Five Times Two

Okay...got a couple of memes going around this week.

The Revgalblogpals have created a party-down meme:

1) Have you ever gotten a really good kiss under the mistletoe? Tell the truth. Spare no details. Was the mistletoe real, because kisses under the fake stuff do. not. count.
Sigh...no. Although a girl can always dream. And in the meantime, here's a neat website all about mistletoe, believe it or not. (Note to webmeisters: Bring back the Art Nouveau page! We want Art Nouveau mistletoe art!)

2) Do you know anyone who makes real eggnog, not the stuff from the carton? And if so, do you actually like it?
A few years ago I was at a party where the ambitious hostess had whipped up some homemade eggnog. It was pretty good; lighter than the storebought concoction. I just tried not thinking about the raw eggs; although I suspect the alcohol content of that particular batch had strong antibacterial powers.

3) What's your favorite Christmas party album/CD ever?
Oh, I think for a par-tay party I'd want a custom mix of jazz/swing/classic pop -- you know, Ella, Rosemary, Frank, Nat and friends -- and then some get-down Christmas blues, and some uptempo worldbeat Christmas music, and maybe some mellow Windham Hill-y instrumentals interspersed throughout.

4) Does your office/workplace have a party? Do the people there ever behave the way people in movies behave at office parties, which is to say, badly?
Yes, we do. Actually we have three parties in December -- a very informal potluck lunch, and then the formal, official party at our community's sole white-tablecloth restaurant, and then, just a day or so before our Christmas vacation, a Christmas tea for our office hosted by our boss, an Anglophile who collects tea things and likes to do this. (The tea is not intended to be sex-segregated, but our male employees are terrified of attending, and usually throw themselves a pizza party elsewhere on premises while our soiree is going on.)

Ironically, out of all these events, the most unruly I've ever seen anyone has been at the tea, which is followed by a "Chinese gift exchange" where people bring unmarked gifts, draw numbers and take a gift (sometimes the very one they've brought) -- and then subsequent gift-takers are allowed to steal the gift if they wish. There's the spirit of the season for you! Anyway, some of the women can get a little aggressive and/or territorial; I guess that's why some of them spend so much money on those fake nail extensions. But other than that our parties are pretty subdued affairs. A coworker of mine, though, reports going to his spouse's employer's Christmas party at a local bar and, after the evening had progressed and the liquor had been flowing freely, some of the females started flashing the other partygoers and innocent bystanders. I'm reasonably sure this would not happen at any of our parties.

5) If you have to bring something to a party, what is it likely to be? Do people like it?
What I bring depends entirely on my mood. And I hate bringing the same thing to the same crowd twice. A lot of the time I get asked for my recipes; but most of my friends and coworkers are terrific cooks, so I'm under some pressure to perform.

That's one meme. The other is simply a challenge to list five absolutely random facts about oneself. I seem to recall doing this before, but I think I can come up with five more random facts:

1.Last summer I made a batch of peach chutney. (It was okay, but I'm not sure anyone would ask me for that recipe.)

2. I own a pair of old-fashioned waffle-stomper Iverson snowshoes that make me feel positively athletic when I use them. (Except when I trip over them and fall into the snow.)

3. Two of my favorite books as a middle-school-ish child were Howard Pyle's Robin Hood and an anthology of Sherlock Holmes stories.

4. Rocky and Bullwinkle is my very favorite TV cartoon, ever.

5. My personal best for keeping a terrarium alive and reasonably attractive is two years. (That one illustration of a Wardian case in my new gardening book has me all geeked on terraria.)

Hey -- they said random, not interesting.