As has become the custom, we welcomed in the new year with a cornucopia of friends, food and fire, here at Chez Us. We made pizzas, quaffed drinks of both the hard and soft variety, set off fireworks and made much merry. At 12:42am, naturallement,  we hid our heads in propitiation to the Spam God. Many thanks to the 20+ friends and family members who showed up and joined in the rannygazoo.

Like last year’s celebration, we capped off the overall experience with a bonfire, attempting for the second year in a row to completely use up the ginormous applewood stumps we got from Margaret’s parents’ house. For the second year in a row, we were unsuccessful in getting the damn things to completely burn away; this may become a yearly effort that spans well into the (un)foreseeable future. Unlike last year, however, we decided to hold said bonfire in an actual fire pit that we built from those sort of wedge-shaped concrete blocks you see holding up the more frufru retaining walls in your better neighborhoods. This was a tremendous improvement over last year’s plan, in which we dug a hole in the dormant backyard garden for the fire, thus forcing our brace of inebriated guests to stagger back and forth between our muddy backyard and our poor innocent carpets. The fire pit worked out so well that we’re going to keep it around for use in other occasions, including as a replacement for our aged and highly improvisational charcoal grill system, which consists of two army-issue roasting pans, filled with briquettes and standing on cinderblocks. I plan on getting a couple of big stainless wire racks to span the pit and use as a grill surface for our various barbecue parties. I’m also bound and determined to use it for a monster chili-pepper-roasting party next pepper season…..it’s been entirely too long since we’ve had us a big pepper-palooza.

Among the highlights of this year’s celebration was a fire-breathing demo by Jason, who brought his very own personal stash of tiki torch oil for just this purpose, even though by the time he started he could probably have just spit on the fire and gotten a similar effect.

[flv width=”640″ height=”480″]http://www.uncle-andrew.net/blog/movies/fire_breather.flv[/flv]

We also took the occasion of the new fire pit as an opportunity to burn a sage bundle that my sister Meg had put together and sent us many years back from New Mexico. That makes us sound way more New-Age-Hippie-Airhead than we actually are; we weren’t trying to summon the good spirits or align our chakras. It just seemed like a good time to make a little offering to Whatever’s Out There for the plenty we seem to have more than our share of. Sage burns nice and stinky….an acrid, cleansing smell. Made a nice topper to the evening. Well, morning, really.

This year’s party was nowhere near the drunken bacchanal of least year. While the liquor flowed freely, most folks seemed to rein themselves in a bit this year; we dropped from four pukers down to one, a very respectable decrease. And no one had their face drawn on with indelible marker this year. True, one of our revelers got on his phone and started prank-calling after-hours emergency vet clinics (interestingly enough, the same reveler who later barfed), but to be fair he was kind of goaded into it by others who shall remain nameless. Ethanol surplus or no, everyone remained the fun, happy, easygoing folks they are when sober. Which is yet another thing I love about our friends; on the occasion that they get shnockered, they just become the same people that we love and respect in the first place, only more so. Our friend Steve proffered the opinion that the inhibition-lowering effects of alcohol give you a chance to see what kind of person someone really is—a happy drunk is probably happy in their regular life, a nasty drunk is probably a bit of an asshole, etc.—which in the case of our group is an encouraging thought indeed. The sight of one fellow, two and a quarter sheets into the wind, cleaning our kitchen floor with a paper towel because he was a bit scandalized at how much dirt folks were tracking in from outside, just made me want to give him a big ol’ hug and thank whatever forces shape our destiny that we have such fundamentally decent and good-hearted human beings to call our friends. Everyone should be so lucky.

It occurred to me as we were cleaning up after the party that, without expressly intending to do so, we have put ourselves in a position that pretty much perfectly accommodates the goals we envisioned for ourselves early in our domestic relationship. Back when we were still ensconced in the wilds of deepest darkest Pullman, we used to fantasize about what our lives would be like once we returned to civilization. We envisioned a home in/around Seattle, where friends would gather for parties or drop by on the spur of the moment, where we could all just sort of bask in each other’s company and fellowship. And while ’tis true that we don’t all gather together as often or as extemporaneously as we might otherwise like, this is more a factor of the crazy-demanding schedules by which most of us live our lives….sort of a “the spirit is willing but the day planner is weak” kinda thing. And when the opportunity arises and friends and family manage to congregate here, whether for a movie night, a game brunch or a birthday party, it’s always a good time. Through sheer serendipity and some effort, we have created a home in which folks seem to feel welcome, which is really the very best we could have hoped for.

To all of our friends and family, near or far, the very best in Ought Ten.