Irony Free Since 2013

Once upon a time there was a group of friends, four couples, who formed a "supper club." We'd meet once a month for dinner, rotating hosting duties, each faction contributing a dish and/or cocktail according to the pre-determined themed menu. The food was always amazing, drinks flowed with happy ease, but in retrospect all that goodness was beside the point, because the reward was having some of the greatest times with some of the greatest people I've been lucky to know. Then life, as it happens, impelled half of the couples to move to other states. And over the course of five years seven new lives have come into the fray. I guess you could say Supper Club broke up, or at least reached an amicable separation agreement. But such a bond--cemented in the love of bacon, booze, fearless culinary experimentation and shameless enjoyment of hair metal--is not easily put asunder. We could not quit each other, and make a point to re-form as much as possible. Cut to: this past weekend.

Before Monday happened in all its terrible sadness, I got to spend a wonder of a couple of days with my old crew. It all started when the husband half of one of the couples, now Long Island denizens, got a wild hair to get us together in the Big City for an evening. We found a weekend that worked for most of us, then the Mr. realized, 1) he had yet to check in with his wife regarding this engagement and 2) her birthday was right around then. So it became a supersecret mission to slyly assemble in a restaurant where he would be taking her under the guise of a date night (surprise #1) followed by karaoke until the wee hours, then (surprise #2) caravaning to their abode the next morning for a full on supper club reunion. And it worked!

Thanks to a superior network of childcare helpers (thanks for the two-night sleepover, Grandma!), we were all able to not only make it happen, but happen in vintage SC style. We managed to shock the birthday girl and then go on to have a great time, partying like it was 2008. For someone who had no idea that all these people would be invading her house, she took it in remarkable stride. And then we had some great food, caught up with the hosts' two ridiculously cute girls (as well as the two girls belonging to the Vermont outpost, who made it for Saturday portion of the event), and acted like there wouldn't be a Sunday morning. Oh, but Sunday came, and we all paid handsomely, but it was worth it.

Anyway, thanks all for pulling it together and for being such quality human beings. Forgive me for being a bit mushier than I would have normally been, but it was a truly marvelous memory to take with me before everything went sorta kablooey in our world. Again, thankfully, none of us were physically affected by the Boston Marathon bombings, but in our own ways each of us (who all at one point did live here) picked up a new scar. All the more reason to make sure we see each other again soon.

And on and on and on and on.