The Official Unofficial Border Line Party

We did it.

After months of tedious, sometimes painful planning, largely done by Lisette, we threw the first-ever Border Line party yesterday. If you don’t know, Border Line is my personal forum, populated by my friends. It’s been around for three or four years, but we’ve never bothered to all get together, since we see each other every day or so anyway.

But it was a blast.

Something about seeing all the active members together in one place, talking and joking around and being friends with each other— in the real world— was just grand. There was just some inexplicable greatness to it.

Thank you, all of you who came. I, obviously, enjoyed it, and I hope you did too.

And, because I do these sort of things, a recap of the shenanigans:

At 1:30, I arrived, bearing a paper bag full of buttermilk biscuits, a backpack of Blank White Cards, and my family’s new, incredibly spiffy camera. We had a monstrous amount of food on the table. There was curry, potato salad, potato chips and lasagna; spaghetti, pita chips, hummus, my biscuits, and brownies, all sitting on the table.

After I very nearly selected a soda out of the boxes of room-temperature cans, someone kindly pointed out to me the cooler full of ice and soda. I grabbed a cold one. Filling my plate with food, I went to sit down, and watched folks play Soul Calibur. A lot of people used cheaty tactics— that is to say, picked the guy with the biggest sword and bashed away. There was also much button-mashing, which is really the only way to play a fighting game.

Soon we got bored, and a couple of folks wandered outside. They pulled a chunk of ice out of the dog’s water dish, and started playing ice soccer with it on the pavement.

I could already see how this was going to end.

We all realized that the party was starting to sag, so we all gathered around the general couch area and decided to “post”. Using our type-y fingers, we all “posted” in different “topics”.

“Shut up, Spencer.”

We sat there for a while. Some people got more food to chow down on (more food upon which to chow down— uhh, food down upon which to chow), and we bounced around, chatting about nothing in particular. I called Ian a Jew, and he got irked about it, even though he is one. Layla spilled her strawberry soda, which was the soda of the night, I might add, and we all scrambled to clean it up.

Then, struck by a flash of idea, we all decided to play a game. We wanted to play Blank White Cards, but I’d forgotten to cut cards before I left, so Nick distracted Matt with a game of Magic while I sliced index cards in half. Sette finally reappeared, after being gone for most of the party that she organized, and I got a Blank Whites game started. We were only a round into it when people realized it was time to leave.

So we packed up. Food was redistributed; rides were determined. We made sure there was no big trace of us left, then said our thank yous and our goodbyes and all went our separate ways.

Thus ended the first Unofficial Official Border Line Party.

Many thanks to:

• Sette, for planning the whole thing and pulling it together
• Matt and Michelle, for being taxi drivers
• Kathryn and her family, for lending us the use of their house
• Everyone who came— it was an absolute blast!