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i woke up saturday morning alone in my room, my two new actress friends nowhere to be seen. i got off the bed, went to the bathroom, and then headed downstairs, where i could hear the faint chatter of ladies talking. on the dining room table sat fresh store-bought cups of latte and mocha latte. megan, deanna, and roseanne were sitting outside on the deck, having breakfast and flipping through an issue of entertainment weekly (the special fall tv preview double issue, the one with wb sarah michelle gellar on the cover exposing her bellybutton). i grabbed a mocha latte and waited for the rest of the gang to wake up. a ringing telephone interrupted our morning meal - it was the other two remaining houseguests, calling because they got lost and needed further directions to find the place. i went upstairs to get changed and by the time i got back downstairs, our lost guests had arrived: christine, old high school friend of deanna, and christina, christine's friend. later i learned christine's an auditor in the boston area, while christina worked for maybelline here in nyc. christine actually said you recognized me, and i think i vaguely remember her from a party at deanna's apartment in the medford/somerville area a while back.

when dan and cymara finally got out of bed (john came back from a coffee run, unbeknownst to him that megan had already gone out and brought back some stuff), it was time to decide what we wanted to do. we decided to just lounge around by the pool. the weather up to then wasn't exactly bad, but the sky was slightly overcasted, and didn't seem too appropriate a weather for beach going. the ladies found their way to the jacuzzi, which was just heating up. the fellows (including myself) waded into the pool, enjoying the splendors of bigger waters. so we did this for most of the day. if you weren't in the jacuzzi, you were in the pool, and if you weren't in the pool, you were laying back in a lounge chair enjoying the sun which was starting to break free from the clouds. while chatting with megan, i was so happy to discover that she's also a big gilmore girls fan! at last! someone who speaks my language!


dan &
cymara

john in
turban

ladies
playing

pool boy
fantasy


the opposite of attraction


handstand
(christine)

john in
jacuzzi edge

beachball

pool/deck
infrared

i also found some time in-between water sports to capture some of the indigenous creatures of the region:


greater
yellowlegs

snowy
egret

great
egret

american
bittern


groundhog

cottontail
rabbit

monarch
butterfly

blue
crab

when it started getting close to dinner time, the ladies went out to buy groceries while the boys were in charge of cleaning up the deck and starting the barbecue. we cleaned the deck, but completely forgot about the barbecue. instead, we jumped back into the jacuzzi and waited for the ladies to come home with the food. when they did come back, deanna asked john if we had worked the barbecue yet ("um...barbecue?"). after some failed efforts, john had to finally call deanna's father and ask him how to turn on the gas-powered grill. guided by the proper instructions we were able to finally light the bbq without any further ado. the division of labor was this: the men did the grilling while the women huddled in the kitchen and did everything else - skin and defat the chicken, cut the vegetables, toss the salad, boil the corn, apply garlic+butter to the bread, etc. besides taking photos and supervising the grilling, i was also the daring taste tester who ate samples of the chicken to make sure it was cooked enough to eat (tough job!). when everything was finally done, we had a great dinner outside on the deck. we ate under the dim incadescent glow of the porch lights and the illumination of the full moon in the dark sky. near the horizon, there would be an occasional random burst of fireworks (megan, you weren't lying!) celebrating some unknown occasion.

after dinner we proceded to have some chocolate fudge cake along with some fresh hot coffee. with dessert done, it was time to play games. we first started with apples to apples, a game where you pair up adjectives with a suitable noun. sounds like some sort of elementary school english drill, but the game is easy and fun to play once you start it. we played two rounds, christina winning the first round, megan the second (although christina almost won again, which would be proof that she was using some sort of mind power to steal our thoughts). we also came up with a rule that says the adjective cards you win actually describe what kind of person you are. megan, the final winner, won with filthy, animated, scary, extreme, fabulous, and cool. next we started a drinking game called i never, where the premise is someone says something they've never done, but anyone who has done it has to drink. cymara and i were exempted from drinking so we played with cans of coke. it didn't take long for the game to turn sexual, and i think i was the person to cast the first stone by declaring, "i never slept with an animal before." so we went around the table, each time learning a little bit more about our fellow players, usually of a sexual nature. as the night wore on, the questions got crazier, steamier, sexier. i will not repeat any of the questions, but suffice to say that there became a strain between john and deanna as we all started to piece together deanna's sordid past, and john went to bed before the game came to a close. when the game finally ended (it sort of fizzled out of steam) with all participants thoroughly drunk, everyone crawled back to their respective sleeping quarters and went to bed (dan and cymara moved to the cabin out in the backyard).

tomorrow: part iii, the beach, the vineyard, the speed trap, the emergency room hospital visit, the yankees versus the red sox, and another great lifetime movie