Well work has really picked up lately. A big project which was hanging out there finally came in, and a couple others are ready to get moving too. Which is good, but means I have a lot less time for recreation. Thus the lack of posting here for the past few days.
So anyway. The party. Went pretty well I think. Cooking & other preparations were less crazed than I had feared, although more stressed than they should have been due to the hurricane. Not that we suffered any damage, but I lost a day when I was planning to make a couple of recipes. But we had no net access, and I had bookmarked the recipes online but hadn't gotten around to printing them out. D'oh!
By moving furniture around we managed to make room for almost everyone to sit in the living room. Which is pretty amazing considering that our living normally seats 4 or 5. But we were short a couple of people for the movie-watching -- Patricia due to car trouble preventing her attendance, and Jeff having left early due to work the next morning -- so the overcrowding wasn't as dire as I had expected.
The dogs reacted predictably to the massive changes in their environment: Thirteen stood there shivering with fear at the throng of intruders, and Lina ran around practically hyperventilating with joy over all the new people to pay attention to her. Nutty, being much more laid-back, quietly allowed people to pay attention to him without getting so worked up about it.
Of course, we had enough food for an army. Because it wouldn't be a party without way too much food. Lots of people brought dishes, and I cooked so much that we might have had enough even if no one else had contributed. It was nice to have such good variety though. Like an Indian buffet in our house! Next time I definitely would not make double batches of the onion chutney and saag paneer. We've been eating that saag at almost every meal & while we've made a dent in it, we still have a long way to go. Georg has been testing his culinary skill by coming up with interesting ways to eat Indian leftovers so they won't taste like the same damned leftovers every night. With remarkable success I must say.
Everyone seemed to get a kick out of the movies. Originally I had thought to show one movie in its entirety, but fortunately I thought better of it. Instead we just watched the dance numbers. Phil brought a couple of DVDs of bhangra videos, which were great fun. Also we showed the best numbers from Gumnaam, Junglee and Amar Akbar Anthony. There was a general consensus that the title song from Amar Akbar Anthony is fiendishly catchy. Only one person so far has fessed up to singing it to themselves the next day, but I suspect it was more widespread than that.
The only major mishaps were Patricia's car trouble, Nutty trying to drink Phil's lassi, Calvin leaving his backpack here and having to come all the way back from Carrboro that night, and Ray getting a little too into one of the dance numbers and bumping into Thirteen, who nearly had heart failure. Poor dog, I really felt bad for her. First we moved the furniture, eliminating the spot where she normally hides out. Then before she'd had a chance to get used to that trauma, nine strangers pile into the house. I was planning to give her a bath on the day of the party but when the time came, I just didn't have the heart to. She was scared enough already and besides, she wasn't that dirty.
The living room actually looked more spacious with the furniture rearranged for the party. Too bad we couldn't leave it that way. But we couldn't, because 1. the couch was blocking the fireplace, and 2. the coffee table was way off in the corner away from everything else, so there was no place to put the remote or a drink or whatever. Which was why Nutty got a chance at Phil's lassi, because the glass had to be put on the floor.
I must say, I'm extremely glad we had the sense to clean up that night. It's no fun to wake up to a mountain of crusty dishes. But instead the house was reasonably clean the next day. We ought to have people over more often. If for no other reason than to force us to keep the house tidy. Next time not 12 people though.
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