Festivus for the Rest-of-us

This weekend, Delta and I invited the gang over to celebrate Festivus. The idea being some fine wine, delish food and an airing of grievances (which any good evening should have!). The morning of the party, Delta and I were still victims of our own inertia, sitting on the couch devoid of ideas for our menu.

After some serious bouts of debate and discussion, we settled on going Mexican (homemade guac, Chicken Adobo, bean salad), and created a painstaking shoping list. We headed over to the supermarket, and Delta watched in horror as I headed over to the shopping carts. "Do we really have to take a cart?!" For New York super markets are not built for manoeverability. But there's no getting around using a cart when you're shopping for 10 people. We had barely turned down the first aisle when Delta yelped, "I can't do this! The cart wheel won't turn properly and there's people bumping into me and there's no place to think and..." I seriously panicked that he might leave me alone there in the supermarket, but in a display of heroic effort, he pulled through in typical fashion.

The rest of the afternoon is a blurry memory of frenzied cooking and cleaning. So that when the first guest arrived, we had barely just sat down to rest and poured ourselves a celebratory glass of wine.

The evening itself proceeded exactly as we had hoped, as evidenced by the basic success factors that mark our parties:
- We plied everyone with food and drink (for what could be better than turgid guests)
- The jubilant revelry lasted well into the night (until a neighbour had to bang on our common wall, following the standard New York signal for shut up)
- The evening concluded with Ilajna doing some wild karaoke'ing at Keats (now doesn't that sound familiar!)

All in all, when you have to stay in bed till 2.30pm the next day just to recuperate, you know it's been a good festivus!