It was cold on the day we ate cheesecake. I’d eaten cheesecake before. I’d eaten cheesecake many times. Once, I had it for breakfast, in the company of a friend named Zhenya. We ate copious loads of it and washed it down with beer. We wandered around Prague, with cheesecake and beer in our bellies. It was a warm day. We wandered as if lost, pausing occasionally, to photograph slugs, or attempt to read pages of graded and abandoned homework in a blue dumpster. On a warm day that began with cheesecake and beer, I read Czech homework with a Russian. Later that evening, we smoked like fiends, drank more beer, and then wandered (once more) into night-time Prague. It was cold on the day three of us ate cheesecake. I was not in Prague. No one in my immediate circle spoke Russian, despite two Russians in my immediate circle—one in Toronto and one in Moscow. We ate cheesecake as a way to enjoy the afternoon and escape the strange, brittle chill howling through the city. I enjoyed cheesecake (without beer) with Carin and with Corey. It was key-lime cheesecake. I took a picture of it. The picture blurred. I took other pictures: of pillars and cheesecake-eating crowds…of hosts behind rounded greeting desks and brass doohickies like dribbles of caramel frozen in time. I talked. I listened. I laughed, a lot, but it’s hard not to laugh when those around you are also laughing…warmly, in a way that is more giggle than chortle. It’s hard not to laugh when Carin describes her adventures with clever, slightly-angry animals doing their best to commit bodily mayhem while pretending to do other things. Just after hot chocolate, and just before key-lime cheesecake, Carin spoke of an elephant pretending not to charge. He was a big, bull elephant: the big sort of land-dwelling megafauna native to a place like the African continent (quite close to the bit that looks like a dog’s nose, sniffing Antarctica.) Elephants—it would seem—are pretty good liars: for the most part. Elephants, it would seem, pretend to eat, when they lie. (I once heard [from a dubious source] that in Ancient Egypt, those present at a conspiracy removed their jewelry while plotting. I would assume that among modern Elephants, those present at a low-speed chase pretend to munch on grass, as they tiptoe close, closer, and closer to their camera-toting target.) It is warmer in Chicago now. And very wet. Carin is back in South Africa. It’s winter there—or something like that! I don’t exactly know how things go on the other side of the equator; I’m still wrapping my head around the fact that stellar constellations are different and that toilet-flush whirlpools go in the other direction (actually, they go in the direction a flush-pipe is pointing, but left to their own devices, they’d go the other way, which isn’t the way they’d go in the northern bits of the planet.) I remember a cold day with key-lime cheesecake and some of the best company imaginable. Funny how people from Renderosity are some of the best people around! Unfortunately, there were no Russians with receding hairlines, or garish, multi-colored fingernails and admonishments to “laf” written in ball-point ink on their fingers. Fortunately, Corey and Carin were there: despite the chill, and Corey and Carin can definitely say that they beat a traditional Chicago winter, even if Corey’s zipper didn’t. On one of the coldest days of the year, I got to enjoy an immense bit of warmth (and tales of elephants lying, giraffes neck-dueling, and hyenas attempting (and failing) to crash a barbecue.) Life is good because of that, and now I’d like to say a hearty “Gelukkig Verjaarsdag, Carin!” or something like that. As always, thank you for viewing, reading and commenting, and again (a wee bit late, as usual) and: Gelukkig Verjaarsdag, Carin. (I stole that last bit from Tara. Cut and paste makes it look like you speak another language! I love it!)