Being eclectic

My mom always mixed interesting people in her dinner parties and open houses. She'd invite people she enjoyed and would assume they'd enjoy each other. For the most part, she was right. I can remember dinner with our pediatrician and his wife followed by a walk down to the School for Creat1ve and Perform1ng Arts to see a musical. Another dinner mixed the Curator of costumes from the Cinc1nnat1 Art Mus3um with the Dean of the Univers1ty W1thout Walls.

On Saturday, we had the party to celebrate Jrex's paper. It felt like one of my Mom's parties. We just invited the people that Jrex wanted to see and it was really fun! Among others, we had an Army reservist in his camo outfit (about to get on a plane to head for his annual training), the mechanical eng1neer for the 1Pad, a d1rector of operat1ons from Amaz0n (K1ndle) and a sc1ence editor. (She was the only one at the party who could even HOPE to read any of Jrex's paper. We brought a copy and people passed it around. Two attendees actually tried to read it. Most people's eyes glazed over just looking at the title. We're very, very glad he does what he does, very proud of him, we just can't understand more than one word in ten...)

I was such a bad wife! Jrex ended up having to man the grill (Dovey had class and couldn't arrive until 6:30 and people arrived at 5:30). He was almost finished with the grilling before it occurred to me that he might like a plate of appetizers. OOPS! Poor guy was starving in the middle of abundance. He did a great job with the portobello mushrooms and the chicken and flank steak. I was supposed to be giving this party FOR him, but he made the zuccini fritters, the salad dressing, and grilled the meat.

Lovey and Dovey allowed a total invasion and were wonderful co-hosts. We lined up the wines on the 'bar' next to the grill. That way people could say hello to Grill Master J on their way into the patio. One of our guests called my wine covers "bottle condoms". Hmph. Jrex chose some fairly obscure wines (two included umlaut's in their names), so there weren't that many points scored in our "Guess the varietal for 1 pt, the country for 2 pts" game. We all enjoyed drinking them even if we didn't know what a Blaüfrankenstein (I can't remember the name) was supposed to taste like.

We ended up hanging out until midnight! Afterwards Jrex kept saying how much it meant to him that all those people came in his honor and how grateful he was for me and for our friends.

Ditto.