i got up at 9am, after spending a cold night in the cabin (with dan, who slept in the second guest bedroom), the ocean breeze blowing through the open screen windows. i took a shower and read in bed. john came out with the morning call. i got out of bed and went to the house to get some cereal. i met megan's boyfriend david, who arrived late last night (i had already gone to bed). once everybody was up, we decided to go to the local beach. deanna couldn't go because she had to drive erin back to the airport. the rest of us left without them, all crammed into the ford explorer. we got to the beach close to noontime, it was already pretty crowded. while everyone else went into the ocean to take a dip, i stayed on land, sweating in the heat and reading my book. about an hour later we decided to go back home.

deanna was already back from the airport, and the rest of the day was spent lazily. if not in the pool, then somewhere sleeping, lunch being whatever leftover items we had from last night. christine drove home around that time. i had a chance to do my first gps drawing of a single-stroke elephant, but it didn't come out too well. i also saw a black swallowtail butterfly, approaching it slowly so i could get a good photo. later, we watched some television, saw the decisive tennis battle between jelena dokic and venus williams, venus winning of course. but in terms of garnering new fans (especially male fans), dokic probably won. jelena, will you be my girlfriend?

as the afternoon slowly transitioned into evening, megan and david went out to buy groceries. david, a professional chef who owns his own restaurant in nyc, was going to make dinner for us. while they were out, the rest of us watched rollerball, deanna's assignment movie to write a capsule review for entertainment weekly. i've never seen the movie before, and the added attraction of "seeing what john stamos sees" in the special r-rated edition of the movie was a bonus. after seeing the film, i wholeheartedly agree that i've never seen a worst movie than rollerball. it lacked in every single department, from interesting characters, to coherent stories, to even simple film editing. i thought it was a joke, but that part of the movie shot entirely in green night vision mode will be legendary in cinema history as what happens when a movie runs out of money and the director has to resort to nightshot in order to get something out. the movie was a good laugh though, i'm glad i never paid money in the theatres to see it.

while david and megan were busy in the kitchen making dinner, the rest of us were outside playing croquet. i have never played before, and all my knowledge of the game comes from watching heathers. it goes without saying that this game is not my forte. deanna beat us all by many strokes, john coming in a distant second. through the whole game we took turns making inappropriate comments about balls and strokes.

elsewhere, back in the kitchen, david was putting on a cooking show. here was a guy who was my polar opposite in terms of cooking. while i can't cook to save my life, david was in his elements, like watching an artist work. you have all these raw ingredients, and just looking at them you could never imagine that viola! delicious food can be created from them! we had this pasta with lobster meat, potato with roasted garlic, a zuchinni dish, and barbecued sausages.

after dinner, while cleaning up, there was some kind of fireworks display going on outside. it wasn't very long but there was a lot of big fireworks. later, we watched the anna nicole smith show, probably the last time we'll ever watch that horrible train wreck of a show. with so many original guests gone, dan and i moved back to the house instead of sleeping in the cabin.