Recipe for love

Here's how to have a perfect Sunday afternoon:

1. Gather with some of your favorite people in the universe, so that the six of you laugh a lot and enjoy each other's company insanely much.

2. Make sure the hosts are Kyle and Erin, who are impossibly generous, stylish, beautiful, and humble, all at once.

3. Enjoy champagne and oysters to begin. Really good champagne. Really, really good oysters.

4. Move to the dining room, where the sun of an unseasonably beautiful November day falls on a table laden with glazed ham, glistening pomegranate and citrus salad, eggs baked with cream and herbs and mashed potatoes, and simply insane pastries of caramelized sugar, butter, and just enough flour to hold them together. O. M. G.

5. Watch Eric M fall asleep on the couch while the rest of us are still at the table, Burt shaking his head, saying, "Every. Time."

6. Return home and make German flashcards, and have that be pleasant, too, because you're sitting outside on the porch in November, and it's 72 degrees out. Wave to the bikers going by.

7. In the first early dark evening hours of standard time, hard cider in hand, Vaughan Williams on the radio, remember the perfect afternoon, just past.