1998

Best Picture: titanic

Our first Oscar Party in our new home...finally, plenty of room for people to sit comfortably! People who had never been to the house prior to this have a little difficulty finding it (a problem that still persists to this day), but eventually everyone finds their way there. Another change for our guests is an addition to our family: our Golden Retriever puppy Fly, who was five months old at the time. Fly is confined to the kitchen with gates for this particular party, but starting the following year he gets the run of the house, and over the course of the next nine parties he'll set the tone of the evening by stealing people's food, humping their legs, and generally harrassing the guests. He does win beaucoup points for cuteness, though.

Otherwise the evening runs generally as it has since the first party; Gwen is now serving a full-blown dinner, though, as opposed to just snacks, in spite of the lateness of the starting hour. The big technological breakthrough this year is that I'm now tallying the scores all night long on a dry-erase board instead of a blackboard (woo hoo!) And we add a new innovation with the awarding of the first Oscar Gift Basket at the evening's end (twelve little chocolate "Oscars", which go to Kim Garrison).

One big change as far as the printed invitation goes is the addition of color, which begins a snowballing effect of the invites getting more and more costly to produce as the years go on. All in a good cause, though...