Anniversaries and champagne or sparkling wine seem to go hand in hand… So when the bottles of champagne, sparkling wine and cava, red and white wines started arriving hours before the party yesterday, you knew it was going to be an interesting evening. Throw in the house liquor cabinet and a cooler filled with beer and we were set. Mrs. MM and I hosted around 20+ high school classmates and their spouses for a mini reunion at our home. We were celebrating our 25th year since graduating from 12th grade! Frankly, I thought just about everyone looked better last night than we did as scrawny, somewhat awkward teenagers… but maybe that’s just a bit of wishful thinking. :)
Throwing together a dinner for 30 is sometimes easier than a small fancy sit-down dinner for 8… and with various requests from foreign guests, we ended up with a slightly bizarre buffet menu of lechon, paella, baked whole lapu-lapu, lumpia ubod, bicol express, fresh lumpia, green mango with bagoong, salad, etc. The 12-15 or so friends who were drinking last night consumed a good 12-15 bottles of champagne, wine, liquor etc. (I am not even counting the beer). At our age, dinner parties usually end by 11 and we are fast asleep minutes later… this morning, the last guests departed at 3 a.m.! It is amazing how quickly old friends can reconnect, and somehow for a few hours, we did feel like we were back in high school. Everyone has since gone on to do their own thing, a doctor, lawyers, media execs, authors, politicos, etc. but for a suspended period of 8 hours, we were like giddy high school seniors doing the silliest things… Worse, someone actually brought a copy of our yearbook and that was just a little too real, if you know what I mean…
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people departing at 3am. sure sign a good party was had. :)
I always marvel at people who’ve managed to keep in touch with friends from the past. Ang galing. Frankly, I know very little of what my grade school classmates are up to nowadays.
Enterprising widow Clicquot was the first to break through the blockade brought about by the Napoleonic invasion that started the Russians to refer to champagne as Clicquot in the way we call toothpaste Colgate. Almost equally expensively celebratory is their own combination of caviar and vodka which a delegation of Filipino artists was feted with (a member of the party related to me) while the natives themselves feasted singlemindedly on their guests’ pasalubong of lakatan.
Ah from beer to champagne, drinks to cater to every taste but how do you react graciously to guests who proudly bring 7-Uppy Asti when you have taken the bother of chilling bottles of Champagne?
Blue skies and happy days seem to be here again in relation to the blog so am fixing my own celebration here.
Cheers to a successful reunion…you may have to make additional jellies and jams for your xmas list!!!
elaine, with about 250 bottles in stock, I am hoping that will be enough for Christmas 2007… Apicio, hahaha, you got it, there are always bottles that somehow get misplaced in the confusion of bartending and guests and what not… I am currently posting from a desktop (my new laptop has yet to arrive) but yes, things don’t seem as disastrous as they did a few days ago. Em, I think many of our good friendships were made in high school, in fact, perhaps more so than college for me, so it’s nice to catch up with them every so often! Fabian, yup, 3am is way too late for me these days :)
Two of my best friends were my classmates since grade school and we remained friends though high school, college and we even worked at the same office for a while!! Shared many (and I mean MANY) dateless (read all-girls)nights out, cried on each others shoulders, rejoiced at our late marriages and childbirths (mine) and mourned the losses of our parents. And to this day, we still keep in touch and see each other when time permits! Here’s to wonderful friendships that can sometimes even be closer than sibling relationships! Cliquot or Asti, cheers!!!
I think that same feeling of closeness took place at school for a particular generation. I don’t sense that in recent graduates.
my highschool friends are my friends for life…