Bar the door! B turned 34!

We vacillated for weeks on the topic of a birthday party for B. So close to Christmas, it’s sometimes tough to assemble a quorum and let’s face it, it’s a ton of work. Luckily, a friend of ours offered her house. Unfortunately, she had to un-offer it at the last minute due to a family emergency. Regardless, we’re really glad we went ahead with a little get-together (including our friend, whose delay in travel made her family and her available for our little shindig).The party was a pretty traditional affair with Christmas overtones until a few of the guys started talking with way too much authority about the subtleties of Scotch. Ever the cynic, I decided to test their palates (and their resistance to large amounts of alcohol). In an odd coincidence, I had received several bottles of all kinds of Scotch from different people for my birthday. I’ve never been a Scotch man, but have also never been one to look a gift bottle “in the mouth”.I approached the contest fairly methodically given my already inebriated state. We had been drinking beer most of the evening, turning to Jack and Coke once the sun went down. The tasting competition went like this: I hid 3 bottles at a time under my side of the table and poured a small drink of each for all 4 of us. I then recorded on paper folks’ guesses as to the brand.How well they did identifying the Scotch is somewhat immaterial as in an hour or so, we somehow managed to drink almost a full fifth of Scotch each. If I wasn’t much of a fan of Scotch before, I can assure you that if I never drink a drop of it before I go to the big distillery in the sky, that will be just fine by me. I’ve only spoken to one of the other participants directly since then, but have no reason to think anyone pulled a Jimi Hendrix.I never did a proper head count, but from the pile of coats and shoes in the foyer, I’d say we had a pretty decent crowd.   The snow made for a beautiful afternoon and kept the kids entertained to boot!