Come on over. Bring a friend or two!

We didn't get any pictures from this past week, so this rendition of the good times will have to suffice.


This past week we hosted not one, but TWO different social gatherings at our house.  On Monday evening we had a lively trio of retirees - Jane, Vance, and Lou - over for dinner.  Jon cooked up a scrumptious meal with the rest of us pitching in on side dishes, deserts, and dish washing.  Afterward, we had a guest appearance by Charles and played possibly the most entertaining game of Trivial Pursuit (copyright 1981) of my life.  The evening eventually came to an end because the younger generation needed to get to bed.

The second gathering of friends occurred on Friday when Jen and Beth dropped in for a Game Night.  On the menu was gluten-free chocolate cake with homemade chocolate icing (courtesy of Chef Jon), ice cream, potato chips, and extra homemade chocolate icing.  I had at least three pieces of the cake.  On the game end of things we covered Bananagrams, Urban Myth, and Salad Bowl*.  Unless we missed a major part of the rules, we concluded that we would not recommend Urban Myth for anyone who actually wants to play a game.  I believe we decided it would be better for sitting around and simply reading the cards to each other and maybe Googling some of the real ones to find out more.  Salad Bowl was particularly fun, especially with Beth turning into Super-Animated-Beth.  We finally said our farewells as the clock started pushing 1:00AM.

The significance of these two evenings for me was that it felt like we were having friends over simply for the sake that we like them and they are good company.  It wasn't a get-to-know-you gathering and there wasn't any particular holiday we were celebrating.  Maybe this holds a bit more significance for me since the previous house I lived in back in Cincinnati didn't get these kinds of opportunities very often.  We didn't know many people in town beyond the Cincinnati Church of the Brethren aside from co-workers and only two of us commuted to work.  As much as we liked our fellow CCoB congregants, almost all of them lived 30 minutes to an hour or more away from our house.  The result was that we rarely had guests over in the evening unless it was a friend from out of town who was also staying the night.

So, yay for friends who are close enough to visit in the evenings.  This doesn't make Cincinnati any worse or better than Portland.  This is, however, one difference that I am currently appreciating and enjoying.


*How to play Salad Bowl:
1. Cut up a couple of pieces of paper into little strips big enough to write a couple of words on them.
2. Have everyone write down names of people or characters that everyone in the room will recognize (example: David Letterman, Juliet, Minnie Mouse, Harry Potter, Quasi Moto, Stan Noffsinger, etc.)
3. Fold each paper in half and put them in a (salad) bowl.
4. Divide into two teams.  You're probably sitting in a circle already so go ahead and arrange yourselves so that each team member is sitting between members of the opposite team.
5. Get ready to have fun.
6. The first player starts with the bowl in front of them and has 60 seconds to try to get his or her teammates to guess who is written on the sheet of paper that was pulled from the bowl.  Once one of the teammates guesses the correct answer the person giving the clues can draw another piece of paper from the bowl.  The goal is to get your teammates to get as many correct answers as possible in the allotted time.  During this first round the players may use any words for giving their clues as long as they are not written on the piece of paper.  If a player can't get his or her teammates to guess the correct answer or does not recognize the name on the paper they drew out, tough luck.  He or she must keep trying until the end of the 60 seconds and then the paper can go back in the bowl.
7. After the bowl has been emptied in the first round the scores are tallied up for each team based on how many pieces of paper the players have.  Then all the papers go back into the bowl for Round 2.
8. The second round is the same as the first except that the player pulling the papers can only use three (3) words as clues.  "Ummm..." is a word, as is "Geez."  "I don't know" would be three words so don't screw up and say that.  Even if there is an "I don't know"er, his or her teammates can try wildly guessing and hope for the best.  Tally up the score after the round and put the papers back in one more time.
9. The third and final round is played like Charades.  That's right, there is no talking.  This is when things can get very entertaining.  This can also be a time for some more of that wild guessing.
10. Tally up the scores after Round 3 and find out which team had better describers and guessers.  The winning team should then proceed to gloat while the losing team points out that nobody on the winning team knew who Jim Thorpe was and that was really sad.

We actually opted not to do the team scoring aspect.  It was still fun.