Had a pretty nice weekend all in all. Worked all day Friday on the next WFRP book, then we went to Redmond for an early New Year’s party. My friend Pat, who moved down to San Diego awhile back to work for Upper Deck, hosted a party at his dad’s place. Other young girls were in attendance, so Kate spent hours running around, giggling, and having a good time. We caught up with Pat and some other friends, ate some tasty Brazilian food, and left around 7.
We then went over to Ray and Christine’s and met up with the rest of Clan Geek. John and Jenny had made a couple of trays of righteous lasagna and Christine had one of her famous cheese plates in effect. We hung out, drank, and played some family games. At 11 Bill took half the party to his place, which has a view of the Space Needle, so they could check out the fireworks in style. Kate was delighted. We were playing some Cranium game (Hoopla, I think) when midnight rolled around and didn’t even notice until 12:15. The rest of the group then came back and people started drifting off into different rooms to sleep. I ended staying up yakkin’ with Winninger and Tynes until 3:30 or so, then went to the basement to sleep.
The next day everyone stuck around, as is somewhat of a tradition. Ray and Christine’s place is big and cool and everyone feels comfortable there. It’s not unusual to find two people drinking cocktails at the kitchen bar while two others play an X-Box game and yet others reads graphic novels in the living room or watch a movie in the basement. Saturday I made the coffee (my lot in life) and we ended up having cold lasagna for breakfast. Nicole started doing a giant puzzle and spent most of the day on that. Ray and I retired to the basement for a couple of games of Up Front, while Christine and Bill went out to get supplies for dinner and John and Jenny read books.
That evening we had fresh sausages, trip-tip, grilled asparagus, broiled fingerling potatoes, and fennel slaw. Kate then got just about everyone downstairs for one of her performances. It was a bizarre, steam of consciousness sort of thing, the point of which was to have everyone pay attention to Kate. That girl loves to be the center of adulation. When that had dragged to its conclusion, we finally loaded up and headed home.
Today it was back to work, finishing up a bunch of odds and ends on different projects. In the early evening I sat down to clean and mount some Flames of War minis, so Rick and I can start playing that soon. Still have a ways to go with my army, as I haven’t even started the tanks yet. And really, you gotta have tanks.
I used to have terrible luck with New Year’s Eve. I spent several years just staying at home, since my plans always seemed to backfire. This year I have no complaints. Well, OK, it would have been nice if we could have made it to Jess’s party as well, but we thought three shindigs would be pushing it.