Big fun day [Saturday 16]

As I write this it's 9.41 in the morning on Sunday and I'm on the flight to San Diego for a previously mentioned conference. We've all boarded and are prolly waiting for clearance from ATC. I'll be writing this in keep knowing how bad blogger app is at dealing with networking issues. 

Going to start chronologically because the meatiest parts come at the end.

Got up at 8.30 in the morning only to go back to sleep and arise at 10.00 in Brookline. My hosts had other couple friends coming in for lunch which I didn't want to hang around in for. We made a solid breakfast: cauliflowers, Pepin-style creamy scrambled eggs that I made, avocado, and meaty remains of the previous night's dinner for AD. All in tortilla and rotis warmed to be almost crispy. They could have become a tad too crispy I'll admit for it was easier to eat them as tacos rather than rolls that we intended. After helping JD clean the dishes (and a few more) all of us watched Priyanka Karki's YouTube series. As previously alluded JD wants to make movies and videos and is starting from the basics, with the series as a starting point. I was getting ready to leave while they watched the series but JD said she didn't fully understand what was happening and AD said he couldn't tell the characters from each other and he had even lesser understanding of what was happening. It must have grown on them because they did watch three episodes of the series right as I was getting ready to leave though to be fair it could also have been because each episode was only like ten minutes long.

On the way to the 66 bus to the orange line I met SD, who lives near the Heath St stop. He was trying to get me to amble around but I had to catch the bus to make a tight timetable. Just as he was talking to me, he found someone else who he knew also Nepali who he started talking to. Must have been such a wild morning for him, to bump into a bunch of people who don't even live close by one after other.

The T ride home was frustratingly long and full of delays due to the T. The trip which I've made in 45 minutes on my bike took an hour and forty minutes by train and bus. Honestly... What to I even say? The only good part about it all : it was ridiculously cold all day and almost impossible to walk outside for long without being fully prepared for it which I was not so in some way the wactra time was a cost of convenience. This has been said a hundred times already and will be said a thousand times more in this blog: thank god for podcasts for saving me from the mouth of insanity.

At home, got caught up on Fridays posts (as I get caught up on Saturday's posts this Sunday haha) and caught up with the housemates and CC. In a way it was a 'best of' of all the recent seasons, if roommate BB had been around too, he was in ME to see R, it would have been the complete apartment set for the last two-ish years. CC's found a great job in DC, lives in a decent neighborhood near the zoo and has a good group of friends. To celebrate her jetting the job I drank a can of beer, my first one in almost eight months. It's not that I've been completely dry all this time but this was the only celebratory drink. It's a great cause for celebration!

I rode my bike, after what felt like a really long time, to Aldi to get cheese and crackers. This was for the evening potluck, I was in charge of the cheeses. Got three flavoured goat cheeses (cranberry which SS loves and tastes like jam and cheese, honey which is sweet and mild, and garlic and spices which is flavorful) a serious Gouda block (oof so cheesy) and an extra sharp cheddar (not sharp enough). Also got a comically large amount of green grapes.

Back home I cleaned my room, picked the grapes out of the stems and cleaned them (you laugh but it took so long and it wasn't a quick task) and with Cc set up the cheese board with little description of each cheese and everything. The guys cooked meat and the staples. We spent the next several hours preparing listening to songs and cleaning up.

The first guests got in at sevenish and they weren't really guests as much as regular house occurrences. The first real guests aka people who don't come over every week or two weeks got in at a little after eight.

Too many things from the party it doesn't make sense to describe transcribe a party anyway. There wasn't enough booze because people who drink beer brought in wine and were looking for beer. A bottle of wine disappeared and reappeared after the party. The half open bottle of wine we'd hidden to not make people sick due to it being halfway to vinegardom was consumed quickly. The game of antakshari, the first one I've been in, in perhaps a decade and a half lasted for solid three, maybe four hours until the participants gave up because they were too tired to go on. The group as a whole largely ignored a game of mafia that was happening while those playing loved it, a little for everyone. The women got talking as a group and planned for their meetings. I made potentially new friends. Discovered that ND gets very flustered when she's complimented. Found out A (of the video fame, first time meeting her) is amazing with songs and so are AP (of the PhD fame) and RSS (of the Forest hills region). CC is unbelievable with rare Bollywood movie names.

The folks started heading out at 12.30 and by 2 everyone was almost out. We could have tried harder to keep folks around but CC needed to sleep in the common room so there wasn't too much interest in taking the party on while disturbing her sleep. SS and her friend S ( Green st) were the last folks to leave which made me so happy because they were the ones most concerned if this was going to boring because they didn't know too many people around. At least one of those concerns was addressed.

SM was the first one to go to bed, after comparing notes on the evening. We agreed generally everyone had fun and the drinks running out early wasn't really on us. Pk Cc and I talked for another half hour before I went to bed so I could catch my flight this morning. The flight I'm currently typing this in right now.