7:39 p.m. Well, the chair is empty now. I've really got to straighten the covers out. They're original pinto bean bags with bits of bean still clinging to the inside, which I've had longer than the chair. The cushions came from the porch swing hanging on the front porch of the house on the Shadow Lawn Press site. The Morris chair is my most beloved chair, with arms wide enough for a mug.

Once upon a time we had a huge auction of everything we owned, and this chair is the only piece of furniture I kept. But that is a story for another time. The story for tonight follows.

My memories, as hostess, are going to be as skewed as my chair covers, as fragmented as the old quilt you'll see peeking out behind the chair in some of the pictures. So I will give you the bits and pieces that I remember the most vividly.

We begin with Beth, who is tearing up as she finishes her reading. So were the rest of us. Reading is hard. Beth, however, had the guts to go first and she read a funny, romantic, sharp-as-a-tack piece.

Beth is a totally cool person; adept and funny, with good hair and a purple manicure. I am so glad she thought the party was at 4:00 instead of 5 because she was one of the first people in the kitchen and she knew her way around it better than I do. Sure, my garlic is a little old, but I sort of think of it as decoration, in addition to nutrient.

She brought an accomplished piece of brie inna crust with leaves on top and jam in the middle, turned ordinary bread into bruschetta (while pronouncing it correctly), and she even discovered that I had a second oven, which I'd somehow missed. I know the more time I spend with Beth, the more laughing I will do, and there's nothing in the world I like more than laughing.

Beth is married to Chuck, who has a diamond stud in his ear and a brand new digital camera. Chuck seemed totally at ease in a room full of women -- actually, he seemed quite swimmingly copacetic. When the group was fumbling around with seats and who's-going-to-go-first, he quickly created some kind of a mathematical solution that involved pieces of paper and numbers.

Just getting the journallers into the library was harder than herding kittens. I asked Chuck to speak up in a booming voice and move people along, and he did. And then, when there were more papers than people, he revised the numbering-choosing scheme somehow and fixed the problem. Thus, everyone had a number and many of us were agape at the manly dexterity of it all. I think it had something to do with trigonometry.

Chuck then read a really funny piece about his penis to an audience of known penis appreciators. Hearty applause followed.

This photo of Tamar is courtesy of Chuck. For some reason -- probably something to do with the "other" party -- I must have been distracted and thus didn't take my own picture, but to tell you the truth, I think I just got caught up in the vibrancy of her reading, and I forgot.

Now, this is the same Tamar who really, really wasn't sure she was going to read and who would have been the last person there to force the idea. Yet, she had the best reading style of all of us: witty and warm and rich and tender as she playfully described cat and baby, Dante and Damian.

Tamar said she's done some acting, and it shows. She's also a woman totally in love with her family, and -- it shows. When you host a party, you have to be everywhere all at once, pointing out the location of phones and bathrooms and paper towels, and generally listening and watching things out of the corner of your eye. After I showed her where the phone was she made a couple of calls home and I noticed that as soon as she connected, her face just lit from within.

I also noticed that she did some kind of speed-dial thing that looked like a Superhero maneuver. And she brought a nice big container of garlicky hummus.

Meg was the co-hostess of this extravaganza and she single-handedly organized all the thousands of email messages, details, ideas, plans, back-ups and turnarounds that such a gathering demands. Plus, she came an hour early to help me gather foodstuffs and such.

We therefore had a chance to feel really uncomfortable with the strangeness of this thing before anyone else got there. But since Meg (who is Dutch) reminds me a lot of my daughter, who is in Amsterdam as we speak, it was only a matter of minutes before I think we both started feeling that this was all going to work out.

We'd decided earlier in email that if people were starving they'd write nasty things in their journals about the party and so we were stacking up the sandwiches and chunking up the cheese, just in case. In fact, I do believe we began to have a certain amount of fun there, before the party even began.

Meg is smart, and organized, and above all else, sweetly funny. She brought bags of crackers and cheese and mustard, very European. Ditto a hat. Totally continental.

Then there's sweet young Ri. She is delicate and shy and gangly like a doe or a supermodel. She also had diamondy earrings that you can see glittering, and -- braces! Just so cute. I wish I'd remembered to look for an engagement ring, but in the press and the whirl, the shy people often get less attention from the hostess.

However, she did bring her fiancé Bill, who was even taller, and just as nice as you could want. Also a bit quiet, but with an air of dependability, so I asked him to help with flipping records. That's the only problem with having LPs instead of CDs: you've got to be all skittery and alert every couple of minutes as the music stops.

I couldn't help asking him to look through the albums and put on whatever he liked because I was really really curious about what kind of music would a cool young guy pick -- and guess what it was? Frank Sinatra. Lucky Ri.

Ri baked three different kind of cookies and they also brought me a potted chrysanthemum, which is going to be the first plant that goes into the ground here in our little part of the world. Lucky me.

Mahrya is a beautiful, talented girl who writes very very well, but who doesn't particularly want to be a writer. It could break your heart. She's the newest journaller in this group, sort of. She'd kept a journal for almost a year and then took a break. Now she's got a new site and one entry.

That's right: one entry. And that would be the one she read. However, before she could do that, she needed a copy printed out. So, we went into my office and because I had a party raging in the next rooms, I was, let us say, frazzled. I couldn't find the Apple Menu.

So Mahrya did her Kinko's routine. She had worked there for a lengthy stretch, and let me tell you -- it was exactly like watching a stew -- er, flight attendant in action: the calming voice, the firm instructions, the cheerful but professional demeanor ... I could feel the fluorescent lights overhead almost. Needless to say, I love Kinko's-we-never-close.

Mahrya brought three fabulous sweet desserts from Gelson's and stayed, along with Meg and my friend Sharon, long enough for some really satisfying gabbing about writing, life, and such at the end of the party. I was so glad for the chance to sit and talk with no distractions. It felt like a gift.

Miriam read an exquisite piece. You should make haste to push the buttons under all the photos and read to your heart's content, but Miriam's piece will make you laugh and go hmmmm at the very same time.

Miriam is a world-class traveler in the tradition of Paul Bowles' Sheltering Sky characters: "We're not tourists -- we're travelers." Actually, since the books in the photos are, indeed, alphabetized and since the chair is near the beginning of the alphabet, Miriam could have reached right up and pulled down the Bowles if necessary.

She is also an aerospace engineer. That's the first way I heard it. Then, when I introduced her to the next person, I changed it to astro physicist. I couldn't help myself. By the time I was talking to the third person, I know she had become a rocket scientist.

Miriam told me that when she cruises the web, she doesn't bother with the pictures, and that's a shame because she, being a astronaut and all, would have guessed my contest balls had she had the pictures turned on. She brought two kinds of quiche, of course.

Diane is already a famous person in journalling circles. Everyone knows nka, which stands for Nobody Knows Anything. Everyone, including me, reads Diane's journal faithfully.

Thus, we all know Diane is pregnant, and I am sure I was more forward about it than I should have been, due to the weird familiarity that reading someone's journal creates. But still, Diane really does look fabulous for four months, all glowy and maternal. See for yourself. Notice also the Mulder photo on her shirt.

Diane, along with Chuck and Tamar, is a screenwriter, and screenwriting was the subject of the piece she read. She, along with the invisible and increasingly illusive imaginary Stee, is also a Nicholls Fellowship semifinalist, for her first screenplay, no less.

She's going to be a mom with a movie, I predict. She brought the most delectable chocolate moussy cake, which mercifully was not completely devoured. I had some tonight while watching Star Trek.

There was a mysterious carton of milk in the fridge this morning, and I want to believe that it was also from Diane because I saw her drinking a glass of milk. Did I mention that Diane's pregnant?

Finally we come to me. I had a fabulous time, and I even read something -- I picked the shortest thing I'd done since I started the journal, and then this morning, when I was kicking myself for choosing such a stupid lame thing to read, I noticed the piece directly behind it, on June 25, which really would have been perfect for this crowd.

It was a piece about how hard it has always been for me to be a writer and a person out in the real world. I think the journal group would have understood the struggle, the juggle. I think they would actually -- care. That's what I love about this community of strong, like-minded individualists who are weaving an entire quadrant of the web as we speak. A live, vibrant response to life that captures the little moments and holds them in thrall.

I'm really happy to be a part of it.

Now it's time for a break. I've cleaned everything up and covered the rest with aluminum foil. I'm going to pour some sangria, grab some cheese and crackers, and relax in my favorite chair. It's full of memories.