The ultimate haywire comes home to roost.

On Monday morning I went to meeting of a reading group, and I had to make the following excuse: "I did not do the reading, because this weekend, my house was overrun by a band of gypsies."

Sure, you are probably thinking. And your non-existent dog ate your homework.

Or maybe you are thinking, Honey, back away from the Bruno archives.

But I am not making this up.

You see, on Saturday night the PP and I and some friends went to see the Luminescent Orchestrii at the The Bohemian/Horizon Records, where they were giving a concert that was also a recording for WCNW's Tower of Song series. For those of you who, like me, have a bit of a thing for the Romanian gypsy sound, or klezmer, or tango nuevo, or all of the above, you should not pass up a chance to see Luminescent Orchestrii, as they are fantastic musicians and singers who bring together a wonderful hybrid sound that will launch you from your seat, whether you do or do not know how to dance to something in 11/7 time. Dance anyway. Life is short.

Anyway, mid-way through the second set, they noted between songs that they needed a place to stay, and the PP's head nearly spun around three times. What he was thinking, it turns out, is that we have two extra bedrooms plus a futon couch and that we should put these people up. Life is short.

So we did.

As our friends who we'd gone to the concert with were leaving, they said, "if you take the gypsies home, be sure not to take home the groupies." Luckily, we so succeeded. The band packed up their stuff, packed their instruments and gear into their mini-van (like a well-oiled packing machine, I might note), and off we all went to our house.

Over limoncello and herbal tea, my fantasy of talking about my current favorite kind of music with actual practitioners came true. When I noted that one of their songs sounded like Astor Piazzolla, they acknowledged his influence. They told us a little about trips to Romania and Hungary and various gypsy music festivals, and then everyone went off to respective bedrooms and crashed.

In the morning, the PP and one of the band member brought home pastries and we all feasted and chatted, and after a while everyone went off to do his or her own thing. It all seemed so normal, yet so not: at one point I realized that we had a fiddler playing on our front porch, a bassist listening to my CDs of Renaissance choral music back in the TV room, and the guitarist practicing riffs in my study. Later the bassist joined him in my study and they worked out a new song. I kept looking at the PP in disbelief, only to be greeted with a similar disbelieving look from him.

Then they left, and the house was silent, as if none of it had ever happened. But there is still, several days later, this great creative energy here in the study.