Today was a wonderful way to kick the Olympics off in style. Of course, now I'm tired and v. happy that I have tomorrow to be completely hermity before a week of craziness - but today was #worthit.
I got up at 8:30 and immediately baked two cakes - a lemon cake and a blueberry cake (both gluten free). The Olympic Rings Cakes (tm) are traditionally five cakes, and are traditionally full of food coloring - but the last time I baked all five cakes, I ended up throwing away the equivalent of two cakes, and also we're all much classier than we used to be and are somewhat averse to food coloring. So I didn't dye the blueberry cake blue, which I think was a sign of great forbearance on my part (and also the cake looked way better than it does when it's blue).
After the cakes were baked, I did some other things to get ready - I went to Whole Foods to buy fancy cheese and dairy products, and I went to BevMo to stock up on rum and cachaça (where I ran into Julie and Brian, who were stocking up for their own party tonight - too bad we accidentally booked over each other), and I took a shower, and I prepped a gallon of mai tais and a pitcher of mojitos. Shockingly, though, I was mostly on time in terms of getting things ready for the party - usually I'm still cooking when people show up, but this time I was basically done when people arrived, so I was able to enjoy myself.
And it turns out that that's a good thing - far more people arrived than I had anticipated, which means that I actually had a mostly-accurate amount of food for the first time ever (we got through all six fancy cheeses! and a ton of guac, and two and a half bags of chips, and most of the cake, and all the mojitos/mai tais). I had only gotten confirmations from ~12 people as of last night, and somewhere around 25 people showed up (not counting infants), which made for a super fun, super crowded situation. I live in a studio, which is probably not designed for 25 people - but it all felt lovely despite that.
John and Jess (and Ian) were the first to arrive, and they were followed shortly thereafter by Oniel, whom I hadn't seen in years (possibly almost five years, although I think I saw him another time in the intervening half-decade). Walter and Carson and their baby showed up right before Oniel, although their baby was the youngest of the child army and so mostly slept through the whole thing. There was a flurry of arrivals after that - Adit and Priyanka came (with Vihaan), and Anthony (whose hair is reaching peak 80s band), and Dan (whom I hadn't seen in ages), and Vidya, and Justin, and Marco (Claude's brother), and Terry (still in town, although she leaves in the morning), and Lauren and Nathan (and Finley), and Claudia and her boyfriend Sam, and Sheila and Rajiv (Sheila is perhaps the only person who was as excited about the Olympics as I was).
That all turned into a full house, and some people absconded to the terrace with their wine, while others (mostly John/Anthony/Dan) talked about the Guns 'n' Roses concert that they're going to, and we all drank mojitos and mai tais, and Anthony and I very ill-advisedly tasted both the cachaças (turns out that the one he brought is infinitely better than the one that I bought this morning, but they are both terrible). Also, Adit left and then came back and then kept saying goodbye for an hour, as he does. Also, John did inappropriate things with my fake baby (Prom King), including putting him up on the skylight over my bed (which is reachable from my terrace). Also, Lauren's son unexpectedly tried to eat my nose, so if he has any diseases in his saliva, I'm pretty sure I inhaled all of them.
The party started to clear out around six (with a temporary clearing earlier when Vidya and a couple of others went to Taco Bell, although they came back), but then the second round of the party happened - just when it was down to Rajiv/Sheila/Justin, Jesse and Maya showed up, and so did Raja, and also Katrina and Annie. Round two was more lowkey (or at least it had a higher average age, since there were no children), but no less fun - we talked about a variety of ridiculous things, and Raja made some entertaining pronouncements about how easily we could all do gymnastics, and we cleared out the rest of the cheese and mai tais, much to my relief. And Jesse gave me an Olympics medal, which was v. sweet (especially after he had basically forced me to give him one with his crazy eyes - I award medals mostly at random, but it was nice to get one back).
Everyone left around nine, and I ran the dishwasher and watched gymnastics and vegged and inadvertently napped until now. And now I am going to go to bed and revel in the fact that I don't have to set an alarm tomorrow and don't have to do anything or see anyone or cook anything or prepare anything - the full extent of my ambitions is to clean the kitchen (almost done anyway), get coffee, watch some olympics, and maybe read a book about gardening. Yay. Goodnight!
I got up at 8:30 and immediately baked two cakes - a lemon cake and a blueberry cake (both gluten free). The Olympic Rings Cakes (tm) are traditionally five cakes, and are traditionally full of food coloring - but the last time I baked all five cakes, I ended up throwing away the equivalent of two cakes, and also we're all much classier than we used to be and are somewhat averse to food coloring. So I didn't dye the blueberry cake blue, which I think was a sign of great forbearance on my part (and also the cake looked way better than it does when it's blue).
After the cakes were baked, I did some other things to get ready - I went to Whole Foods to buy fancy cheese and dairy products, and I went to BevMo to stock up on rum and cachaça (where I ran into Julie and Brian, who were stocking up for their own party tonight - too bad we accidentally booked over each other), and I took a shower, and I prepped a gallon of mai tais and a pitcher of mojitos. Shockingly, though, I was mostly on time in terms of getting things ready for the party - usually I'm still cooking when people show up, but this time I was basically done when people arrived, so I was able to enjoy myself.
And it turns out that that's a good thing - far more people arrived than I had anticipated, which means that I actually had a mostly-accurate amount of food for the first time ever (we got through all six fancy cheeses! and a ton of guac, and two and a half bags of chips, and most of the cake, and all the mojitos/mai tais). I had only gotten confirmations from ~12 people as of last night, and somewhere around 25 people showed up (not counting infants), which made for a super fun, super crowded situation. I live in a studio, which is probably not designed for 25 people - but it all felt lovely despite that.
John and Jess (and Ian) were the first to arrive, and they were followed shortly thereafter by Oniel, whom I hadn't seen in years (possibly almost five years, although I think I saw him another time in the intervening half-decade). Walter and Carson and their baby showed up right before Oniel, although their baby was the youngest of the child army and so mostly slept through the whole thing. There was a flurry of arrivals after that - Adit and Priyanka came (with Vihaan), and Anthony (whose hair is reaching peak 80s band), and Dan (whom I hadn't seen in ages), and Vidya, and Justin, and Marco (Claude's brother), and Terry (still in town, although she leaves in the morning), and Lauren and Nathan (and Finley), and Claudia and her boyfriend Sam, and Sheila and Rajiv (Sheila is perhaps the only person who was as excited about the Olympics as I was).
That all turned into a full house, and some people absconded to the terrace with their wine, while others (mostly John/Anthony/Dan) talked about the Guns 'n' Roses concert that they're going to, and we all drank mojitos and mai tais, and Anthony and I very ill-advisedly tasted both the cachaças (turns out that the one he brought is infinitely better than the one that I bought this morning, but they are both terrible). Also, Adit left and then came back and then kept saying goodbye for an hour, as he does. Also, John did inappropriate things with my fake baby (Prom King), including putting him up on the skylight over my bed (which is reachable from my terrace). Also, Lauren's son unexpectedly tried to eat my nose, so if he has any diseases in his saliva, I'm pretty sure I inhaled all of them.
The party started to clear out around six (with a temporary clearing earlier when Vidya and a couple of others went to Taco Bell, although they came back), but then the second round of the party happened - just when it was down to Rajiv/Sheila/Justin, Jesse and Maya showed up, and so did Raja, and also Katrina and Annie. Round two was more lowkey (or at least it had a higher average age, since there were no children), but no less fun - we talked about a variety of ridiculous things, and Raja made some entertaining pronouncements about how easily we could all do gymnastics, and we cleared out the rest of the cheese and mai tais, much to my relief. And Jesse gave me an Olympics medal, which was v. sweet (especially after he had basically forced me to give him one with his crazy eyes - I award medals mostly at random, but it was nice to get one back).
Everyone left around nine, and I ran the dishwasher and watched gymnastics and vegged and inadvertently napped until now. And now I am going to go to bed and revel in the fact that I don't have to set an alarm tomorrow and don't have to do anything or see anyone or cook anything or prepare anything - the full extent of my ambitions is to clean the kitchen (almost done anyway), get coffee, watch some olympics, and maybe read a book about gardening. Yay. Goodnight!
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