So, the party report. Everything went amazingly well, everything I hoped for came about and I had a thoroughly wonderful time. Yay. That was one of the best parties I've ever had; thank you so much to all the lovely people who came.

People who made the party wonderful: doseybat and compilerbitch provided the venue, dealt with the music and were invaluable in helping with the food and drink and general sorting out, and generally the whole thing wouldn't have happened without them. pseudomonas showed up early so we could get the party started, and carried the flag for my Oxford set while hatam_soferet was busy being highly educational at Limmud and darcydodo was prevented from attending by too much evil geography. midnightmelody asked a good question which led to biology textbooks coming out(!) ixwin brought vectorious whom I hadn't previously met in person. shreena provided tasty Indian "lumps" and quizcustodet increased our quotient of unreasonably tall people who are also really interesting (in the absence of lethargic_man and rysmiel). Talking of interesting unreasaonbly tall people, coalescent brought a shiny iBook and reminded people of the interesting study on high school relationship networks and gave me a Beth Orton CD. neonchameleon (another unreasonably tall person) braved the snow and horrible transport to make it about halfway through. timeplease (who has enhanced many previous parties by bringing exciting fruit beer) noticed my heavy hints that this was not really an alcohol centred party, and so brought board games instead, and was generally wonderful. ewtikins brought shevek, whom I had never met at all before (in contrast to shreena whom I've known since I was not quite 10, not to mention my sibs whom I've known since I was too young to remember). shevek flummoxed everybody with a grenade pin, and ewtikins started a really interesting conversation about how people's minds work. Thuggish Poet came with my cousin S and P'tite Soeur, but sadly no Screwy as the transport issue proved insurmountable. Thuggish Poet gave me a Roots Manuva CD in order to help me break into hiphop, and P'tite Soeur made an amazing fantastic cake with a clock face pointing to 2 and 7 (and gave me some very exciting French chocolate). Cousin S was the youngest guest for an age-range that covered nearly twenty years.

P'tite Soeur's cake together with chanukah provided the perfect opportunity for pyromania; timeplease carefully set up 27 candles on the cake, and I added three plus the shammes to the chanukiah. I did not burn myself or set anything unintended on fire, so ha. deborah_c and MF (WINOLJ) turned up later on, and provided a second wind after some of the earlier guests had headed out. I had some really lovely conversations with deborah_c, whom I'd only met once before, and enjoyed catching up with MF who is an old friend I don't see often enough. MF classified it as a geek party, which I think was more true in the later part than the earlier part but probably a fair comment in general.

By the time the party had thinned out in the later part of the evening, it was a good size to play Carcassonne, a highly enjoyable game which was thoroughly over-analysed (I think having huge debates about optimal moves is a large part of the fun of games like that!) MF, with the help of compilerbitch, played like the go player she is: setting herself up for large potential future gains rather than playing for short-term points. neonchameleon and pseudomonas were creatively evil strategic in finding lots of ways to screw over the other players. deborah_c kibbitzed initially, and then took over from neonchameleon when he had to leave. She complained that she'd inherited his evil reputation but I have a feeling that was a convenient excuse. midnightmelody applied educational theory to the approaches people took to learning the game (most of us had not played before). timeplease's bridge-like approach of carefully calculated risk-taking (while tempering doseybat's tendency to try for huge gambles) turned out to be the most successful, but until the very end it could have gone any way.

And the little brown teapot I gave doseybat did excellent service all afternoon and evening. It's probably cheating to count it in with the people but it did make an important contribution to the success of the party. P'tite Soeur , pseudomonas, MF, deborah_c and timeplease stayed over. I failed spectacularly to get up in the morning and therefore missed P'tite Soeur who had to leave early to deal with bureaucracy. But when I did manage to surface at about half past ten, deborah_c was utterly wonderful and gave me a cup of tea in bed. Too nice. MF and timeplease and eventually pseudomonas gradually drifted away, and then compilerbitch fed me and doseybat brunch and I finally managed to get dressed (this at about 3pm!) and we cleared up. Then somehow or other I got into a long and fascinating conversation with doseybat and compilerbitch and it was really too late to head home. So compilerbitch fed us some stirfry, because although I was careful to have a reasonable amount of real food at the party, including compilerbitch's wonderful and special diet friendly dahl, still vegetables are good. And then we carried on talking for hours, and oh look, it appears to be late morning the following day...

*bouncebouncebouncebounce*

monanotlisa didn't make it to the UK and therefore didn't make it to the party, but sent me lovely card, thank you Mona! loreid couldn't come because her own birthday clashes with mine, but belated happy birthday to her and thanks for her lovely message too. lethargic_man is at Limmud but gave me A Deepness in the Sky which I'm looking forward to reading. rysmiel (who also has geography issues) sent me a wonderful parcel with bookies, which arrived on time despite Christmas, yay organized friends. And Granny gave me her antique silver hair ornament which was a present to her from Grandad, which is really touching. I did pretty well considering I told everyone not to give me presents! Oh, and I forgot to mention that doseybat gave me a funky genuine Ethnic Vietnamese shoulder bag, which is gorgeous and exactly what I need.

I was hoping to see fluffymark at the party, but he didn't make it. I hope everything's ok with you, Mark? But I'm happy about several of the other people who couldn't make it, because I tracked down lots of people I've semi or completely lost touch with to invite them, and lots of really cool friends have reestablished contact by replying to my party invitation with regrets. So all in all things are utterly wonderful. I should have parties more often!

Oh, and this would be my 500^th LiveJournal entry. I'm pleased that it happens to be a memorable one.