Party With a Twist.

Wow, I can't believe it's all history already. We had a wonderful Christmas week full of excitement and rest that flowed in an alternating pattern. Tony had all of last week off and we started the week with his Christmas party.

Tony pretty much puts this one together each year, picks the place, the food, plans for most of the other details too. Ravi, a well respected employee who left the company in the middle of the year to work at his own business was invited. Ravi and his wife Jasmine are also dear friends of ours, so when he asked Tony if he could surprise everyone with an entertainer it didn't take much for Tony to agree to it, even after he found out the entertainment was belly dancing. Tony's co-workers represent a broad spectrum of humanity, including Portuguese from Portugal and Angola, Mexican, Indian, African and of course plenty of people just like me, whatever that's called, American I guess (although I have a grand complicated ancestral mixture of European, and American Indian).

That reminds me of a story that my Dad tells about his Uncle Buddy and Uncle George who would tell him as a young boy, "Tommy, you have ancestors and garments covering your body and you're going to die!" My Dad says he would look down at his skin and freak out!

OK, back to my story. In my minds eye, I was expecting a culturally enriching event perhaps with a Christmas twist on the belly dancing theme. Tony and I were the only other couple that knew that the entertainment was to arrive and perform during dinner, something along the lines of a violinist moving from table to table. Having general expectations of what the dancers would be like, I joked with Ravi, Jasmine, and Tony, "what if they are really really old?" We all laughed about that.

Well, guess what? They weren't very young at all and I won't be so disrespectful as to describe the carnage in detail, but I will tell you that they kept ALL their clothes on. Moral of the story: Never hire belly dancers over the internet, always request a meeting with the actual dancers prior to the event. I have no idea how much Ravi paid them but I'm pretty sure it was too much.

Then, the best part of the evening for me. My husband got the best laugh of his entire career as party host when he held the microphone later in the evening after the belly dancing ladies had been long gone. And I quote: "I just want to say a big thank you to my Mother and Grandmother for generously providing the entertainment for the evening."

I love Jasmine, I wish you could have seen her face.