~ Two ~ Party On!!!!!!!

Times Square New Years Eve Ball (Photo credit: ★ SimonPix)

Let the party begin! It is New Year’s Eve–let’s party like it is 1999! (Or if I were being truly wild and crazy–1977,  but that is another story). Grab a hat from mybeautfulthings, some champagne from Chay, wish RoSy a Happy Birthday, devour some munchies that Eagle-Eyed Editor so kindly brought, and don’t bump Robin Coyle’s table–we don’t want her to fall off!!

Robin robincoyle (she is the one in the lampshade) and I are hosting this party with our rose coloured glasses perched prominently on our noses. We want to enter this new year on a positive note–so here is the invitation with instructions:

You Are Invited to a New Year’s Eve Virtual Party

Where: Here

Why: To bring in the New Year on a positive note

How: By leaving a positive comment or resolution

When:  New Year’s Eve —all day and all night and into New Year’s Day

Come one, come all, and bring your most festive smiles.

Entertainment: You, Vanessa Chapman, and Rodents & Rebels

So join us for the frivolities and add whatever you think may make the party hardy!

Vanessa Chapman is dropping by with a song she and a friend have put together for us so make sure you find her–I think she will be in the kitchen. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eDHzns7FryU&w=560&h=315%5D.

I have some mystery guests dropping by so check back every once in awhile to see what goodies they provide for us in the form of wise words, music, and even cigars!

Here is wishing all of you a wonderful New Year’s Eve and a great start to 2013–a leapless year!

Sharing my card from Mary with you:  http://www.jacquielawson.com/viewcard.asp?code=3946887033868&source=jl999

~ Never Ask Me: How Are You? ~

Cute coffee. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This is from my weekly newspaper column–I talk to my readers like they are my friends. I hope some of them are:

My sister Peggy and I try to email each other every day. She lives in Ottawa, so we do not have the luxury of face to face visits often. Sometimes I do not have much to say—but today this is how I opened my little tirade to her (she made the mistake of asking how I was):

“Well, (you can always tell something did not go well, when you start a sentence out with ‘well’) yesterday started off with a bang, or should I say crash—I broke the carafe for the coffee maker, so made coffee by putting a cup where the carafe should go and then pressing up on the spigot thing to get the coffee to come out. That was some fun! Until I got the hang of it I had hot coffee coming up the handle of the knife I was using to press the spigot up. (I now have first degree burns on my right hand). So I went out and bought another coffee maker and started getting it ready to make coffee (this morning), and it did not have all the parts it was supposed to have–so I tried putting it back in its packaging, and of course it does not go back into what it just came out of.

So….I will be taking the darn thing back to the store the way it is and they can deal with it.  I just finished making two cups of coffee using my rather flawed method again today–but used a spoon this time. The coffee ran up the handle of the spoon a bit, but since I am getting better at this, not as much as yesterday. Oh, yeah, and the coffee tastes like sweet dishwater.”

That is how my day began–has to get better from here, right? Just a minute, I need another sip of coffee—yep, warm dishwater (or what I imagine warm dishwater with sugar would taste like).

It is Monday morning as I write this and no, it is not going to be a diatribe about how awful I think Mondays are. I like Mondays. It is the day I usually write up this column and I do look forward to writing another piece of weekly literature. Then I just have to make do with what I really produce, and though it isn’t literature, it does fill up my space on page five.

I am surprised though at how important that first cup of coffee is to me in the morning. I did not even drink coffee until I was in my thirties—before that my caffeine fix was in the form of tea or cola (yes, at one time I did drink cola with my morning bagel and cream cheese or bacon and eggs—try it, it really complements the food).

I am trying to become a tea drinker again for one reason and one reason only: I do not put sugar in my tea. I put a lot of sugar in my coffee—as I do not think I really like its taste—the aroma is good, but the taste without a pile of sugar is too bitter. I so admire those who drink it black (gag, ugh) or with just a little cream (just gag).

Today, I am writing this up without the benefit of a good cup of hot sweet liquid (good being the operative word here)—but I am persevering—I am made of good stock.

Party Like It is 1965!

A cooked hot dog garnished with mustard. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Party! Party! Party! (Sorry that was chant from 1973, the beginning of my university academic life–probably should have been study! study! study!–but just doesn’t have the same ring to it!)

Let the frivolity begin! It is Friday. Not only that, it is the beginning of a holiday weekend. The reason for the holiday weekend is superfluous to me; the important thing is that it is a holiday weekend.

Does anyone remember having wiener roasts? When it was okay to offer people hot dogs roasted over a real fire, with real wood in a brick encased fire pit? My parents had a sort of outdoor mini fireplace they built with my older brothers’ help and it was the heart of  summer at my house.

We gathered around the makeshift hearth for many a wiener roast, hamburger binge, and on occasion steak fry (it was not really fried, hence I do not understand the term, but hey, who am to argue with a time-honoured tradition?)

We did not have steak a lot, but my parents would buy a half cow or quarter cow at the end of summer from some farmer who had it wrapped in a million big and little brown packages secured with string.  At the beginning of the procurement of the partial cow, we had the steaks. The steaks were big T-bones, and if I remember correctly, I could eat one that was about half my size. Now mind you, as I get more mature (?) I may remember things a little differently than they really were—but I swear those steaks were humongous.

And we would have potato salad with egg (always with egg), cottage cheese encased in green Jell-O (which I would never, ever eat!), huge mounds of coleslaw, and for dessert there was watermelon. We would cut it so that we could eat it without forks, and of course have seed spitting contests. (This sounds like I am making it up—but I am not—just ask my brothers and sister—oh, sorry—they do not want me to divulge their identities—so you will just have to take it from me).

English: fresh potato salad (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There will be no wiener roast for me this Labour Day weekend. We had to retire our barbeque a few weeks ago as it had just given up the ghost. We put it out at the road, and some poor guy came along and took it before garbage day, and as he was loading it onto his truck, all the burnt briquettes spilled out onto him. I just happened to be looking out the front window when he was loading it up and felt bad for him. Hope he got something out of it for his trouble.

Anyway, I digress. I am not sure what is on the menu for this weekend. Are any of you having a barbeque you want to invite a charming couple to—we will byob and some extra if you throw a couple more hot dogs on the *barby for us. Have the mustard ready!

*Friends from down under — did I spell this right – feel free to correct me and I will edit it.