WOW!! What a party!! I'd be very hard pressed to think of a time when I enjoyed myself more than the official Blogstream Christmas gathering! Here's the highlights:

• Several of us arrived at Bella's place a wee bit early. We COULD have arrived even earlier to help Bella with the deorations, but we got stuck in traffic. Of course it didn't help matters that Randy was throwing water balloons out of the window at people who were singing Christmas carols to the stranded motorists. That damn ticket is going to cost me $50!!
• Once we FINALLY arrived at Bella's we had to wait on her to finish getting dressed. She was in such a hurry that she didn't even notice that she had her shiny black vinyl dominatrix outfit on backwards! I didn't say anything to her about it at first, but everytime she took a step it sounded like a couch was trying to sneak up on me!
• About half an hour later we heard the sound of tires screeching and then a powerful crash! We didn't even have to guess who had just arrived....HeatherScot. We have TOLD Heather not to bring that damn squirrel because he keeps getting stuck under the accelerator and causing her car to careen into buildings, bodies of water, and the lobby of McDonald's!!
• Just on the heels of Heather's arrival, Buffy comes bursting into the front door and annouces that she's just spotted Santa Claus heading West on the interstate! We were all quite excited until we learned that it wasn't actually St. Nick that Buffy had spotted....it was in fact just a mailbox with a picture of Larry Hagman on it.
• Things were going pretty well up until Annie's grand entrance. She'd decided that she wanted to arrive in the same manner as Santa....so she had climbed onto the roof and started down the chimney. I have to give our Annie credit...she was doing good until she got about 3/4 of the way down. She got stuck between the bricks, a squirrel's nest, and a bunch of empty Advil bottles. It took us nearly an hour to get her unstuck...though it WAS funny to see nothing but those black go-go boots dangling in the fireplace!!
• Secret blew in at around 9...she apologized for being late and explained that on the way over, she'd gotten lost and ended up doing some last minute shopping at one of those roadside markets. Her story was that some old man in his 80s with only one tooth in his mouth had started up a conversation with her while she was shopping and once he started talking he just would NOT shut up! If it hadn't been for the fact that the poor old geezer sneezed and blew his one remaining tooth onto her hairbow she might have STILL been stuck there!!
• Secret's story got cut short when we heard AZRON explaining how to turn 3 inches of string, a Snickers bar, and a picture of Rob Lowe into a source of energy that could effectively make ordinary electricity obsolete...admittedly I was a bit skeptical about Ron's theory at first, but once he showed me the numbers on a spreasheet I was quite impressed!
• As I was looking over the spreadsheet, I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around and saw kktaylorcc standing there!! I was so happy to see her that I almost spilled my drink onto Bella's brand new olive green shag carpet!! You'll recall that poor Taylor was wrongly convicted of that incident that happened in Duluth back in September with the cow, the rooster, and the cast of "The West Wing". It was such an ugly, drawn out trial. Miss Taylor could have beaten the wrap had it not been for the state's key witness: a grumpy little old man named Moe who claimed that he'd been pelted with little shards of glass last summer while he was walking by Taylor's house.
• Taylor's arrival was overshadowed only by gjwlegs, who'd stopped by Dunkin Donuts on the way to the party and picked up a couple dozen blueberry cruellers with sprinkles on top. We were all a bit hesitant to have one of the treats at first. I don't have to remind everyone about what happened at LAST year's party when we all started seeing things after eating those "sprinkles"!!
• As is always the case at these functions, we had to go and fish n.lynn out of the pool. She said that she'd spotted little orange men from Jupiter out on the back deck and wanted to investigate. When she confronted the orange men's leader, Zorblock, things got way out of hand. Zorblock pushed lynn, lynn threw a drink in his face, and seconds later lynn was head first into the pool.
• While we were gathering towels to dry lynn off with, Miss Lou came flittering outside to see what the ruckus was about. THAT turned out to be a nightmare....she and lynn had exchanged some looks a few weeks ago over one of life's OLDEST mysteries: how DO those cherries get into that blob of chocolate??!!

Now, THIS year we had all vowed not to let things get out of hand as they have the past few years, but you know how the old saying goes...."famous last words".....it took me two days to get all of the bits of pineapple out of my hair back at Christmas of 2001, and I know for a FACT that those tables we broke at the Hilton were NOT worth $85,000 each regardless of WHAT that little knucklehead at the front desk says!! Anyway, we'd managed to live up to our pledge until Buffy's cat spotted Heather's squirrel and began to chase it around the house!! It was all I could do not to laugh when that crazy cat landed on top of Randy's head while he was telling the story about 4 midgets at Chicago's O'Hare airport! The frantic look on Bella's face cut my laughter short though. She pointed behind me and I turned just in time to get nailed in the face with a chocolate cream pie that someone had left sitting on the front porch as a joke. Personally, I was NOT amused and immediately began to plot my revenge, which I'd have been able to carry out if the damn electricity hadn't gone out!! When the lights finally DID come back on, I heard Heather scream when she saw her beloved squirrel humping a potted plant!

Even though things managed to spiral out of control for the latter part of the evening, the party was still a huge success! I can hardly wait for the New Year's bash we're having over at the Ritz!! This time though I don't think it's a very good idea for each of us to arrive on the back of a mule with a broken back, missing teeth, and a bad case of hoof rot!!