Geek Parties... Now with Money

For a long time my friends and I have hosted parties. We're not the most social people, but we've had a few go'rounds that have been worthy of note. The Iron Chef Challenge on the premier of Iron Chef American springs to mind. But those parties lacked something that is relevantly new to our lives: excess funds.

Last night we celebrated Brett's 24th birthday, and instead of struggling with my limited English vocabulary in a vain attempt to explain what money can buy you, let me just show you a picture.

First, you will note the blender. That is the greatest blender to ever crush ice. I purchased it as part of my, "Oh God, I'm Lonely, so I'll Buy Stuff" phase of my breakup with Lindsay. I stand by it as one of the best purchases from that period. Yeah, it was little spendy (okay, a lot spendy) but wields such explosive vortex action I might be tempted to compare it to certain vaccum's claim of gravometric proportions.

Next to the blender is a rather large bottle of tequila--moderately priced tequila. Mexican served as the party's central theme... but only to the extent that we ate nachos and I made more blended margaritas in one night than I have consumed in my lifetime up to that point. Back to the bottle... you will note that it is mostly empty. It started full that evening and only seven people attended (with two attendees hardly drinking). That left a rather substantial portion to the rest of us. Sure, the margaritas were a good method, but they lacked sufficient throughput to ensure we polished off the bottle. This is where Trivial Persuit comes in.

Trivial Persuit, you ask? Sure, you read the title of the post, right? Win yourself a pie piece, you and your partner both take a shot. Easy as... pie, I guess. But no, not really. I'm pretty good at Trivial Persuit, and when I get on a roll, I tend to be unstoppable. My team suffered some bad setbacks at the start (Mars/Moon... Keneset/Synagogue...), but in a period of less than an hour we obtained five pie pieces, and the five corresponding shots, all on top of the blended fruit margaritas I was pumping out. I was pretty gone by the time the evening wrapped up.

Much to my surprise, I suffered no ill effects in the morning and was able to make it to the hospital to see my grandmother. Who, by the way, is doing much better and may very well be discharged by the end of the week.