Rather than do any food ourselves, we mostly got a selection of really nice meat/cheese/veggie/sushi platters from the grocery store. It greatly simplified things. Of course, plenty of food was brought by guests. And there was a cake (courtesy of my mother-in-law Helen). There was a selection of ice cream to have with the cake. There were also Shirley Temples.
I also did all I could to get as many guests as possible to play SingStar. It's always fun to stick a mike in someone's hand and make them sing along to "We Built This City" and "The Final Countdown" (which actually has the lyrics, and I quote, "Ba ba ba baaa! Ba ba ba ba baaa!"). Everyone was impressed by Nathan, my supervisor from work and as white as any of us at the party, kicking butt on Run-DMC's "Tricky". I'm not sure if he was singing the Run part or the DMC part, but he rocked.
And gifts. Wow. Much more than expected. A couple of weeks before all this, I got myself a PS3 (woo!), so it was great when I got Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction from my mom; it was the game I most wanted for the new console (although I gather she didn't know exactly what she was after and asked for Pools of Destruction at the store). I also got a couple of gift cards for EB Games, so I now also have Lego Indiana Jones. Other gift highlights had to include:
- a plush of the killer bunny from Monty Python and the Holy Grail
- an extremely silly Marvel comic called Wha-- Huh?!
- my very own Doctor Who sonic screwdriver, along with a wallet with psychic paper (now I can make anybody's cell phone work across any distance through time and space and I can easily get into any party or crime scene of my choice)
Most of all, the day was just... fun. I've got great family, great friends, great co-workers and a great wife in Lynn (who really held things together and made sure I had a steady supply of Shirley Temples).
