Thank goodness for friends like these

We're talking about the kind of friends who don't require a top-to-bottom search for items to be tossed into the clothespress out of sight, the kind who are happy to eat what you eat, the ones who are able to entertain themselves, the people who laugh, the people who read. The door opens, they step across the threshold, and, no matter how long it's been, everything picks up right where it left off. I love this time of year, because it brings all sorts of people to Austin for all sorts of reasons, most of them fun! And there's no requirement to make elaborate preparations to entertain them, because our spending time together is the entertainment. Having voted early takes some of the time pressure off and lets us be more flexible.