Party Time

Friday after work I threw a Back to School party.  It turned out to be a great success!  I realized that this is probably the first full-scale party that I've thrown on my own.  Full-scale meaning more than a handful of people (about 25 I'd say).  Since I have a job it took a lot of pre-planning: menu planning on Tuesday, shopping on Wednesday, pre-making food on Thursday, and last minute craziness for two hours on Friday.  I had a really good mix of people and I think people had a good time, both hanging out with friends and meeting new interesting people.  I even invited all of the new faculty and two of them came.  At one point my department chair said that she had thought that she should throw parties in order to introduce me to people, but it turns out that I am having parties that introduce her to people!  It was funny to reflect on that for a minute.  I guess I have come a long way in terms of making friends in a new town.  It really was tough there for a while.  But I would still say that I have a lot of acquaintance friends and no bosom-buddies friends yet.  That's harder, I know.  Towards the end of the night I realized that I hadn't been drinking much, so I hit the bourbon and made mint juleps (tip, you can quickly make simple syrup in the microwave), and the next morning realized that I got drunk really fast.  Hopefully the lingering guests didn't notice too much.  My specialty drink of the evening was a watermelon lemonade which was popular with both the kids and the adults (with vodka).  Yum yum.  Now my fridge has a back-up batch of cheesy mexicorn dip calling to me that I need to figure out how to get rid of without consuming 2 pounds of cheese by myself.