I can’t believe I ate the whole thing!
7:02 p.m.
The music department student council hosted the annual fall barbecue this afternoon. Once upon a time, and I don’t know if I preferred this or not, the party was held at the home of a faculty member, usually the department chair, or someone else’s in the event that it was not feasible. The Duke and Duchess never had the barbecue at their place because they live too far out of town for most students to get to, and so Vlad often hosted it on those occasions, or we or our other colleague did. That colleague has since left for greener pastures (he’s been gone for seven years, believe it or not) and we were tired of being the hosts.
What that entailed was having buildings and grounds deliver two trough barbecues to our home, which we dragged into the backyard and filled with vast quantites of briquettes and found some enterprising student to start up. The plan was that people brought their own barbecuables, and we, the faculty, supplied things like salads, desserts, etc. It was always a fun time.
About four years ago Hubby had the great idea of having the barbecue in the quad, right outside the music department front door. This ended up being a great idea. There was a huge area for people to throw a frisbee around in, several enterprising young musicians brought their instruments and got a band playing, and there was lots of room.
Two years ago the students suddenly took it over and it became their event. This happened right when the new guy assumed the chair job, so he never had to deal with planning the barbecue. Neat trick. But what it also meant is that instead of this being something that the faculty did for the students and other faculty, it became a student-sponsored and organized affair. The faculty are still welcome to come, but we don’t actually feel like it’s our party anymore.
Anyway, I had promised to make my famous potato salad (it’s not mine, actually, it’s Kristina’s from M00sew00d C00kb00k) and I had totally forgotten to do so, which meant I had to go to the grocery store this morning to get the necessary ingredients. I also took the occasion to drop of O.B.’s pesto (he’d forgotten it last night, after I reminded him several times not to).
I knocked on the door to his and Little Princess’ BF’s apartment (she was there too, having stayed over that night) and was greeted by my baritone of last year, whom I had wakened. He has moved to Montreal and was using their pad to crash as someone is renting his old room. He let me in, looking like he would have let anyone in to steal the silverware, and I put the pesto in the fridge, noting that O.B. was in the shower, and the other bedroom door was closed.
After I got home, the phone rang and Little Princess asked me if I had snuck in and left the pesto. Apparently the baritone had fallen asleep again and they were stymied by the sudden appearance of the tubs, not being able to remember clearly now if they had taken them with them the night before or not.
So I made the potato salad and brought it to the barbecue which had moved indoors because we had just had a torrential downpour. One of the barbecue troughs was under the portico on the porch (probably totally against the fire marshall’s regulations) and I cooked a dozen ears of corn and a couple salmon burgers, one of which I ate. The potato salad was a great success, as was the corn; I indulged in a bit of rum and coke (O.B.’s rum) so that I was actually able to abide the company (that’s another bitch session in the offing). Now I’m home, stuffed, and feeling like I could use a nap.
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