Tonight we had the main bash for graduate Matthew at the Albany Community Center. Thank God we got prepared food from 99 Ranch Market (3288 Pierce Street, Richmond). Matthew made some great selections, and a number of our Asian guests were pleasantly surprised to see fried belt fish and curry fish balls on the buffet, though I can’t say the same for the our non-Asians. Everything worked without a hitch as we had choreographed things well in advance and also had an extra set of hands in the form of one Uncle Bill. We needed to decorate quickly due to the cutthroat policies employed by the City of Albany when renting out facilities. We had to go get the food at 99 Ranch and the coffee at Peet’s. The cake and sound system — a set of powered speakers and our IPods — were schlepped over in our initial trip, so I set that up ASAP while my mom handled the decorations, tablecloths and chip and dip setup, and Steve went to BevMo to get ice for a massive soda operation. Soda had been delivered to the house by Safeway and stored in the garage for the past week. There was also the matter of those damned chafing dishes and pans of water. The only thing that I could honestly say was crap — other than the soda and some of the chip-like substances — was the cake. It was a big cake from Costco with lots of trans fat frosting. If there was any butter in that cake at all I wouldn’t know because I fell asleep reading the list of ingredients before I ever got to it. Matt and his friends had a great time, which was the whole point of the affair, and we all keeled over at about midnight.
