The morning after the night before *UPDATED*

Posting will be light today, as my Mom has been hospitalized with a recurring condition, so I have to go take care of that.  I’m optimistic that she’ll be back in her own home by this evening, but it’s still a concern.  The morning after, therefore, is less than thrilling.

As for the night before, though, that was wonderful.  Danny Lemieux came to town, and he joined Charles Martel and me for dinner.  (Don Quixote, unfortunately, had another commitment.)  I can now tell you as fact that Danny Lemieux is every bit as charming, erudite, witty, well-informed, and all around delightful as he appears in cyberprint.  Charles, of course, is too, as I’ve mentioned here before.

Dinner was a real pleasure.  Charles introduced us to the phrase “French conversation,” one I’d never heard before.  It means a conversation that breaks free of rigid, linear back-and-forths, and swirls all over the place in interesting flights of free association.  Unsurprisingly given the Frankish warriors at the table, our conversation was very French.

What made the conversation especially delightful was that we’re all people with good funds of knowledge.  If there was a Venn diagram, we would have had a strong area of central overlap, which allowed us to touch upon issues that didn’t need a lot of explanation, but we also all had our own strong areas of knowledge that allowed for fresh and new topics.

It was, in other words, as good a dinner as can be imagined, with people as nice and interesting as one could wish.  Only DQ’s presence would have made it better.

UPDATE: Mom’s fine and I’m just waiting around to take her home. A lot of blogging food for thought while waiting at a hospital.