Yesterday:

I'm crouched over in my bedroom, in my six week summer rental house in Los Angeles. I'm editing a chapter in Mimi's book about the social impact of mobile phones in Japan. A half-eaten bowl of plain yogurt with fresh blueberries and Great Grains cereal sits between my laptop and my desktop computer. One computer for email and chat, one computer for work .

From San Francisco, Robin sends an SMS message: "I may be at lax from 2 to 4 today...."

I meet her at the airport, convince her to skip her connecting flight (wasn't hard). We head back to my Venice Beach home, near Brooks and 4th. I call Mark, living on a sailboat in Marina del Ray. Mark is twenty minutes away with his friend Robin from UCLA. He beats me to the house; he calls, talking to my roommate Scott from the front porch.

I call Joanne; she asks if she can bring over her dog, Salami. I will ask my landlord, I say. I forget to. It's Venice, she says later, it's okay. Shortly the six of us and the furry one are enjoying whiskey and lemonade in the garden. I'm poked in the side by some fronds; I cut them down and Robin and Mark make baskets. The sun shines. Someone's talking about screenwriting and television pilots. Someone else is talking about interactive narrative and artificial intelligence. Someone wants a larger painting studio. Someone else wants to eat. That's me.

The party splits. Joanne, Robin and I walk up Brooks to Lincoln and buy steaks, salad, potatoes, mascara, nailpolish remover. Come back and cook up the grub. Soon joined by a friend from Chicago a decade ago Oona, and Daniel. And a dog with two color eyes, Bowie. And Cody, a friend from a film screening this week. We eat outside with dogs begging and lazy conversation. Soon we retreat into the darkening interior, and watch the first dialog-minimal Conan movie while the dogs cavort and the meal settles. The party parts ways again and I drive Robin to the airport around 9.30. I return home and sun baked, steak fed, whiskey tired, I stay up until 1:30am finishing up my edits on the book chapter, and writing a letter to the owner of a house in Culver City I hope to be able to settle in.

[Robin covers this day in text and pix]