As always the hosts were gracious and I had lots of vegetables (and a little cheese) to fill up on before the pizza (and salad) arrived. It was unusual varieties of thin crust - I tried four-cheese white, mushroom, and salamino which was NOT made of ponies. There was also caffeine-free diet Coke and fruit so I could drink and have dessert. The others had cookies - both home-baked and messengered from Zabars thanks to J from Miami who couldn't be there.
I brought board games but we didn't have a chance to play. We did M's "add letters to NORMA" puzzle given definitions of the original and expanded word/phrase, where I saw "Paper Moon" (NORMA + POPE) and talked about how I was just reading about it in a book about '70s movies I'll report on when I finish. Except I confused it with "The Last Picture Show."
There was also a game to guess two related movies linked in a row, like TRCAFAFRISC (TRAFFIC + CARS), which was easy to wrongly assume was "Traffic" and "Crash." As this was handed out, I got into a discussion with B of contact lenses and bifocal vision as they relate to puzzles, so missed solving most of these.
Another game had names of comedians with blobs instead of letters, that differed depending on how the letter looked. Some jumped out (George Carlin has a distinctive shape), while Eddie Murphy took a lot longer. There was no hysteria approaching last year's Ugandan national anthem, which had to be explained and demonstrated (click-gulp-click) to those who weren't there.
N had a 6 a.m. limo for a flight this morning and kept trying to leave for his long trip home, only to stay about 2 hours more than he anticipated. That's known as a "Jewish goodbye." Hope he got out in today's bad weather.
As the calendar heads toward the actual holidays, events dry up as people travel and do things with family. I always feel pleasantly removed from all the hoopla. Today was a good day to hole up.
