Celebrations

I came to a stunning realization early on over the weekend, one which in hindsight seems head-slappingly obvious: the new house is never going to be done. It remains, and will always remain, a work in progress. I really had thought that I was going to be able to get a certain number of things done before our housewarming party which would allow me to step back and look at the whole big picture and say “All right, that’s finished.” But, not so much. It’s honestly something of a relief, to have officially thrown our housewarming party and be able to regard the ever-evolving To-Do list as something which I shouldn’t necessarily neglect but which has no set deadline, either.

So the housewarming party, in and of itself, was a lot of fun. It is hard, in my estimation, for a party not to be fun when there are deep coolers full of beer and at least one bushel of crabs involved. (Check, and check.) In addition to celebrating our new place of residence, I was able to well and truly break in the new grill with multiple rounds of burgers and dogs, which in turn gave rise to yet another profound realization: I enjoy picking crabs by hand and eating the results, so much so that an entire party built around that very proposition strikes me as eminently worthwhile, but ultimately the crab-picking is an activity one should enter into for fun. As opposed to sustenance. Because a good time can be had pulling apart the wee crabby limb-from-limb and thoracic-chamber-from-chamber, but the calorie-intake versus calorie-expenditure balance, or the time spent liberating the food stuffs ratio to time spent eating, or however you want to measure it, is pretty heavily skewed in favor of the doing, not the chewing. I’ve always said we offer non-crab food options at these type of parties for the people who have shellfish allergies or just generally don’t enjoy seafood, but honestly I always end up scarfing down a few burgers and dogs myself because crab-picking really does work up one’s appetite.


In addition to celebrating a warm home, there was at least some sports-related celebrating to be enjoyed as well. In honor of the World Cup (I presume, that it may have been purely because it amused her) my wife taught the little guy how to yell “GOOOOOOAAAAAALLL!” and he proved remarkably adept at the long, loud, sustained vocalization. And in fact he also proved uncannily good at matching the note he was hitting to the note my wife hit as they both yelled “GOOOOOOAAAAAAALLL!” Unfortunately the US lost on Saturday and the UK lost on Sunday so our rooting interests are now nil and there probably won’t be any more occasions for the little guy to use this newfound skill. Unless, of course, “GOOOOOOAAAAALLLL!” becomes his new “Home Run!” to be shouted out whenever he sees anything on tv that vaguely resembles a sport with grass and a ball, like tennis or golf.

While most of the rest of the world was focused on sports broadcast from South Africa this weekend, locals hereabouts were also interested in the regional interleague baseball rivalry between the Baltimore Orioles and Washington Nationals. At the risk (as always) of sounding condescending, the O’s were astoundingly and unexpectedly impressive all weekend, not only sweeping the three-game series but coming from behind in all three games. Maybe that says more about the Nats’ ability to hold leads than anything else, but regardless. I’m happy for my wife and her team.

(The Yankees won two out of three this weekend which seems to be what they do with almost every series, so it’s not that interesting to talk about, even with the added drama of playing against Joe Torre.)

My wife and I celebrated our fourth wedding anniversary on Sunday, mostly by lounging around the house and reflecting that as we get older the big house parties get somewhat easier to clean up after because people tend to keep the large, sticky mess-making idiocy to a reasonable minimum. We also got a babysitter so that we could have a grown-up dinner at a real restaurant, which ended up being a Brazilian steakhouse. If you’ve never had the pleasure of that particular dining experience, they cook up several ark’s worth of various meats in the kitchen and as each batch is finished cooking (medium rare) the slabs are loaded onto swords which are then paraded through the restaurant by gauchos who will slice off a serving at your table if you like. Needless to say, it is one price for all you care to eat. This is exactly as awesome as it sounds, and my only regret was that after an entire weekend of consuming grilled meat as if it were my job, by Sunday night I was starting to slow down a bit. It was still nice to have someone else do the cooking, though.
After a weekend like that I am, perhaps predictably, very tired and surprisingly still full. But that is a nicely narcotizing effect which makes Monday a bit more bearable.