I suppose I could warn you when I’m going to do that. If only I knew in advance myself!

So, let’s see, where did we leave off? Cousin M was in town and I played hookie (with permission) half a day to take her to lunch and show her around T-town on Wednesday. It was the Loop for lunch, five hours of driving around Tallahassee (I’m still a little uneasy about looking at a map and trying to see what sort of screwed-up loops I made), then dinner with Mom, J & K at Marie Livingston’s. Yum! Since Cousin M’s hosts were the early-to-bed type we got her home just after seven and I ran a couple of party-related errands before going home, myself.

Since it was only just eight o’clock I figured there was no sense in wasting time so I started draping the walls. Wow. Somehow I did not expect to have to move one wall of furniture and–should I ever be crazy enough to try this again–that so many trips up and down the step-ladder would be needed. My thighs are still protesting all of the steps but hey, it’s a great glut workout! Three hours and a quart of sweat later I had drapedthe four walls I was going to (because I ran out of sheeting), hung up the silver stars with their kick-ass mini lights, and draped caution tape over the bookcases and vertical-blind valance.

And wouldn’t you know I came home Thursday to a note on the door saying Pest Control was coming by on Friday.

Thankfully I did not get a call from the office on Friday, so I can only presume that the decorated table and prominent bar-cart convinced whomever not to report strange activity.

Would you believe that on Saturday I was actually 2 hours ahead of schedule??? I know, totally unheard of for one of my parties. Usually I’m waiting on at least one appetizer to finish when the first guest arrives right on time. Instead, I was cooling my jets at two o’clock (having already showered and primped and changed my shirt four different times) just waiting out the clock until I could reheat the final appetizer and start the popcorn popper.

This turned out to be a good thing, though, as just as I was getting ready to start the popcorn there was a knock on the door: the Bard was 45 minutes early! See, I must have known something like that was going to happen, but it was actually fine (though I did tease him about it for a little while), but it gave me a chance to give him his birthday present before the party started and he kept me company while I finished up the last-minute preparations.

‘It’s a Disaster!’ Movie Night was a rousing success. All of the food went over wonderfully, there was plenty of it (which means I don’t have to cook for a few more days! yay, leftovers!), the guests mixed as wonderfully as I thought they would, and the movies provided ample mocking factor. Here was the rundown for those that might be interested:

4pm: Dante’s Peak and Spicy Appetizers (cheeses with pepper jellies, jalapeno and ham corn muffins, black bean dip, salsa, guacamole and chips, and–even though it’s not spicy–bacon wrapped artichoke hearts or, as Palmie refers to them, Crack)
6pm: Twister and Tasty Cow (‘nother cow/same cow) Roulade (with garlicky green beans and red potatoes)
8pm: Posiedon (2007) and Pineapple Upside Down Boat Cake (with blue jell-o sea!)
9:45pm: Armageddon with S’mores and Rumballs

And the house drink was a Mudslide, though I do try to keep my bar fairly well stocked in case someone wanted something different. I also provided a pleathora of popcorn toppings, both sweet and spicy, though I think most people preferred it merely salted.

We finished up the movies just after midnight with a mass exodus for the door. We were all exhausted, but that’s a great way to end a party. I made sure everyone had their favors (small boxed sets of Worst Case Scenario cards, compass/carabiner clip and emergency whistle) and was safe to drive home before starting the clean-up. It actually only took about an hour to put away all of the food, load the dishwasher and clear the table of it’s debris. In fact, the only thing waiting for me Sunday morning was to take down the draping, rehang the pictures on two walls and clean out the rented popcorn machine for it’s return today. Otherwise I vegged out and did some reasearch for Wedding Tarot.

Thankfully I had this week’s Random Acts… in the can already so I didn’t have to worry about that tonight. Instead I wandered through StumbleUpon for a while, flipped through some old music books, and fiddled with a story that might end up on New Bard’s Press. Tomorrow I forsee spending a lot of time clearing out the Oldenfeld.net forums of the rest of their flotsam and making some content changes. One of these days (someday soon, hopefully) I’m going to overhaul this site, add some pages for the different long-term projects (like Random Acts… and Wedding Tarot) and make a space for I-Friday submissions, too. It’s still on my to-do list to get back into that habit.

I feel like, right now, I’m in a planning stage. I have a lot of big ideas that I want to see through, if I can, but I need to figure out how to balance them with the things already on my plate. Do I need to let go of some projects, again, decide which are more feasible first, or do I just need to find some stronger internal motivation? It’s probably a strong case for of the latter, so if I can keep the ball rolling I might just pull it off!