I was lamenting the eight bottles of Beaujolais sulking in my pantry, so Maud said, like obviousness, that we needed to have a sangria party. Friday night, envigored by a Joe’s Shanghai feast of crab dumplings and dou miao and eggplant and a beef-and-broccoli stirfry, we set to work slicing apples and oranges for three large bowls of the brew. Sometimes there is little more satisfying than opening wine bottles in quick succession, pop pop pop, and then glugging out their contents with abandon. I am a whiz at opening wine bottles, no, really, it’s true, come over and I’ll show you. I am bragging only because, well, because it’s my blog and I can brag if I want to, but also because maybe a year ago I could only watch with some envy as someone else eased the cork out of the bottleneck while I wished I knew how to open a wine bottle—and look at me now. Oh, it’s nice when goals are achievable.

Saturday morning we had breakfast like we are ladies in a country house, coffee and tea and breads and spreads, then there was melting butter and brown sugar and golden syrup, and a pineapple cardamom upside-down cake in the works.



All those magazines that break down party prep for you step by step, they’re missing the bit where in the afternoon—after the cake’s been baked and the rosemary aioli’s been whipped up; when the portobello-pepper crostini are all but assembled and the tulips are slowly blooming all over the house in pink and red; while the cheese and the assorted chocolate-covered whatsits on pearly plates are just waiting for the show to begin—you pop out to your local video store for “The Goonies” and the early edition of the Sunday Times, and then you come home and watch the movie in your party clothes.

Jason and Emily came bearing gifts, so many gifts, some of them even homemade empañada gifts. Then Jason unwrapped a paper package to reveal, among other little things, a miniature Día de los muertos table with miniature skulls and miniature candles and miniature bananas and a miniature bowl of mole, which made me say, “What is this? A center for ants?”

Tom’s friend Frances was quiet but as nice as he was tall. (Which is: rather.)

I asked Matt Z about cross-departmental canoodling in Philosophy Hall, but he said he hadn’t heard the goss.

Cheryl hadn’t been here before and wanted to open all the doors, so she did.

(The Cheryl story is, Cheryl is my Chinese New Year party competition this year, but I think I might concede early and just go to her shindig, because apparently this semester I am concentrating on being a student who has a thesis to finish by April. Dang, it is occurring to me only now that maybe I should have majored in throwing parties instead. In any case, the other winning ticket for the girl is, it turns out she has managed to befriend a Malaysian restaurateur and get her hands on real pandan leaves whereas I only have a small bottle of green pandan essence from Hong Kong Supermarket. Maybe we will join forces to make my mother’s incredible pineapple spiral tarts, and maybe we will invite Colin Goh.)

Emily wanted to buy my house.

Jessica showed us her district attorney’s badge, gold and heavy. We ooh’d and aah’d. It made the fifty-cent tin star-shaped sheriff’s badge I wanted to get the other day look like, um, a fifty-cent tin star-shaped sheriff’s badge.

By sometime in the midnight hour, the three bowls of sangria had been reduced to three bowls of dregs of alcohol-saturated fruit, the tastiest dregs around.

By sometime in the one o’clock hour, India tried to say good-bye to Maud and found her asleep on the sofa downstairs.

By sometime in the two o’clock hour, the kids had been sent home with foil-wrapped packets of food, and I had help with the clean-up, which was sweet because, like the boy said, the clean-up was easier with two.