Here's a picture of Robert and Howard playing Gauntlet when our living room was mostly, but not all, set up--still, we've come a long way! Howard is a nice guy who works across the hall from Robert and went to Hunter two years behind me. Howard has the distinction of

1. having been the captain of the New York City math team, and
2. living a short walk away from us.

Anyway, our finally being all moved in called for a celebration, so we decided to try to get an assortment of our Boston friends to come over at the same time. Here's the evite we sent out:

(Upon entering our apartment last night for the party, George helpfully pointed out that the name of our party was somewhat of a misnomer, due to the six boxes stacked in the stairwell. I don't think George in particular should have talked, though, since having been here when the movers arrived a month ago this Saturday, he's seen our apartment with way more boxes in it.)

Most people actually RSVP'd, and no one got lost on the way--though we did get two last-minute calls for directions, one en-route, and one group of people climbed up the stairs at the neighboring brownstone and vainly knocked on the door. We ended up being eleven altogether:

• George and Michiyo (the latter of whom we haven't seen in a very long time and just did something exciting to her hair, apparently for the occasion; the two of them brought us some Godiva cocoa mix, a commemorative quarters folder, and a great book on growing herbs for our soon-to-be balcony herb garden),
• Howard (he brought us delicious brownies that an unnamed friend of his made),
• Paul (we promised him food and a taped version of The Simpsons in order to get him to come by),
• Annie (my new friend from BU's TESOL program, who bravely T'd to unknown territory for the event--sorry, she's not pictured above)
• Debbie Wu (who I haven't seen in five or so years, but spent many post-midnight hours with in the Tower Court computer lab awhile ago),
• Erika (Little) and her husband, Tim (we haven't seen Erika in five years or so either, and we'd never met Tim before, but it was great to see her again and to meet him; they're not pictured above either, sorry, mostly because I tried to leave the camera in a really obvious spot, but I still forgot to take any pictures at all until it was really late and they had left),
• Jef (who carried a whole pan of peanutbutter chocolate chip cupcakes he made himself on the T over here--and yes, I'm aware of the ambiguity of this clause. My intended phrase structure is below--really you only need to note that the final PP (on the T over here) is attached to the VP (carried), not to embedded S (he made himself). I'm actually not sure of a few of the details, like how I should diagram "by himself" in this instance. Think of this as a sample of what I'm doing in one of my linguistics classes right now, and as practice for Marnie Reed's problem set due Wednesday:

We ate a polenta tamale pie with beefy-bean chili, a vegetarian spinach lasagna, a nice interesting fresh spinach salad, soft drinks and juices, a cocoa banana cake, and butter cookies. Around 10:30, George and Michiyo, Erika and Tim, and Annie had to go, but after that we had an exciting round of Star Wars Triviopoly™, a game co-invented with Howard and field-tested for the first time that night by Robert and I, Debbie, Jef, and Howard. It involves a Star Wars Episode 1 Monopoly board, the questions and R2-D2 randomizer from a Star Wars Trilogy Trivial Pursuit game, and Regis's "phone a friend" lifelines in order to create fun-filled hours of Star Wars enjoyment. When we were still playing at 2:30 AM, we decided to have a cut-throat round with no lifelines or trivia question reprieves in order to bankrupt everyone and end the game. It still needs a few small refinements, but in general it's a very promising game. Debbie nicely offered to drive Howard and Jef home, and Paul spent the night on our futon. Since the next day was Presidents' Day Monday, nobody had to go to work (except for Robert, that is, who really could have mentioned this to me sooner. . . ). Here's a picture of the people left at our house at 3 AM, as they were heading out the door; Paul discovered that he could throw his leg over our railing in order to be included in the picture. Next time, we'll try to take more pictures throughout the evening.

our apartment. . .

Finally all of our furniture is in place--not everything is painted, repainted, or finished, as I'll do that on the balcony in nicer weather, but till then, this is what our place looks like. Not pictured are our dining room, balcony, or private stairwell (see above for that one). Clicking on each image brings you to a much higher-quality version. Enjoy the tour of the apartment!