this was my second monthly dinner with andrew's family (the first one was on 030622). there were some new faces, andrew's brother todd (whom i haven't seen in a few years), todd's wife and daughter, and a cuban named juan. judy (andrew's mother) was there, and of course david, along with the his handful of tenants, santa dave (with lady friend susan), stuart scott lookalike dave (back from the philippines), and julie. dinner was served out in the backyard, a big red weber grill cooking a pair of large lamb chops over fragrant smelling wood brickets (the grill changed to a maroon color once the grill heated up). the appetizer was these portabello mushrooms covered with some sort of stuffing, and besides the lamb chops, we also had some stuff shells, some cheese covered broccoli, and salad with croutons sprinkled with a balsamic vinegarette. the usual round of pre-dinner introduction was postponed until after dinner. the most interesting one was juan ("doctor" juan, because of his international relationship PhD), who lives in germany with his partner and works in bosnia as a mediation facilitator. stuart scott dave almost started another heated debate when he threw out the idea of what people would do if they knew they only had a year to live*. fortunately, dan (the downstairs neighbor), the argumentative spark plug from the last dinner, was absent today, stopping by only briefly to say hi (hipster alert: chunky plastic-frame glasses, pabst blue-ribbon t-shirt, old-school vans?, and over 30 as well (grandpa)).
meghan and julie had upset an ant hill which caused a swarming of angry ants that they were able to ignore by not resting their feet on the ground. as it got closer to dusk, the mosquitoes started to come out. i was pretty much free of bites, but i noticed some other people weren't as fortunate (probably they're sweeter to the mosquitoes than me). in the sky, i heard squeaking and what appeared to be bats flying overhead catching insects. juan took some digital photos with his nikon 2500 (the purple lozenge shaped swivel nikon). we decided to move the dinner back inside for dessert. juan had made a flan, and there was also ice cream. he was incensed that some people ate his flan with an ice cream topping ("you can eat ice cream with flan, not on flan"). greedy andrew asked for a bigger slice of flan, leaving me with the smaller slice. around this time meghan busted out her digital camera as well, grabbing some snapshots for her own weblog. after dessert, santa dave brought out his guitar and played a pair of holistic folk songs.
we left around 10pm, andrew driving us back in maura's car (his car is in the shop), maura driving back home once we got back to our place. andrew and i finished off the evening watching the new nbc series "the restaurant" followed by the movie taxi driver while eating out a bag of cape cod potato chips.
* what would you do if you only had a year to live?