OC Christmas Party

On Friday, Lindsey threw a small Christmas party for our friends. Lindsey spent alot of time cooking up a plethora of dishes. People started showing up around 7pm and the last people left after 5 am. I was pretty spent and slept until 3pm the next day. At my age, a night like that makes the next day (and sometimes the day after) a complete write-off.
It is really great that we have met some really wonderful people in the area. These people have embraced us and we wanted to show our appreciation. We also reached out to a few other people who we knew were around after exams. Rudy, his wife Colleen, and their 4 month old child, Alex, came out. Alex could only party until around 8:30pm, so he and Colleen left early. We also invited Faris out. Faris's wife was back home and he was left here all alone. It was great to get him out. This was their first real exposure of some of the poker "animals" and they held up alright, but we will expect more of them their next time out (including Alex).
The evening started out relaxed with a lot of conversation and eating. Next poker was rolled out and the real partying began decimating our liquor cabinet. After the first group left, some die-hards remained to play a third game. Then, Christine, a Poli-Sci Phd candidate, wandered into our apartment (we leave our door open to keep the apartment cool). She certainly livened up the room as we tried to get her to acknowledge her hidden attraction to our friend Jeff. I think we spent the next hour trying to convince her, through a series of strategic poker hands, to take Jeff out on a date. As you can see from the picture we had some minor success (go Jeff!).
I think any party that goes on to past 5am is a success. Lindsey deserves the bulk of the credit for pushing for it and doing all the work. A note to my other fellow students: we decided against a mass invitation because our apartment could not handle a mass amount of people. Just with the people that showed up 3 wine glasses were broken and two speakers were knocked over (one on poor Tammy's head [seen on right with Lindsey] as she was passed out on our couch - she didn't even budge). We always try to bring new people over to our place, just in controlled amounts (and this strategy gives Lindsey and I a better chance to get to know them). Anyways, you can see the rest of the pics here.