Tea party!

My sister and I were never really into tea parties as kids.  Drinking water with sugar out of my sister's little tea cups wasn't very exciting for us.  It wasn't until I was in high school or college that I got into tea parties.

My grandmother was born in Niwot, Colorado--a little town outside of Boulder.  When she was little, Reverend Taylor's church was on the second floor of one of the buildings.  Her family moved out of Niwot when she was in high school.  At some point, her daughter, my Aunt K, discovered that Reverend Taylor's had become a tea parlor.  Every summer after that, my aunt and her three nieces would have tea together at Reverend Taylor's.  It was the best--there were dress-up clothes and accessories to wear and lots of pastries to consume.  My youngest cousin is eleven years younger than I am, so she loved playing this glamorous game with her aunt and cousins.  By the end of tea, my sides hurt from laughing so hard and I was already tired from the sugar high.  It was the best way to spend a summer Saturday afternoon.

A few years ago, Reverend Taylor's had closed when we called to make our annual reservations.  We were very sad--especially since I've realized that I don't know what kind of tea they served, and it was the best.  But we haven't given up our tea parties--now we make our own treats and serve tea at my aunt's house.  It isn't quite the same, but the closeness is and that's what really counts.

Tomorrow I'm having tea at the Brown Palace with my best friend, B, her mother, grandmother and my mother.  I won't be wearing borrowed gloves or pearls, but it is still the best way to spend a summer Saturday afternoon.

What's in sweet & sour sauce anyway?

We had Chinese food for dinner the other night.  The waitress asks my friend what kind of rice he wants.  He asks what kinds they have.  She says, "White or brown." 
"Yeah, but what kinds of rice?" he clarifies.
"There are different kinds of rice?" she asks, surprised.
This is how he ended up with dry brown rice.

After he tried the rice, he asked a waiter for sweet & sour sauce.  He was told they didn't have any packets of it, so the waiter would bring him some from the kitchen.  The waiter soon delivered a bowl full of sweet & sour sauce.  I innocently ask, "What's in sweet & sour sauce?"  My friend's theory--little Chinese girls because little girls are made from sugar and spice and everything nice.  So now it seems that sweet & sour sauce is made for $2 an hour by little Chinese girls.  Think about that the next time you go out for Chinese.

14:59 and ticking...

This morning I had a sudden urge to check out my sorority homepage.

Sure enough--it was finally posted! What, you ask? A picture of me and two sorority sisters from a friend's wedding. The wedding was a super-fun reunion, thousands of miles from where we went to school--and even better because we are scattered across the country now.

A confession: I wasn't that into the whole sorority thing in college. It was one more thing that I did--I loved the idea of it, but I wasn't into the whole party scene and really wasn't that close to the other 120 women in my chapter. But now that I've become an alumna, I appreciate all of that so much more and I've become more involved than I ever was in college. This truly is membership for life.

Another confession: Every wedding should be as fun as hers. She did so much to ensure that being one of her bridesmaids was not a financial or emotional burden, but more importantly, her bridal party was awesome! Barely any of us had non-bridal party dates so this set up at least one hook-up (for which I continue to take partial credit, as I do for the wedding itself--see below), and lots of mischievous fun "decorating" the bridal suite. When the bride and groom arrived, I hope they enjoyed the toilet paper streamers, inappropriate shaving cream messages on all glass surfaces, and took some of the suggestions from our list of places to "do it." Perhaps fortunately they didn't take our suggestion to bring the list down to brunch with them the next morning with checkmarks showing locations completed.

It is amusing that my sorority and this wedding have developed this connection in my head because the bride and groom started dating after getting reacquainted with each other at one of my sorority formals where I took the bride as my "date". Now if the best man marries that bridesmaid, then I will single-handedly be responsible for marrying off both brothers. What a title!

Until then, I will enjoy bringing up that picture on my sorority homepage to enjoy my 15 minutes of fame...

Things to do in Colorado Springs when you're dead

Last night I played fashion consultant for one of my guy friends while shopping.  As my reward we stopped to have ice cream in the food court which overlooks the ice rink.  To make it more interesting, we made a friendly wager on the hockey game that was just starting.  Having chosen sides, trash talking ensued.  I'm not known for my creativity, so most of my trash talking sounded like, "My goalie can kick your goalie's @**."  But it is more fun when the other team's goalie is number 69.  And by the way, the score at the end of the period had my team up (two to nothing), so I get free dinner.  Yum!

I never intended for this to happen.

Just a disclaimer to start this off: I never intended for this to happen.  Sure I've slowly become wrapped up in the blog world--spending way too much time reading random blogs when I should be doing more productive things--but I thought I would just let the idea of my blog remain an idea.  But then I wanted to post a comment to my best friend's blog and *poof* here I am.  Don't expect too much yet, ok?