And have had homemade blueberry pie, courtesy of consuela. (It behooves one to keep an eye on any dessert made by consuela, she who is famous for her baking, and be early in line for it.)

It's lovely in SF, not too hot but not too cold either (always a risk). Lots of good conversation and two little boys running in and out and through to the front yard area with their bouncy ball and baseball mitts. One spots Hec in the shubbery periodically, rousting an errant ball.

Deena has a marble-topped table covered with treasures gleaned from her and Katerina Bee's long walk on Dillon Beach this morning: sea bird feather, some dried feather boa kelp, cool rocks, some beach glass, lots of shells. Beverly and Katerina are helping her organize it into categories.

Think I'll go have another Sierra Nevada pale ale and join the conversation about surfing at Maverick's Beach.

KristinT just arrived, making a grand entrance. No Cass sadly.

We've had pie. (pie pie pie) Emmett and I and Lexine's son C (C-bug?) have played catch for roughly nine berjillion hours. Java Cat was late with the beer, which caused us to all sit around and complain about the lack of beer (instead of walking five minutes around the block to get the beer). We were finally roused from our inertia to collect the beer and came back...just as Java arrived with Katerina B. and Deena. And more beer.

So to sum up: pie, beer, KristinT.

JZ's pics are wonderful! I cannot believe that I will get to meet Nilly in just a little over 1 week from now.

I look forward to pics and stories from the Nilly-Q.

I think everyone at the Nilly-q is now happy with beer.

I'm still happy thinking of everyone at the Nilly-Q. And I'm right where you are re: looking forward to the 31st, Anne!

ETA: OK, and in my e-mail confirming for the 31st, I called it the Red Dragon, but it's actually the Royal Dragon, I now see. I'm correcting here rather than spamming the DC localistas list.

Fun has been had. Hec and JZ led a wonderful walking tour through Golden Gate park this morning. A friend of Sail's joined our group and made himself unobtrusively welcome. A Buffista in training, for sure. The park was gorgeous. Nilly was very impressed with the size of the immense eucalyptus trees, which she has in Israel, but much smaller, she reports. She and JZ checked out every statue in the park, and we threel agreed that one of the huge trees with twisted trunks that had a cavity between two root bases that ran up into the trunk needed a hobbit door.

The walk wound up at the home of the Zmayhem, where some of our number watched cartoons with Emmett, and some sat out on the back deck, surrounded by trees, birdsong, and the cheers of the staduim just across the street from the apartment house's front gate, and enjoying the breeze. We had a lovely and wide-ranging conversation concerning hair care and color, apartment gardens, and the excellence of the ginger snaps Hec passed around. JZ drove Ginger and Lee back to Deb's to help wipe down chairs and set up sun umbrellas for the Nilly-Q, and then most of the group walked back to Deb's while JZ chauffered Sail and me on a brief architechtural tour of San Francisco's houses before dropping us at Deb's.

The food was fabulous, and the company was superlative, groups forming and re-forming as everybody tried to talk to everybody else. Java, Katie B. and Deena arrived with beer-re-stock, not long after Consuela arrived bearing fabulous blueberry pie. MissEli and her DH were there, as well as Sparky and her DH. Nilly eddied from group to group, and conversation, good food and wine and other beverages left everyone sated and receptive for 'Suela's pie and Deb's heart-stoppingly fabulous chocolate decadence dessert.

It was a glorious afternoon, and it was with regret that I realized people were starting to leave. Many of us will go on the wine country tour tomorrow, driven by Deb and her mother-in-law, sfmarty. There is talk of gathering for dinner tomorrow night, which I hope really happens, as I'm not ready to say goodbye to the people I spent the marvelous day with today.

Having a wonderful time, Wish you were here!

Arg, I wish my email was sending things correctly- for the Boston leg of the Nilly tour, I will only be able to attend Tuesday's during-the-day fun. I'd love to go to dinner, but I've got to take the last train out of town and I'm afraid that dinner would cut it too close.

Pouts, then remembers that she gets to go at all. Whee!

Beverly, thank you again for providing such a marvelous and in-depth description of the gathering. I think what I especially love about tales of Buffista F2Fs is that they almost always include the topics of discussion. Because of course we want to know what you all talked about! It demonstrates once again that what we have in common, more than anything else, is simply the words that we share with each other.

yay! Beverley is going wine touring -- I wasn't sure and I haven't yet had much chance to say more than Hi!

Lilty, can you send me your arrival information so that we make sure we get you. My profile addy should work. If not, let me know here, and we'll figure something out.