party town and bad britches

Alissa threw a party over the weekend that was quite a sight to behold. You can always gauge a party by guessing how many people the host knows. In my estimate, she knew about 80% of the people there. That's the "sweet spot" of partying. An 80/20 split between people you know and people you don't know is awesome when it comes to meeting people. You get a few drinking games going, see where these people are from, what they're doing, and connect with them. It's also great because there are too few new people to cause a party-shift; where a group will "steal" the party from the host (almost always resulting in drama).

This party was a good one. Reese, Rollo and I arrived around 9:30ish and immediately talked with some of our good friends, and got to meet some others. I found out that Kimmie will be leaving for Florida sometime in the near future, which I think everyone's bummed about. I met the much-heralded Jim McBride; brother of Ryan, son of "Papa McBride" (who has a simply astonishing full head of hair). I also got to meet Matt, who gave me his last name - but I immediately chose to ignore it, referring to him exclusively as "Matt Whohasnolastname".

As good as it was, the party had its weird moments. Ryan got his scurvy crew into going streaking. While this is not unlike McBride to suggest such a thing, certain questions crept into my mind. Questions like: "Why does this keep happening?" and "Wouldn't it be cool if we locked the door?" Ah, well...

On the way out, I got Rollo's car stuck in a snowbank. For the record, Alissa's house is built on a hill and the entrance to her driveway is on another hill, which means the better portion of her driveway is a valley. There were a lot of cars in the driveway so when we arrived, I parked as I drove in (nose first). In trying to leave, there was no place to turn around and little room to maneuver otherwise, so I built up speed coming down the hill from the house and only made it halfway up the other hill. Then began the laborious process of getting the car turned around. My 3-point-turn quickly turned into a 25-and-a-half-point-turn aaaaaaaaaaaand, we're stuck. Rollo gave a valiant effort by helping me rock the car back & forth, but we ultimately needed additional manpower. Luckily McBride heard Rollo's deep bellow for help and he rallied his troops to come push us out. Even more luckily, they all had clothes on. We really dodged a bullet there.