I'm pretty proud of the meteorological scoop documented in my last blog post. Although it was chilly today in San Francisco, it most assuredly did not snow.

What, however, would be a good activity to do on a wet and cold day in SF? That had already been dictacted by a conversation I had with my darling six year-old daughter earlier that week.

"Dada, Mom and I have a question for you..." she began

"No!"

"Daaaaadaaaaaaa!"

"Now what?"

"Can we have a dessert party on Saturday night, with ice cream?"

"You know that it's winter, right? The middle of winter?"

"Yes."

"And so you've decided that the correct course of action is to invite people over for ice cream? Because people want to be cold on the inside as well as the outside?"

"Yes."

I checked the date on my calendar and performed a few quick calculations. Blast! I only allow myself to be a cranky bastard 364 days out of the year and Daisy had caught me on the ONE day when I felt the need to be agreeable.

"Bah! Grrrr! Brrrr! Why on earth? Ice cream?!? I mean, of all the reasons to have a party! What is the matter with you people? Gah!...........ok."

"Yay!"

So, Daisy and Hank skipped around to all our neighbors' houses and invited them over for a 7:00pm Saturday night ice cream party. Logistically this ended up working well because another neighbor was hoping to host people at their house at 8:00pm to show off their honeymoon photos and videos. This meant I would only be forced to share my house for about an hour. I am fully capable of creating a grinlike expression on my face for an hour.

Thematically, the whole evening hung together because the neighbors' honeymoon photos were from Antarctica.

Yes, that Antarctica. I know, I think it's weird too. As near as I can guess, their short list of resort destinations must have included:

- Antarctica
- Inside an active volcano
- The Mariana Trench
- Center of the Earth
- Iraq

I'm hard pressed to come up with any other list of vacation options where Antarctica is the most romantic honeymoon choice.

Anyway, the ice cream party went well. We had nearly 10 different flavors of ice cream, 4 sauces, 4 kinds of sprinkles, and whipped cream. Neighborhood kids shrieked and hurled themselves into furniture, fueled by sugar highs and whipped cream propellant. Grownups gathered around the homemade hot chocolate, pouring in ever greater amounts of Peppermint Schnapps. Or maybe that was just me. My grinlike expression was Schnapps-fueled.

After our kitchen was coated in 15 different kinds of sticky, we all moved two doors down for the Antarctica show. The pictures were pretty interesting. Glaciers, as it turns out, are more colorful than you'd think. And all the islands around Antarctica are teeming with penguins, just like in that damn documentary. They march, and regurgitate fish, and stand around for months at a time.

It seemed like a pretty good trip, but I think I'll still save my vacation dollars for the other 6 continents/core-of-the-earth. I should also budget some money for a nice hot-soup party this summer.