Hope all had a great day.

Mother's Day was a lot of fun yesterday.  The restaurant was very gourmet and delicious.  The one funny thing was Mark's water glass.  We all picked up a glass of something for a toast to mothers, and the bottom of Mark's glass literally dropped out! 20 ounces of ice cubes and water rushed all over the table, wetting three copies of Lowell's book along with my purse, our clothes, our napkins, the floor, EVERYTHING!  For our trouble the manager comped us all a delicious dessert we didn't need to eat but enjoyed nonetheless. 

We lingered in the restaurant for nearly three hours at the restaurant, enjoying Emily and her parents, talking about wedding venues and plans, and finding out that Mark and Phil have a lot in common. We hugged goodbye and headed home to watch the Orioles win.  Mark made low-carb pizzas and salad for dinner.  It was a lovely day.

I have now completed two of the books by some of Lowell's colleagues in the UB MFA program.  They are both great, but I like Lowell's better. Haha!  Who would have guessed THAT!  LOL!

I also put his reading up on YouTube.  You can hear him read his final story from the book, "Bathwater," at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2uOl_yIzkQ.  Just copy and paste this url into your browser and it should come up.  The reading is about three and a half minutes long.

When Cindy came home last night, she said exactly what Mark and I had discussed all weekend.  Lowell's presentation, the second one in the second act, changed the whole tone of the night and made it much, much better.  Each reader introduced the next one.  In the first act, each student performed that duty adequately, but perfunctorily, by saying "and the next reader is..."  The first reader on the second act did that, also, and you can hear her say it on the YouTube video.  But then Lowell gave a very wonderful and personal introduction to the next reader and even shook her hand and smiled at her as she came up. (Unfortunately, I didn't know that was coming, so I didn't film it.)  After that she did the same to the next reader and the next and the next to the end of the evening.  It was a huge boost to the overall tone of the evening.  WAY TO GO, LOWELL!!  You made everything better. 

BTW, all these pictures were taken with my NEW camera!  Thanks, Mark!