Life: Idiotropic

Since Storm Kyrill sadly cancelled our International Women's Club USA 50's Night last Thursday, we quickly rescheduled for the only date this week that was available - Wednesday. I got the word out quickly and made sure all our volunteers could be there and our party was on!

Photo: My team! I'm the one in the middle with the pink glasses! Tiara wasn't there for the photo, but she was a great help too!

The decorations were amazing! Dani bought old 45 records and painted the centers light pink, then hung them from the ceiling. She also hand painted a doorway and hung a retro screen for people to walk through. One of our members brought old photographs from her dad's high school years and old high school letters to put up. Twisted pink and black streamers lined the dance floor and went up from the center of the tables to the ceiling.

Andrea's husband used to be a DJ, so he put together an amazing collection of music from the 50's, brought his own stereo equipment and set up the entire sound system complete with Grease playing on the screen in the background muted.

We found retro candy online and had Beeman's gum, Bit-o Honeys, candy cigarettes, tootsie rolls, and a ton of other candies on the tables along with a song list from our DJ, a Diner Menu card, and a Good Housekeeping article from 1955 on how to be a good wife.

Kim Rex was supposed to sing the National Anthem acapella last Thursday, but didn't think she'd still be here. She had tickets to fly back to the US today. And then her son's passport got lost, so she was able to come and sing for us. The Anthem was beautiful. Some of the ladies there had never heard our National Anthem sung. One woman told me she thought it was just music and had never heard the words.

A very nice group of American ladies did all the serving. We brought out pickles in bowls, then trays of lettuce and cheese to the tables. Each tables had a bottle of ketsup and mustard just like a restaurant would. Then we brought plates with burgers and onion rings. When everyone was served, I explained what a root beer float is and Kim did a demo so that we didn't have root beer all over the tables. Then ladies came out with a bottle of root beer for each person and glasses of ice cream.

Jeff played music during dinner. At 8, we had the hula-hoop contest - something that I'd previously thought would go quickly, but there were some VERY good hula-hoopers in our group and it wasn't until I made them hula two hoops at a time that we finally got a winner. Then Kim Lynch and her daughter got up and taught us all the Stroll and the Hand Jive and we all danced for a while.

All in all the night was a success with a lot of great feedback. The only glitch (and quite a big one) was that the club inadequately cooked some of the burgers. We were able to get those quickly switched out thanks to my great help and the club manager was alerted to an unknown end as of this posting.

1. Put one scoop of vanilla ice cream in a tall glass
2. Slowly pour root beer over the ice cream until the glass is full
3. Enjoy with a straw or a spoon