The Party

Sweetie and I hosted our first dinner party last night. It was fabulous (if I do say so myself). People loved our house (yes -- it *looks* fabulous, but looks are deceiving). And they really loved the food. Our chef really knows his stuff, paid attention to the little things, and made it possible for Sweetie and me to drink copious amounts of alcohol and converse with our our guests.

For some reason, Sweetie and I were steaming hot last night while sleeping. Maybe it was the effect of the considerable amount of alcohol we had consumed during the party. I was snuggled up against him and thought I was going to spontaneously combust at any moment. Then shortly after that, Sweetie said, "I'm REALLY hot!" No joke! Maybe it was just due to residual heat from having so many bodies in the house and all the cooking that went on (I've never used both our ovens at the same time, for example, but the chef did).

Speaking of cooking, I was really grossed out by the lingering meat smell after the party. I didn't think I'd have an issue with someone preparing meat in the house -- I'm a pretty relaxed vegetarian about that sort of thing because I do like to peacefully coexist with the non-vegetarian world. But, the smell was overwhelming and there was no breeze the next day, so opening the windows didn't seem to help. I could barely sleep because of it. But, thankfully it subsided after about 24 hours.

At the party, inevitably part of the conversation turned to how much Israel/Israelis drive us crazy. Then someone mentioned that certain behaviors also drive Israelis crazy and they are not shy to admit it. It's all very perplexing to me. I never think to myself, "It really drives me crazy how Americans...." But many (non-irritating) Israelis will freely admit that flying on an airplane with a bunch of Israelis is a complete nightmare, for example. Or that Israeli drivers are impossible, to give another example.

Anyway, it was a great party, the guests seemed to have a great time, and Sweetie and I never thought entertaining could be so easy. Hats off to the chef and his staff!

By the way, I received some blog feedback and apparently, my mom did not entirely appreciate my previous comment about her and my dad's entertaining skills when I was young....

Speaking of driving
I had to go to the DMV the other day to register my car and get new plates.  That place is a complete third-world nightmare.  It could have been Venezuela.  Just TEEMING with people (of all sorts) and it seems to be complete chaos.  No drawing numbers (that I could see).  Just masses of people inside and outside and no one it seemed was getting much service or would be getting served in the near future.

Fortunately, diplomatic types seem to have their own line.  And even though the lady at the counter has a strange way of getting things done, she does get things done. For example, while I was waiting, she was shouting into her cell phone, rolling her eyes, hitting lots of keys on the keyboard (how can you have to hit that many keys to register a car?), etc. Then, she took off with her tea cup and said she was taking a break. Just like that. She returned and while she was helping us, she started helping the guy in line behind us at the same time. It all seemed very strange, but she did get us out of there in about one hour, and by the end of it, I thought she was pretty effective and efficient.