Gentlemen: Meet Your Dinner

Charlton M. Bouchemeyer, our newest roommate, emailed me the other day suggesting that we invite a few people over for a "punkin' carving" which, he declared, was "critical to his success and happiness in October."

Not wanting to stand in the way of the man from Tennessee's overall mental health, we ended up turning it into a punkin'-carving competition complete with prizes and whatnot; and sent out an email invitation to that effect. On the whole, I think it went well; at least from a medical standpoint, because nobody cut anything off, and nobody cried - I consider that my two key metrics for post-party analysis.

Ashleigh Cavannes (pronounced "ca van ness" or "cavan ess" or just "Ashley") even brought her own punkin' carving kit, which impressed me to no end. Even though she has a name you have to misspell to pronounce, she's still got some class; and she brought tools to the party - big winner. I didn't realize such a thing existed and I got so excited about the punkin' carving kit that I promptly snapped the blade off the little punkin' saw. That's about par for the course with me and tools I think.

The only thing I found vaguely disturbing is that only about 50% of attendees actually followed the party directions and BYOP'ed. I feel like if I get an invitation to an event that says, in no uncertain terms, that I'm to bring with me a giant gourd-like squash from the family cucurbita - I'm going to bring that gourd-like squash.

I'm not going to bring a lemon, six tangerines and a sack of walnuts, or a honeydew melon, or a cucumber, or dessert, or anything else. I'm not even going to bring spaghetti squash or butternut squash (both of which taste much better than punkin') - I'm going to bring a punkin'.

Why?

Because I'm a competitor, and a punkin'-carving-champion needs his punkin'.

Punkin'-shortage aside, it was fun and everything went smoothly. Tyler whipped up some fabulous chili so I managed to sneak some venison in on the unsuspecting public - one of my main joys in life. I didn't even get a "shut up, shut UP!" look from Tyler but once during the whole evening! That's a record.

She sasheyed into the room just in time to hear me loudly announce "well, the chili has venison in it. Actually, now that I think about it - its from that deer - right there on the wall!" as I pointed to a mounted deer head hanging near the fireplace.

That got me the look, so I dropped the topic double-quick.

Later she said - "listen idiot, people don't want to feel like the animal they're eating is eyeballing them from the other side of the room. Its in poor taste."

Let me just say: I've had that phrase hissed at me in more social settings than I care to recount and its a real mood killer.

So, excuuuuse me for living. I just thought they'd like to meet their dinner before they ate it.