Sunday, August 05, 2012

settle down, it'll all be clear

YAY OLYMPICS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So today was my Olympic Rings Cakes party, and it was a smashing success. It all came together beautifully; baking four of the five cakes yesterday no doubt helped, as did buying stuff for nice sandwiches rather than attempting to make supper. By the time the first guests showed up, everything was basically in place and done and lovely (and my hair was tinseled with the Olympics colors) - perhaps I'll post pictures tomorrow, but tonight I'm too tired to figure out zee technology.

However, I was delighted with both the quantity and quality of the attendees - approximately thirty people showed up, which was approximately enough to eat half the cake I baked. We officially cut the cake at eight p.m., but people started showing up two or three hours before that and stayed until after midnight, so that's quite a showing. And there was much watching of Olympics, much rejoicing over eating cake rather than training for decades for small, fleeting bits of glory, and much drinking of rum and other beverages. I made a giant pitcher of mojitos (which were utterly delish), and a vat and a half of mai tais (involving six cups of rum - I usually don't measure mixed drinks using my 4-cup pyrex measuring cup, but it was quite helpful for this party). Once the food coloring started pouring, shit got real, although we only did one shot this year (and that one was diluted - more like half a shot) - a rum/club soda shot with a squeeze of lime and a bit of salt, dyed light blue like the ocean, with one single drop of black food coloring diffusing through it, which was called the Deepwater Horizon. Not yummy, but certainly entertaining enough to deserve a medal.

Speaking of medals, I had twelve or so that I gave out whimsically and capriciously - for such things as arriving first (Felicia), parking the farthest away (Oniel), knowing an Olympian (Chandlord), wearing all five Olympics colors (Adit - who else?), saying that if we can't be Russia we might as well be out of the volleyball competition (Tom), etc. It is entertaining to watch people get mildly competitive over something with no rules and no tangible monetary value - but I'm sure I would have been striving for a medal had I not been the equivalent of the IOC (and like the IOC, I allowed myself to be seduced by my own power and ended up giving myself a medal, yay).

As I said, the last group left around 12:30, and I might have been tempted to go with them - but I was quite happy at my current state of inebriation, and since I'm on deadline and need to write furiously tomorrow (and all next week), I decided to be a good girl and stay home so that I wouldn't die. After they left, I ended up cleaning the apartment - perhaps I should have just gone to bed, but I was just drunk enough to not mind cleaning, and not tired yet, so I put everything away. I need to run the dishwasher in the morning, wash a few handwash only things, and scrub down the counters (after I buy paper towels, since I made a rookie mistake and forgot to buy more before the party) - but cleanup was super easy, and now I don't have to dread getting out of bed and facing the kitchen in the morning.

So beyond cleaning, I really can't recount how delightful of an evening I had - and I didn't even really get all that drunk, despite the vat of delicious mai tais, because I was just so darned excited for zee party that I kept forgetting to drink my beverages. I'm already planning for my Sochi 2014 party - I believe borscht is a requirement, and I'll have to do vodka drinks instead of rum drinks (not that rum is really a British drink, but Britain does still have Jamaica as part of the commonwealth, and there was a lot of rum drunk by the British navy, so I'm making a tenuous connection there). Anyway, it will be super fun - so save the date for February 15, 2014. Goodnight!

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