An Excellent Birthday Party

• Michael Walsh and his roommate Paula
• My cow-orker Tom
• My friend and almost-but-not-quite cow-orker John
• My cow-orker Ray and his wife Leslie
• Lucy Huntzinger
• Trish Homis
• Mike Trent and his wife Angela
• My friend Subrata
• I think that's everyone...

Well, as it turns out, Michael and Paula showed up at 3:30, and were the first ones here. "I guess half an hour late isn't 'fashionably late' enough!" said Michael. John had called earlier to say he'd be a bit late and said that people who throw parties realize that no one is ever really ready for their guests to arrive when they say the party is supposed to start, so they always arrive late so as not to embarrass them.

Being my anal-retentive self, I was actually ready exactly on schedule, and that included taking an hour off around 1:00 to talk to my friend Karen, who called to catch up on stuff.

Anyway, Michael and Paula and I chatted for a while until John showed up, and then people started arriving pretty regularly. Indeed, it turns out that I got about the right turn-out since we used nearly every chair I have in the apartment, including my kitchen stool and my papasan stool. (I did have two other chairs in the other room, but...) So it worked out well enough!

Here's a run-down of what turns out to be somewhat more food than 12 people can eat in six-ish hours:

1. A dozen bagels with cream cheese
2. A 10" chocolate-on-chocolate cake from The Prolific Oven
3. A plate of homemade brownies that John brought
4. A plate of homemade chocolate chip cookies
5. A bag of tortilla chips and salsa dip
6. A bag of grapes
7. 2 bottles of wine
8. 3 hunks of cheese that Tom brought
9. 12 bottles of IBC black cherry soda
10. 6 bottles of Henry Weinhard's Vanilla Cream Soda
11. 12 cans of coke
12. 6 cans of diet coke
13. Orange juice, cranberry juice, milk, and water

Can you tell I was worried that I'd either have not enough food, or that I went way, way overboard? In retrospect, I think it was a reasonable amount of food for this sort of event. Better a little too much than not enough, and many of the leftovers can go in to work tomorrow to fatten up my cow-orkers.

Yeah, but how was the party, Michael?

It was a lot of fun, actually. A whole afternoon of sitting around talking. Leslie and Paula seemed to hit it off, and both were very impressed with the cake (i.e., they're both apparently chocolate and/or cake fiends) and were interested in The Prolific Oven.

I took the opportunity to shove some George R. R. Martin books at Lucy, and Trish borrowed a Bone collection (which Michael read through first). None of Michael, Paula, Ray, Leslie, Mike or Angela had been to my apartment before, and they generally seemed to feel that it's a pretty good place that I have for a pretty decent price (for the area), although the location isn't the greatest. (So, at least my feelings about the place are justified!)

People snooped through my CDs and books, which was cool; as I've said here before, I think I have some neat stuff and I enjoy sharing it with people.

And the cats charmed people, when they weren't off hiding. Newton tentatively checked people out from the beginning, but took a while to really warm up to everyone. Jefferson didn't come out until fairly late (when I fed them, I think) and was very careful, and only towards the end did he start sniffing people and rubbing up against them, although it was my lap he gravitated towards.

But mostly we talked. Mike Trent also works at Apple, and several of us have seen his name in e-mails before, but Ray had never met him before, and laughed that he'd never quite registered that there was a real person behind the e-mails, much less envisioned quite who he was. (I guess this is actually a common thing in large companies with e-mail; there are people with positions which are high-profile on mailing lists, but you often might never actually meet these people, so you don't - really - know anything about them.)

Michael Walsh I think got a little tired of being introduced as "another on-line journaller", so I stopped with that after the first few guests arrived. But otherwise he was his usual cheerful self. Lucy showed up a little later, having been unable to resist shopping at her favorite mall on the way down, and handed me a CD saying. Since I'd said in my invitation that gifts were not necessary, she handed it to me in a box "This isn't a birthday present, but I picked it up at the mall and it's for you, so it's just a present." I did my little shocked-blinking-smirk-but-really-I'm-just-feigning head motion and accepted it. (Uh, I wonder if anyone has the faintest idea what the heck that means!) Nice of her, though!

Oh, and who knows what-all we talked about for the whole time. But it was a lot of fun. I have many wonderful friends, all lively and intelligent and upbeat.

I had a great time. I ought to throw parties more often.

But less sugar next time. I think I went into insulin shock by the end of the day.

Things wrapped up by about 9:30, with Mike, Angela and Tom filing out around then. That seems like the right length of time for a party. Assuming there is a "right" length for such things!