The other day, Kim and I came to the realization that we had absolutely nothing planned for this weekend. Kim had no shows or show rehearsals. Due to school-ending season, most of the movies out in the market are kids movies. There were no neighborhood events. Nothing, not even necessary shopping chores. My daughter and her brood arrive next weekend and our dance card will be actively filled for a month with activities and lots of fun stuff. We will kick off with a big July 4th barbecue, but we recognize that we need to time our Costco shopping for that extravaganza with precision to have sufficient freezer storage and yet be assured of availability of what are usually very popular holiday items. Given the dearth of activities for this weekend, we will likely stop by Party City for decorations and holiday paraphernalia, but the big Costco shopping may have to wait a week.
If you look at our social agenda over the past twenty years we have been together, you would see that we throw lots of parties, both for family holiday gatherings and for general friend encouragement purposes. I would suggest that we are in the top decile or higher of party-givers. Kim is a wonderful hostess and I am a willing accomplice. It doesn’t take a lot to cause us to suggest a party. I think we have given one for every Memorial Day, July 4th and Labor Day since we have been on this hilltop. We always invite our respective families and a bunch of the neighbors (usually 25-35 attendees). We’ve even thrown two neighborhood block parties during out time here (60-70 attendees), which is two more than anyone else in the hood has done. We’ve also thrown two large parties for Kim’s vocal ensemble (80+ attendees). If you add in the Garden Club functions we have hosted (average of 3 per year of 40 attendees), we’ve got a pretty packed party agenda and can say with some degree of confidence that we have a good party house for all these functions. We’ve hosted many people at parties indoors, but when you add the deck and patio, which flow easily into and out of the house, the our overall partying space is considerable. For the larger gatherings, we use our large and relatively shaded parking area as our picnic site with tables and chairs along with pop-up shading. I’m sure we could handle up to 100 if we needed to, but I think that would be the max.
These parties are always a good excuse to stock up on wine and beer, neither of which Kim nor I indulge in regularly (Kim) or at all (me). I can run through a fridge drawer of Diet Cherry Pepsi in a few days, but beer and wine will sit in the cooler forever if we do not have a party or at least houseguests. When Gary & Oswaldo come for the weekend, as they did last weekend, they tend to bring their own wine and booze since they are fairly particular about their beverages and I suspect they recognize that their consumption level warrants their BYOB approach to being good houseguests. We would gladly sponsor their beverages, but I would never presume to know what people like to consume in the alcohol department. I’m not even sure I’m very qualified to buy the right sort of beer. I know that people usually prefer bottles to cans, but beyond that I wouldn’t know a pale ale from a wheat lager.
For years I have been running our motorcycle trip accounting system and for years there has been a debate about the equity of sharing the cost of alcohol between those who drink and those who don’t imbibe. Being a tea-totaler and being the resident bookkeeper, the leadership task on this subject has fallen to me over the years. The whole idea of the “Marinomics” group accounting process is to minimize the hassle and maximize the conviviality. There is nothing pleasant about delineating who ate or drank what, so my choice has always been clear. Gatherings with friends and family needs to ignore who and how much is consumed and one needs to just let the good times roll. If its a party, then it is all on my account. If it is a shared gathering, then the simplest method of cost sharing is to be applied. I’ve always figured that it all evens out in the long run…whether that’s true or not.
As Kim and I were pondering our upcoming weekend, we realized that one area where we are somewhat lacking in our local relationships is the number of friends we have that we would generally go out to dinner with. Our friends Mike & Melisa and Faraj & Yasuko are friends that we eat with regularly, but we tend to do it at each other’s houses. Hardly a week goes by when we do not have a dinner party at one of the houses or another. To be accurate about it, neither couple tends to prefer eating out. I’m not sure why that difference exists, but perhaps its the urban experience where the saying goes that anything within 4 blocks is considered home cooking. The end result is that we have a dearth of local friends that we would call on a Friday and say, “Hey, let’s go to XYZ for dinner.” Don’t get me wrong, neither Kim nor I are really foodies (me far less than her), but we are habitual restaurant diners and it feels somewhat strange to be without a long list of similarly minded friends.
When we pondered our empty weekend dance card, it occurred to us that our friends Pat & Joe might be more inclined to a dinner out so we called them. They are Chicago transplants, so they have a more urban background than others in the hood. They hit the bid right away and even short-circuited the logical next question of where to go. They had recently been to a place on Lake San Marcos called Amalfi. We readily agreed and I booked a table for four for 7:45pm, which is late by suburban standards, but still early for city-dwellers. Now, everything out here in California is pretty casual, but it is nice to have to upgrade to a collared shirt and clean pants once in a while. We put on our better-than-average duds and headed out for the evening. Having secured the Buddy-sitting services of the local twelve-year-old, Augie, who arrived by motorized scooter.
Amalfi was a lively venue with a typical NYC restaurant din about it. Pat & Joe, like us, had upgraded to their best casual wear and we all noted our preponderance of black and white attire for the evening. We spent a nice evening shouting across the table at each other as one does, catching at least half of what was being said and smiling our way through the rest. When the bill came we did what civilized diners do, we split it 50/50 without regard to “who had the shrimp scampi?”…since no one had. Pat and Joe had wine, but that issue never came up. We left feeling we had fulfilled our dinner-out needs for the weekend and we had added five (Pat & Joe along with son, daughter-in-law and mother-in-law) for our July 4th barbecue. We may not be big consumers of alcohol in this family, but we are still under the influence of the best drug we know, the need to gather and leave the cooking and cleaning to the kitchen staff of some nice local bistro.