December 4

December 3rd's entry was delayed due to going straight to Adam's house after work for our annual book club holiday party. It was lightly attended this year, but the holiday salad was roundly praised, and they ate it all the way down to the bottom of the cheap foil pan I brought it in. Warms the cockles of my heart, that does.

holiday salad in the top left!

Joel, Adam's partner, makes wonderful mai tais, which I only have at this party. I don't drink a lot of rum, but these drinks are SO GOOD. And so was the company, so I always have a great time. Spanky never wants to go, so I'm flying solo most years. Luckily, a few months ago, I talked my coworker John into joining the group, so we went over together. Beats the lonely trek to 69th street by myself!



The book group is called The Gay and Lesbian Reading Group, and it meets once a month, on the second Thursday of the month at the GLBT Center in NYC. Each month, we read a book written by a gay or lesbian author or featuring a gay or lesbian character. One month it is a male author, one month a female. This month, we're reading The Bishop's Daughter by Honor Moore, and it is surprisingly engaging. I really don't care for memoirs, as I'm sure I have mentioned here before, but this one is written poetically, and the story is as much about her parents as it is about herself. The story is about Paul Moore, an Episcopal priest who was secretly gay, yet was married with nine children, and about his oldest daughter, Honor, who is also gay. And that brings me to the other big difference in this book from other memoirs I've read. Honor doesn't seem to be whining about how hard or terrible her life was. She's just trying to tell things the way she remembers and she seems like she's done a lot of research into her family's history, to make sure she's written it correctly. However, I'm only about 1/3 of the way through so far, so who knows whether I'll finish before the group meets next week.

Constance and Beverly have been together 25 years! So precious.

ANYWAY, after three mai tais, it was time to do the champagne toast and go home. I left with Julio, and we talked about Brooklyn on the way to the train. My mother grew up in Park Slope, on Prospect Avenue, between 6th and 7th Avenues, and Julio apparently did too. They went to the same grade school (PS 146) about the same time, and probably knew the same people. And GET THIS. When I was out in Denver, I met a man named Tom McInerney, and we got to talking about Park Slope, and I had the same damn conversations with him about where my mom grew up, so I mentioned this to Julio, and Julio KNEW HIM. What a small world! Crazy, right?

Julio is on the right.

And then I thought I would come home and update the blog with the pictures of the party, but I just crashed instead, and then was late to work, and spent the morning cradling my head in my hands. Kids, once you leave 35 in the dust, it ain't so easy to recover from a MILD night out, let alone partying all night long. Christ.

I yelled at my assistant, couldn't figure out how to do simple procedures, and was just generally in a really dumb-ass state for most of the day. Don't you hate days like that? Fricking useless. I wanted to call in sick, but I have so. much. work. Also, HR posted the ad for my assistant's job this morning, and by the time it was about 4:30, we had 140 resumes. OMG. Seriously. For a temporary-to-permanent job. I took a few home with me to read, and it's been entertaining, but also making me remember how traumatic this was the last time I went through this. Matthew was my third assistant, and now I'm on my fourth. Sigh.

Last but not least, still not done with the blanket. There's been hardly any time to knit, what with the hangover and the dumb-assery. Tomorrow, folks, we'll be finishing it up, weaving in ends, blocking the fuck out of it, and making chocolate peanut butter cookies for the next holiday party I'm attending--the knitting group's!