so after making maggie her hope and courage shakers, I got back to work on the figure drawings which are online now and viewable here. I spent most of the day working on getting those ready for the website and listening to dh lawrence. grace came over around 3:30 or 4 and we just hung out and caught up with each other. then we watched movie trailers online, which was fun, she knows about movies I might not otherwise consider.

just as we were about to head over to scotty's aliza called and sounded like she was over being mad at me and wanted to know if I'd meet her for coffee, I told her grace was with me and that we'd both come over to the coffeeshop. we went over and grace and aliza talked since they hadn't seen each other in months and months and mostly keep up through me. aliza had an appointment at 6:30, but decided to come over to scotty's for a little bit beforehand. we got there and found lots of my ex-students and a handful of parents and it was great to see everybody. I kinda got swept into several conversations and grace and aliza went off on there own. after awhile I saw aliza heading for the door and she said to me, "I'll be back in a little while." which I was glad about, but also suspected wouldn't happen. an hour or so later I noticed that she hadn't returned and figured that she probably wouldn't, if she hadn't gotten back by then. a little after that (I had spent most of the time sitting and talking with ashly, whom I love and hadn't seen since the end of june, it was great to see her, hear about her life and her new school, etc.) grace came up and asked when I thought aliza would show back up, I told her she might not, but grace said that aliza had told her about the crawfish party across the street from her house and said that she'd come back and take her to hear the bands... so I thought, "oh well, that does sound like she really will make it," because I didn't think she'd flake on grace. anyway, grace handed me her phone and asked me to call... so I did and I left a message. a little later that scenario repeated and I left another messsage. finally aliza called back, she was already at the second party and was having slight mixed feelings about bringing a fifteen year old girl to it. I told her I thought it was fine and so we agreed I'd bring grace over and meet aliza there. I invited ashly and ben along, but ashly declined. grace, ben and I all went over. we found aliza and she and grace headed off to find crawfish (after the band finished, we got there only in time to hear about two songs) while ben and I stayed and talked about his summer trip to spain.

eventually ben and I went looking for the girls and found them by the crawfish table. grace was devouring them enthusiastically and amassing an impressive pyramid of exoskeletons in front of her. aliza was mostly just making sure that any guys who might be tempted to check grace out knew that she was fifteen and off limits. we stood around and watched grace eat, ben went and got her bottled water at one point and grace appreciated his willing subservience.

finally grace finished her conquest (of the crawfish that is) and we lingered for awhile, but before too long, decided to head back to scotty's. said goodnight to aliza__ things seemed on good terms, but definitely a residual uncomfortable rift from this past week's disconnectednesss. I don't know if I'll ever have a clear picture of how that whole situation appeared from aliza's point of view, but we seem to be on the road to recovery... (?).

back at scott's we hung out and watched old performance videos. gradually people left. I stuck around pretty much just to make sure that grace figured out a place to stay for the night. she had called mike and asked him if she could sleep over at a friend's, but hadn't arranged a friend's to sleep over at... eventually everybody had left the party except me, grace and ben. scotty offered to drive grace and ben home (and me for that matter, but I said I'd walk) and so that solved that.

at home, I had a phone message that michelle had left around 6pm saying she was bored, so I called her back but just left a message. I fiddled around on the computer a bit, chess, scrabble, whatnot and the phone rang__ I was sure it was michelle since I'd just called her, but it was aliza. we talked a bit, but to no end... I don't quite get it, but it was nice that she called. we agreed to have an acai bowl at the place on westminster in the morning.