Of course, anything-- absolutely anything-- would have been an improvement over Friday. Still, it was nice.

I decided to have a party last weekend. We invited Janet and Nigel there and then, and sort of forgot about it immediately afterwards. Well, I remembered, but kept forgetting to remind Elvis to send out invitations. Not only that, I didn't send out any invitations, either. Finally, at about 10:30 on Wedensday night, we got to discussing it. Elvis said it was my call, and I decided that we might as well go ahead with it and see what happened. I sent out a bunch of text messages right away, and Elvis sent out a round of e-mails Thursday morning.

Amazingly, given the short notice, it turned out well. We had twenty people, in the end, and that's with a lot of people who would have otherwise come being unable to do so. Not only that, but 5 or 6 people who were going to come cancelled due to a nasty flu bug that's been going around.

I tell you what, I'm getting good at this party business. I decided to make it easy on myself, and roasted a hunk of beef for sandwiches instead of making a vat of something or other. I made salsa, dip, bruschetta, and barbeque sauce to dip salmini in, and cut up a lot of veggies in addition to setting out nuts, pickles, pretzels, chips and other munchies, in addition to the infamous Happy Mix, which I am finally realizing that people don't like very much. Unhappy Mix would be more accurate, I suspect. There's still half a bag left that I might as well toss since nobody's going to eat it.

Oh, and I made a cheese ball which, as usual, was a big hit. It seems that only Americans are familiar with the whole cheese ball concept. Quite often, the Brits eye it with suspicion. I even had a couple of folks ask me what they were supposed to do with it. ("Um, see how it's surrounded by crackers-- I mean, biscuits?") Once they get to eating it though, it's gone in no time. I just wish that coating it with the nuts wasn't such a pain in the rear. Still, it's worth it.

Anyway, it was a nice party. There was a nice mix of people, and everybody socialized with everybody else instead of sticking to their own little cliques. Plenty of wine and beer was consumed, but no one got totally plastered, even after we started in on the vodka-ed fruit that Janeta and her sister Judy brought for dessert. At about one o'clock we decamped down to the pub, and then some of us continued on to the Late Night Bar of Evil because Saturday just isn't Saturday without popping into the LNBOE for a quick beer and a bit of dancing. We only stayed for one (!) Bbefore heading home. Elvis cleaned almost everything up for me (he wouldn't let me help, although I did sneak in a tiny bit of assistance), and we were in bed by 4 am. Unbelievable. All in all, it was a stress free and enjoyable day.

Last night was the pub quiz. Miss Kitty is out of town, but since Calvin is visiting, he took her place as our token British person. It's a very British-oriented quiz, which makes sense as it's a British pub, and a team consisting of two Americans and one Canadian is doomed without a British fourth. We finished solidly in the middle, as per usual. It was a very nice evening. I love Quiz Night. Unfortunately, there's only one left before the summer break. It's such a bummer.

Another thing that's bumming me out is the rain-- it's been pissing down for days. I'm sick and tired of it, and I can't even remember exactly when our last nice day was. Sometime last week, I think. Friday night, someone broke my umbrella down at the pub, which makes a change from stealing it, I suppose. Yesterday it started to clear up. The sun even came out shortly before we left to go to the pub.

We had been walking all of three minutes before it suddenly started teeming down on us. We weren't even a block from our apartment when it started, after another block the streets and sidewalks were flooded, and by the time we got to the pub my jeans were sopping wet and my shoes sodden.

Those would be my brand new, über-pointy shoes that I bought last week. It was the first time I wore them, and they looked nice for exactly ten minutes after I put them on. They're still wet today. Currently they're residing under the small table in the kitchen, stuffed with newspaper. My jeans were still damp when I put them into the washer this morning.

Life sucks sometimes.

I'm looking forward to this weekend. We've arranged to rent a car and plan to drive down to the Algarve, since Elvis has a couple of days off for Easter. With any luck, it will have stopped raining by then.