Backlog blog #3: September Hodge-Podge

In the interest of feeling like I’m finally catching up on these backlogs, I’m going to roll a few events that happened around the same time into a single entry.

September 18: Vogue has never looked so....

First up was SHADE, a Vogue Ball put on partially by my dear friend Casey to benefit the Lifelong Aids Alliance. It was also a fashion show, and Morgan and I got more than we bargained for in our front row seats. T and A abounded and I was very nearly impaled by a stiletto. It was pretty awesome.

Then came the Vogue-ing, and as always it was a joy to watch Casey dance. Although he killed it in the group routine, in my opinion he shines his brightest doing his solo improvisational work. To everyone’s delight they left the runway intact and let us all ‘work it out,’ which I did more than once.

Here I am in my get-up. I was trying to make my hair Really Big. It was also pouring buckets so I went with the fashionable rain boots to complete the outfit. The bartender asked me if I was in the fashion show, which I took as a compliment.

September 24: FBPP

Second was the French bread pizza party, which K was trying to convince me was my ‘going away party’ since I was moving. As someone who has had more than her fair share of going aways and actively avoids them, AND since I was trying to convince my roommates that they weren’t rid of me that easily, I was just calling it a good excuse to make some delicious food.

I am a sort of foodie but my tastes, while varied, are in no way high-brow. To wit, my absolute favorite type of dinner party to throw (other than Thanksgiving, of course) is a French bread pizza party. Here’s why:

1) Delicious
2) Easy – people make their own food!
3) Varied – people get to eat exactly what they want to eat
4) Interactive – especially good for people who don’t know each other that well
5) Crowd pleaser – who doesn’t love FB pizza??

This was probably the most successful FBPP I’ve ever thrown, with long-distance friends Megan who lives near Portland and Mark and Sarah visiting from Madison, plus two toddlers, the younger – and much smaller- of whom absolutely terrorized the other, leading to my now-infamous line, “You’re bigger than him, you can totally take him!” How cute is this photo? You would never have guessed from how demure Toddler J looks here that he was the terrorizer.

We wrapped up the meal with an apple crisp, a pear crisp, and a molasses cake. The next day I ate FB leftovers for breakfast and made another pizza using all the leftover toppings for lunch. Had there been any left, I could have easily eaten it again for dinner. My love for FBP runs deep.

September 25: Italian Festival

When Robyn asked if I wanted to go to the Italian festival I first said, the what? Then I said, of course! I’m always down for a festival, and I am a little embarrassed to admit I had no idea that Seattle even hosted such an event.

It turns out a lot of people outside the Italian community don’t know about it, even though it’s held at the very public Seattle Center. This is one of those festivals truly supported and primarily attended by the community in question, similar to the Greek festival (also going on that weekend, which I sadly missed) and dissimilar from, say, Oktoberfest in Fremont. We were surrounded by authentic, Italian-speaking, bocci-ball-throwing, pizza-crust-tossing Italians. And I’m not stereotyping here – we witnessed a children’s pizza dough tossing contest going on right outside the building that housed a Very Serious bocci ball tournament. We also watched teams stomp grapes, ate sausages and gelato, and drank Italian sodas.

Unfortunately I don’t have any still images from this event because I took my video camera instead, and although I do have quite a few videos, if you have followed this blog at all, you know I’m the WORST at editing them together! I keep promising a video blog and it is on one of my many lists, I believe the one titled ‘long term’. It will happen, eventually.