Elvis in the House!

Yes, it's true, Elvis did perform in our basement. Well, not the Elvis since he's in Bermuda with Tupac and Biggie, but a very fine impersonator of The King. It was all a part of my mother-in-law's retirement party that we hosted at our place. She finally said goodbye to the working world to enjoy her time as she wants to, not putting in time at a job.

We wanted to throw a surprise party, but we all know how well surprise parties actually work, so instead we compromised and went with a pseudo-surprise party. It's too tough to keep something 100% secret and under wraps and if you plans go even slightly awry, it becomes obvious to the person attempting to be surprised that things are amiss. So, why hide the fact you're having a party? We simply told her that we were doing a family barbecue at our house to celebrate her moving on from the working world. However, she didn't know that extended family, co-workers, friends, and a myriad of other people would make an appearance to share in the celebration. That was definitely surprising and we were able to keep that from being let out of the bag before the party.

The other surprise, obviously, was the Elvis impersonator. My mother-in-law is one of Elvis's biggest fans, so it was a no-brainer for one of her friends to book a private performance for her. If you could only have seen the look on her face when, instead of looking at slides of her working years, "Also Sprach Zarathrustra" pumped through the speakers and Elvis made his way down the aisle of the makeshift theater area we set up in our basement.

As we celebrated, it was hard for me to really wrap my head around the concept of retiring. She had put in her 40+ years of time in the working world (41 of them at the same employer--a feat rarely seen anymore!) and could now look back on it and not have to continue punching a clock. As it is right now, I have at least 35 years to go before I can think about that (probably more the way the retirement age keeps getting pushed further and further back). I've been at my current employer for 5+ years and that feels like quite a while so it's hard to fathom repeating that tenure 7 times over in the next 35 years.

Anyways, it was a great party, everyone had a wonderful time, we all had too much food to eat (and I'm still stuffing myself with leftovers), my mother-in-law was overjoyed, and we finally got the extended family out to our new house. All-in-all I would have to say it was quite the success!