Bastille Day! Who's celebrating?

[Jenise]

I am!!!

Well, kind of. I'm definitely throwing a party. You see, our neighborhood wine club is kind of running off with our neighborhood yacht club to San Juan Island this weekend for some 'do' on Monday so the guy who started the wine club announced that there would not be a monthly wine tasting this weekend. All this without consulting me, the defacto co-chair of the group, who considers a Bastille Day celebration a vinuous must.

But I can't go San Juan Island because 1) I don't have a boat (yet) and 2) I have company arriving from out of state on a house-hunting mission today. So what to do?

Throw the first annual Revenge of the Boatless Losers!

So I am going to smoke a 17 lb whole New York strip roast. And I'm making a tomato/blue cheese/arugula salad and chocolate cake, and I'm going to put out great baguettes of bread and some magnums of French wine to go with the really good wine everybody else is bringing and I'm going to play French jazz and we'll forget all about those yahoos in the Middle East who are trying to start WWIII and we're going to make those yacht club people jealous, JEALOUS I tell you, and what's more my houseguests are going to go wow this is so much freakin' fun OF COURSE we're going to buy a house in your neighborhood.

And we'll all live happily ever after.

[James Roscoe]

Especially when the North Koreans launch a missile at Washington and it falls in the middle of your bay.

[Jenise]

Especially when the North Koreans launch a missile at Washington and it falls in the middle of your bay.

This could be a problem. But the big money's on Spokane.

[ChefCarey]

I have mixed emotions about Bastille Day. On July 14th, 1968 I was in the Latin Quarter in Paris. There was some celebrating going on, but more rioting than celebrating. I was wondering around taking photos. The CRS (national police force) were out in force. At one point they came up behind me and pummeled me hard rubber truncheons, ripped my Nikon from around my neck threw it to the pavement, broke it open and stripped my film. They then escorted me to one of the vans they were using to take the rioting students and workers off to the jailhouse. (I had already been warned about this - apparently one was run through a gauntlet of CRS with truncheons on the way into the jail. I found a supervisor just as they were about to put me in the van and explained to him I was an American and a bystander. I still had my Vietnam press card signed by Westmoreland - it was still valid - and that convinced him to let me go. All night the CRS were firing off gas CS grenades willy-nilly - into cafes full of tourists, they went berserk.

So, I take my Bastille Day with a grain of sel.

[Gary Barlettano]

Throw the first annual Revenge of the Boatless Losers!

Now I'm getting that Rodney Dangerfield feeling. My daughter brings in her boyfriend whose idea of an education was "C's and D's also get degrees" who gets a degree in sociology and two weeks later finds some IT position which pays as much as I'm earning with this collection of useless alphabet soup after my name ... AND HE BUYS A FREAKIN' 30' BOAT!

Please include me on your list of boatless losers. I will be there in spirit whilst my daughter and her beau will be floating around on Lake Berryessa.

We sorta already celebrated Bastille Day. We took my rightwinger boss to the Left Bank in Pleasant Hill, CA. He had escargot and sweetbreads. Zari had prawns in Pernod. I enjoyed the Boudin Blanc et Noir. The blood sausage kind of grossed out my guests, but, geesh, the other guy was eating snails and guts ... which, I guess, was our way of "viving la France." We also had this inky, French-oaky, overpriced '02 Petite Sirah from Napa, but I just can't remember the producer. Quelle horreur!

Other than that, I guess I will be subjected to a barrage of anti-French jokes from my son.

[ChefCarey]

Absolutely hate it when my bread perspires.

[Barb Freda]

Yet another Jenise party which I will attend in spiriti..gotta get to one for real one of these days.

b

[Ines Nyby]

I could be there! Are you surprised to see me here finally? That sounds like so much fun, but of course, if I were there, I'd find a boat somehow...
Unlike you, I am not cooking a 17 lb. roast beast..but maybe I'll cook a 1 bone prime rib steak tonight. It's 100 degrees hot here and cooking is not too appealing right now.
Ines

[Jenise]

INES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm so sorry I didn't see this post until today. Been up to my behind in alligators. Namely, some wonderful house guests. Chris and Scot left this morning after five days, and John and Annabelle arrive tomorrow.

Glad you finally made it to FLDG.

100 degrees? UGH. Hope that's calmed down somewhat since you posted. It's comfortably in the 60's and low 70's here, though I understand y'all are sending the heat waves up for this weekend, which will give us a real chance to test the heat-repelling ability of our high tech new roof.

[Chris]

As one of the "wonderful houseguests", I must add that Jenise and her husband are the best people whose hospitality is fabulous. My husband said he hadn't had this much fun in the past 6-7 years, which, coincidentally (and rather dismaying) is as long as we've been married!

Ouch.

Whether it was to celebrate Bastille Day or in honor of the Boatless Losers, the party on Friday night was sensational and all of the guests were most entertaining.

[Jenise]

Chris said:

My husband said he hadn't had this much fun in the past 6-7 years

I think that was actually a complaint about the fact that once you got that ring on your finger he never saw the bustier and garters again. But that's okay, Bob and I will accept the compliment.

Tell that boy we have more fun planned, get that house sold!

We look forward to your return. We're glad you felt so comfortable here that you did all the things here you normally do at home (the cats haven't quit talking about it), only next time don't break the bed.