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Christmas Party 2001 |  |
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Christmas Party 2001 | |
Over
then past ten years or so Sally and I seem to have avoid holiday parties. When
we first came to L.A. we would invite all of our friends over for Thanksgiving
and Christmas dinner. Back then, most of our friends were still single and several
of them would have starved had it not been for frozen dinners and fast food
(we once had a friend attempting to "bake" a steak). As a result our
holiday get togethers were well attended and well appreciated, but over the
years friends got married, had families of their own and and we go busy as well.
The number of parties that we threw or attended grew less and less and by this
year it had been about ten years since we had more than a couple of people over
for the holidays. This year Sally and I managed to get out a bit more than previous
year and discovered how much we missed having people over for the holidays.
This Thanksgiving we invited a few people over for dinner, which we hadn't done
in quite a while. Thanksgiving seemed to go well, and we enjoyed having everyone
over. Since we hadn't had people over for a while we ended up with a lot of
leftovers. One odd thing was that we actually ended up with more alcohol than
when we started. It seems that each of our guests brought at least one bottle
of wine. Sally and I don't drink that much so we wondered what we would do with
all of the extra liquor, but emboldened with our recent success at Thanksgiving
we decided to throw a Christmas and invite even more people.
For
me, one of the scariest things about having a party is preparing the house.
We've never really had a neat house. I inherited my sloppiness. My mom used
to say "why clean when there are so many good books to read." On the
other hand, having a party is a great excuse to clean the house. Actually, Sally
did most of the cleaning and quite a bit of the baking with help from Randy.
This was the first time in ages that we were actually be able to see some of
the counter tops in the kitchen. I clean out my office, in case anyone went
in there to play on the computer, put lights on the house and helped with Christmas
decorations. The week before the party Sally, Randy and I came down with colds,
so all in all the house was pretty clean given the circumstances.
I
think that the party went very well. Most of the people that we invited showed
up. We really enjoyed meeting everyone's families. The dog only managed to get
inside the house once that night and didn't kill or injure anyone in it's path.
The cats mostly hide although at the end a couple of them came out from their
hiding places and when they did appear they didn't maul any small children.
Sally and I were amazed at how quickly we were able to clean up after the party. The one thing that I did notice after we had finished cleaning up was that once again we ended up with more liquor the we started with.