Hot

And there was a full moon!

And it didn’t rain at all until right at the very last instant as I pedaled into my back alley!

And sinfully delicious hot cocoa drinks spiced with Everclear, vodka, rum, and whatever else was in the bottom of booze bottles at our magnanimous host and hostess’s liquor cabinet!

And the music bike with new and improved sound or maybe one just forgets how loud and clear it is even from a block away!

And re-usable cups, only a couple of which ended up in the mighty conflagration!

And a solid collection of old friends and familiar faces, including many a far-flung or rarely-seen companion, plenty of whom stuck around all the way through until the dying embers!

And Point84!

And a fire-totter!

And surely the fastest trip ever to the secret location, including a police escort!

And a gold star to Chester who kept me and the trailer company on the Ballard Bridge so I wasn’t even really that mad about being left behind even though it was fun to get all cantankerous and curmudgeonly about it at first!

And no one burned their private parts, at least on my watch!

And rum balls and (nearly) the final batch of the Christmas weed cookies!

And the requisite overawed strangers who couldn’t believe their good fortune at stumbling upon the event!

And conversations about Little Women, both the movie and the book—which, in spite of its moralizing, (or perhaps because of it), is really quite charming; Jo, especially would be the sort of character you’d see out on two wheels of a Thursday night around a twenty-foot high Christmas tree blaze!

And only one blinkie lost!

And a U-lock found if anyone’s looking for one!

And one more tree!  At least three times!

At lots of laughs and a little singing and everyone talking at once but sometimes listening, too!

And no fire department!

And did I mention: a full moon!