Ping Pong Parties

Ping Pong is kind of a big deal in our circle of friends. Special paddles, funny-looking serves; the husbands/fiances/boyfriends are really into it. Last year in early December when Jamie's parents came to town to celebrate an early Christmas, we decided to go buy a ping pong table. Unfortunately, we had no way of getting it home-- WAIT. Let me back track a little bit.

Months before that, we went to go buy a ping pong table. We stood in the ping pong table aisle, looking at the displays that involved just a piece of the table and a price tag with some specs. Jamie decided on the least expensive table. The salesboy assured us that it was fold-up-able for easy storage, and we were on our way. The box was thin and light enough, and we lived close enough that Jamie and his older brother Mike just balanced it on top of the car and held it in place as we drove home.

We get it home, tear it open and start assembly.

"We're missing a box or something," Jamie noticed, "I don't have the legs."

After calling the store to figure out why we don't have the legs for our table, I looked more closely at the papers in the box. The papers told me that we bought a table top ping pong table.

Frustrated that the store wouldn't use their delivery truck to come pick it up so we could return it, we Frankenboxed it back up and carefully drove it back to the store to return it.

Now we're back at early Christmastime. This table that we were buying had legs, so the box was considerably heavier. We were there this time with Jamie's younger brother Pat and his wife Sara. All four of us were trying to figure out the best way to get it home. The store's delivery service was an option, but it was going to cost way more money than it was worth. Then we considered running over to Home Depot to rent one of their $30 trucks, but for some reason that I don't remember, that was ruled out as well. Finally, Sara noticed the metal clothing rack that the store employees used to roll the box up to the front of the store and asked if we could use that.

The employee thought we meant to roll it out to the car and agreed, but after some clarification, he had to call up the manager so we could ask him. So Sara asks the manager if we can use their rack to roll the box all the way home (which isn't that far). He wasn't going to let us, but thanks to Sara not being shy, she talked him into it and left her drivers license as collateral. Finally, we were off! Sara and I drove as Jamie and Pat wheeled the table home.

Sara and I giggled so hard at watching them wheel it across a huge intersection.

It was a lot of fun watching them put it together.

Soon enough, we were finally playing ping pong! We'd have impromptu ping pong nights with friends or Jamie and I would just spend an evening playing ping pong and drinking beers by ourselves. During one of these nights that Jamie and I were by ourselves, he decided it'd be fun to turn on the college days black lights. Once they were dusted off and plugged in, we noticed something that turned on a thousand black lights in our heads: the orange ping pong balls glowed in the black light! COSMIC PING PONG.

A few weeks later, this dream came to fruition.

Signs by the door and our Cosmic Accessorization Station.

The Jello shots weren't superspectacular, but they glowed in the black light.

We got crazy with the face paint.

(garbage can)

(elliptical machine)

Most importantly, the ping pong!

We made it a tournament, which was a hit with all the dudes. It was easier to see than what shows in that last picture above, but it was still pretty trippy to get used to playing ping pong in the dark, especially since the orange ball left a light trail behind it. We outlined the table in glow tape, as well as the black folding chairs we had and anything else that we thought would be fun to glow tape... like people's legs and arms and shirts and heads. It was a fun-filled night of highlighters and face paint and it was a major hit. Immediately, we knew it had to be an annual thing.

This was back in April. Yes, I mentioned it back then, but I never really got around to blogging about it. That is, until now. Why did I think to blog about it now? Because I needed to let you know (in a really long-winded way) that we just couldn't wait until April for our next big ping pong extravaganza. Ellison Ping Pong Productions presents our next project: