Chào ba, Sam (good bye)

On Sunday afternoon, we held a sending-forth party for our friend, Sam, as she is about to "set sail" for California. In this picture, left to right: Brian (our gracious host), PJ, Hemant, Nick, and Sue (Nick's wife).



Brian and his wife, Meghan, have a gorgeous home! It's true that every house in Kansas has a big backyard. While I didn't want to photograph the entire backyard for concern about their neighbors' privacy, I did manage to sneak a few shots of Brian's patio. Here we see something useful in the Mid-west:



Brian and Meghan's beautification project--different classes of grass, lilies, all sorts of stuff that wouldn't fit in frame. But to give you an idea of how large this place is, look at the distance between Sue and Nick here....



Who knew that some of us were experts at mixing drinks? Sam makes this tasty cocktail called Mojito which she almost made non-stop for the rest of the night. I wanted to taste it, so I asked her to mix me a half-strength cup with plenty of ice. Here's the recipe, courtesy of Webtender.com:

Ingredients:

• 2-3 oz Light rum
• Juice of 1 Lime (1 oz)
• 2 tsp Sugar
• 2-4 Mint sprigs
• Soda water

Mixing instructions:

Lightly muddle the mint and sugar with a splash of soda water in a mixing glass until the sugar dissolves and you smell the mint. Squeeze the lime into the glass, add rum and shake with ice. Strain over cracked ice in a highball glass. Top with soda water, garnish with mint sprig and serve.

Sam almost used Bacardi rum, which would have increased the potency. Good thing she went light this time...otherwise I probably would have passed it over. I did not get drunk or get buzzed. I was fine the whole night.



Anyhoo, this is the Mojito in its final form, served in a red plastic cup.




Hemant is a mixed drink aficionado as well! Last night he made a shot called the Manchurian Candidate. I was not brave enough to attempt this one. I set a limit of one drink, and so I waited for the mojito. This is the recipe for the Manchurian Candidate:

Ingredients:

• 1 shot Vodka
• 1 dash Soy sauce

Mixing instructions:

First pour vodka, then soy sauce, into the shot glass.

Here's a shot of me sneaking a slice of a rich chocolate brownie (10,000 Calories!):



One of the benefits of having a hi-fi stereo system is that your 70's disco music can be heard from outside. This one track had most of us dancing. Here I'm paying homage (brownie in hand) to Brian, "the dancing god"



Random photo of me taking stabs at the brownie:



It was about 10:00 PM when we went back inside. The others thought it would be fun to turn all the lights off and tell ghost stories, just like when we were kids. I came up with the idea of doing a round-robin story telling, where the story starts with one person and builds as it goes around the group. I kid you not: our first story started as follows,

PJ: "OK, so this one time,"

Hemant: "at band camp..."

We went around for about 15 minutes, turned on the lights, then sat on the kitchen floor and just talked.



Sam took off shortly thereafter, and then Hemant and I left at about 11:30 PM. Poor Brian and Meghan! Sorry for keeping you guys up!

That's the end. It's Monday morning, back to work!

Chào ba, Sam. Good luck out there in California.