An island with superpower ambitions…

“Steph, your party was an unbelievable success. How do you feel about it?”
Unbelievable!
Of course, it really had extremely little to do with me. I provided the location and the invitations. A wee bit of coordination. Yasser and Elsa cooked a scrumptuous meal (full menu below), which Denise rounded out with her Jamiacan rice, and Andrea & Kirsten topped off with ice cream sundaes. Ya’all came and enjoyed yourselves, and that’s what made it work. 🙂

The cheers from the garage were great fun, and I thoroughly enjoyed the few rounds of pong and flip the cup in which I participated. Nothing like team competition for bonding purposes! There were a few holdouts on account of germs and petroleum contamination, but hey, what’s life without a few risks? 🙂
The dancing was nice too, although I didn’t do that as much as I would have preferred. Hard to do everything though! My favorite parts of the evening included some really hard laughing, and a series of incredibly warm hugs.
Who shall I pick on first? 🙂 There was the grumpface, some no shows, a handful of very late shows, and some surprise shows. Some budding couples. Some despairing singles. The usual mix. :-/
Andrea and I discovered that we both get perverse pleasure out of scaring people. Cata and I danced a bit of disco together. Jesse and I commiserated about the challenges of putting together committees of people who a) care about our topics and b) can work well together. Our Australian friend arrived despite going too far. Fernando showed up without his family. “Last to arrive, last to leave”, he announced upon departure a little while later. Srinivas loomed up out of the darkness in the driveway with a whole passle of friends, some of whom had rsvp’d and others who filled in for some of the cancellations and no-shows. I consulted with Peter about calling Paritesh, “Pari”, cuz I had that outsider vibe of being set up to say something that would make me look ridiculous. I think it was Krishna who tried to put me up to it. Sarubh clearly enjoys being the center of attention! Ramu grinned a lot. So did Sirisha and Swati. I think they might have been in on the longest dancing spree (that I missed, sigh).
I heard that Art told the best stories in the garage, but I missed them. Raz and I talked about a few of my old books that were laying out – blast from the past! Return of the Bird Tribes, Emmanuel’s Book, which I’d forgotten was given to me by Mary Frances oh so many years ago, the book that Spotted Eagle had us all read, Beyond the Eagle, and the book that introduced me to phenomenology just before I applied to the Comm Dept, The Spell of the Sensuous.
George and Min were late arrivals (and they both got rowdy!)!! George doesn’t seem too upset about losing the election for GSS executive officer, I guess these means he’ll run for the GSS representative/treasurer spot for comm-grad? That’s a more immediate gain for us. 🙂 I did learn that one reason the count might have been skewed is because some people only voted for the contested positions, not for those in which there was only one candidate.
Elizabeth brought another batch of books to distribute; I’m not sure if anyone took her up on the offer? Sreela had already read them all! When and how folks find time to read non-academic things is mystery to me. I think there must be some kinda manipulation of time that they pull off, generating extra hours in the day! Nigham and I had a bit of a heart-to-heart. In fact, several of our friends are facing questions about visa or other status and are unsure where they might be next year. Lily, Maria and Arturo (who missed this one, wah!)…Elsa. I hope things work out for each of them the way that they want things to work out.
Mike’s a juggler! That was fun. And Chris and I got some tutoring from Denise on turning in the ol’ dissertation (as if it’s going to happen anytime soon). They get submitted in a box. Literally! A cardboard box or wood crate piled high with all the hundreds of pages. I can hardly wait – NOT!
I knew I wouldn’t be able to remember all the friends of Yasser’s and Elsa’s who came. Jesse’s from sociology; Amanda is a fictionwriter – of things that couldn’t happen but do (maybe she’s done some scripting for my life? no? Darn. I’ve been looking for someone to blame!)
I have an “Amy & Todd” on my list of rsvp’s but I don’t think they made it? Amber and Greg were here…and Jed and Megan. I didn’t talk with them as much. Mostly just to rave about the food. Oh yes, The Food!
Mauritian dishes, prepared by Elsa:
Chicken curry
Lentils
Tofu Rougaille (creole stew)
Slavic sauteed peppers
There were also two condiments, a very spicy green paste (delicious!) and another sort of … salad?
Dishes from Syria (a CIA link comes up second doing a Google search!), prepared by Yasser:
Loubieh Bizeit (sauteed green beans with lemon and garlic)
Mtabal (eggplant with tahine)
Bamieh bi Zeit (sauteed okra with garlic and cilantro)
Karass be Humus (sauteed leeks, onions, and humus)
Tabouleh
Hummus bi Lahmeh (with meat)
No one left on an empty stomach, that’s for sure! Erin called in the wee hours of the morning to announce her safe arrival home, and to report a left behind umbrella (followed the next day by Mike realizing he’d left his hat). I was still up cleaning, but it wasn’t bad at all. Not only did we rival the neighbors’ hootin’ & hollerin’ (the party house two doors up that Eric used to occupy in an example of the small world syndrome) with those reverberating celebrations from the garage, everyone was so conscientious with picking up after themselves that the clean-up took less than an hour. I had a restful sleep and saw Bill at the gym early this afternoon. We be working out!