I was just too tired this morning to get up, wound up sleeping most of the day. Finally dragged my lazy bones out of bed, made a quick trip to the market and cleaned the house for having people over for coffee.

Everyone was late, so I got a chapter or two read before they showed up. That constitutes my entire productive output for the day (the coffee crew just broke up).

We had 2 rounds of poker (Simon and Roger won), but by far the highlight of the evening (for me) was the long philosophical discussions (is there coincidence, what aspects of reality are amenable to rational inquiry and which are not) with scattered futurist and technological excursions (e.g. the possibilities of nanotechnology, subatomic physics, closed versus open universes, whether there is an underlying purpose ordering the universe and producing humankind, that kind of thing).

We also had quite a few questions from the "book of questions". It's a good little ice-breaker book, but it's all pretty straightforward psychological stuff, self-aware humans are basically just sharing with it. You might find something new, and it's good for getting to know people, but you aren't poking at the structures of the universe itself in answering the questions.

However, my ulterior motive in the project, that of eliminating the huge surplus of chocolate and cookies didn't really happen. Only half of the (new) pumpkin pie was eaten, and Shane brought a whole new tray of baklava... Rosey and I have been eating far too many sweets. All in all have just about as much junk-food sitting on the table as I had yesterday... but I've had a really fun evening... so I suppose that makes up for having to eat lots of snacks :) .