"Curse Your Sudden Yet Inevitable Betrayal!"

Crazy busy lately, work and home. Pretty satisfied with the 11/2 results, and I'm not sweating the Republicans yet. Maybe in a few weeks or months, but right now I'm generally pleased with the results.

A few weeks ago a friend suggested I host a big Firefly marathon day, and we settled on yesterday. She's a foodie, and a talented cook, and we decided that for Firefly we should do lots of Chinese food and fruit, and I figured I'd do a brisket for the latecomers, and that I'd run the afternoon piece and she'd handle the evening. Plan was to hit "play" at noon, for folks to each bring some Chinese food to share, show up whenever and for however long they wanted, and we'd probably be closing out the series and moving to the movie Serenity at around midnite. A buddy made a boatload of chili to contribute to the theme of "space cowboy" food. No telling how many (or how few) would show, but it promised to be a big slice of fun.

I spent the last few days powercleaning the house, fixing the downstairs toilet, and getting sundry alcohol and brisket junk piled up. And I picked up a nice top round for a big plate of garlic- and red wine-soaked beef bites for folks to nibble on.

Everything went pretty much according to plan except that my erstwhile co-host took ill and couldn't come, almost no one brought any food except desserts, and the sky spat weak drizzle that turned everything into a frozen hell by around 10pm. So my feet hit the floor at 9:13am (early for me on a Saturday) and I spent the entire time in the kitchen. The entire time.

I felt like Laura Petrie. Good thing we had the chili and the top round.

The weather sent most people scurrying for their cars to skate home by around 11:30pm and I spent about an hour or so cleaning the kitchen because if I didn't, I know I'd've let it sit until next Saturday.

I was finally able to sit down around 12:30. AM. And that's literal. My buttocks didn't hit chair for pretty much 15 hours. Ouch. But I was able to catch most of the last episode, Objects In Space.

That seem right to you?

We decided that starting the movie at 1:30am was silly even for the couple of wouldn't-drives/couldn't drives, but a couple of us did watch some Robot Chicken and smoke cigars for a close-out. And the stay-overs woke up and cleared out by noon today.

I didn't really do much today. And it'll be a while before I save up enough hosting points to try something like that again. But we had a great time, my brisket was praised to the heavens, I drank some good booze, ate good chili and smoked a good cigar, everyone got home safe in spite of the ice, and I even got to poke my head out of the kitchen and sing a few lines of the Ballad of Jayne with some other silly people.

All in all, I have to say that it was a mighty fine shindig.