best place to be to watch these go by."

I wasn't hopeful. In my entire life I'd seen two meteors—at least, I thought they were meteors—but they were brief, inconsequential moments. Nothing to write home about.

But I told everyone to come over anyway. I stayed up late, talking to a friend, and then got up at the 3:30 ring of the alarm to get up, dress once again, and go outside. Heather, Jess, and Gareth joined Jeff and I a moment or two later. Tim and Kat drove over and were here shortly thereafter.My lack of excitement about the meteor shower went away from the moment I opened the back door. I saw my first meteor before I even got the door entirely open. Suddenly I felt excited, exhilarated—I realized this was going to be a bit more memorable than I'd been giving it credit for.