Thanks for everyone who showed up last night to the Buffy and Smallville party.
Originally, Tamara and I decided we were going to do a date night since two of our favorite season premiers came on. Since Danny was stuck at the castle by his lonesome, we invite him over too.
I had mentioned to James that I needed help with X-Windows, and offered dinner in payment, however he had plans with Pete who’s in town doing training. But, he committed to a strong maybe after the pizza thing in Tyson’s was over.
Passing the news, Pete got the invitation just in time, but didn’t feel that comfortable bailing out on his new friends, and so got permission to bring them. How was I not surprised they were all female?
By this time we had critical mass, and Tamara decided to turn this into a welcome to autumn party. When I got home, she and the Hendersons had decorated the house in fall attire, including corn-cob wreaths on the door!
Tamara made two huge lasagnas and Danny brought over some sodas. People started showing up around 6:30, so we took in the season finale of Smallville.
Alan managed to make it out of NIH a little later than normal, but got there before Buffy started. On his way over, who did he see pulling into her driveway but Bonnie! The two rode over, and Bonnie shared with us her recent daily adventures.
Tamara got a call from Michele who had a status report about SAIC, and since there was enough time, extended an invitation to her and Mark. They took us up on it, and about 40 minutes they showed up with the most amazing cheese cake you’d ever tasted.
I was starting to feel like a real schmuck, because earlier that day I had talked to Jim by phone: Pete had called him and told him there was a party at my place, and I just flat out denied it. I even put a post on WWCo to see how far Jim would take the bait.
As I was about to call Jim, guess who drove back from Roanoke! Laurie made a surprise visit, apparently arranged by Tamara, as a surprise for Danny. Danny had found another roll of pictures and brought over photos from DC with Tamara and Michele in them that we hadn’t seen yet. He’s still waiting on two more to get developed.
Chris called with a Linux question regarding Apache, and it didn’t seem right ignoring the guests, nor did it seem right to not extend an invitation to our spaghetti night hosts. So we did. And they accepted, bringing Doug (who was visiting) with them.
Excluding the Hendersons, we had 16 people there. When Buffy came on, house rules requested silence, and we watched it and Smallville, only having to use the TiVo once to pick up something that was missed. I have to point out this wasn’t the fault of anyone, but rather we all couldn’t understand the zombie like ghost thingy taunting Buffy, so we had to turn on closed captioning for a moment. It was basically your old “you can’t save her, you didn’t save me” threat.
Michele H. came home from work early, apparently they had a corporate meeting offsite. She hadn’t gotten the news about the party, but clued in with as many cars packed around our house as there were. I felt kinda bad she had to park further away than normal. She happened to come in a few minutes after Smallville started and joined us.
When the shows were over, we pulled out the ice-cream and watched the bonus materials on Monster’s Inc., which included the new short “Mike’s New Car.”
Dan brought over his Outer Limits DVD with four travel episodes on it, and we watched one about the holocaust.
Afterward we broke out Robo Rally and had a timed game of capture the flag. Chris won, but only because he pushed my robot into a conveyor belt when Michele shot me and I had a choice to either move or heal. It was be dead, or come in second.
It started getting late, but Bonnie asked if we could play the game we did at her Chalet, so we did. It was much more fun with a larger crowd. So, I introduced the mafia variant to the group. I tell you, you folks are just plain evil.
People finally started leaving around 12:30am and we kicked the last out at 1:00pm. That’s when it dawned on me, due to all the distractions, we never got to call Jim or Loralie back.
I’m sure I’ll hear about it today, cause you know, if there’s a party, they always HAVE to be invited. 🙂