we had a great time out last night. first off, we went to a little early evening holiday party at my company’s VP’s house. it was funny how most people, rather than mingling, stood and talked to their immediate co-workers. me included, of course. i’m not that outgoing. i have to say that the mashed potato bar rocked. i’d never thought of serving mashed potatoes in martini glasses and letting people top them with things like pesto, mushrooms, cheese, sun dried tomatoes, etc. the VP’s house is quite nice. quite large. quite the cool wide-plank hardwood floors and all stainless viking appliances in the kitchen.
after an hour or so, doc and i, brittney, yvonne and nate, and ben and his wife chelsea went over to the cock and bull pub in lakewood for a drink. i had SO much fun!! chelsea and brittney are both like four feet something tall and veeeeery outgoing. like two peas in a pod. she might even be perkier than brittney. ben is my supervisor but he’s a lot of fun to hang out with socially. he and chelsea left after a while but the rest of us stayed for a couple of hours. i like that place. not terribly loud, not smoky enough to make me want to immediately leave, nice colors on the walls, small, not full of college frat boys, and good happy hour prices. doc said that the hamburger he ordered was the best he’s had in recent memory. then he and nate started talking about all the good burger places in town. we resolved to try keller’s, if only for the cheezy drive-in classic car factor. i can’t even remember what all we talked about but after a while i started to get a headache — i blamed it on the smoke but what i didn’t want to admit (for whatever reason) was that the headache was from laughing so hard and my face constantly having a smile plastered on it. it started to hurt after a while! how dumbass is that!!
doc’s two belhavens put him over the cluster edge; at the time he said it would be worth it to have a drink (24 hours later and the headache’s still going… now he’s rethinking the wisdom of that plan). we had talked about going back to yvonne and nate’s house to play board games and have more drinks and snacks, but we decided to go home instead. maybe next time.
i really like yvonne and nate, and i’m glad to be making new friends. not that there’s anything wrong with my old friends!! i don’t see them nearly enough, and i miss them. but as i said before, i’m not very outgoing and don’t make friends easily. i also tend to assume that all strangers are completely unlike me and are not the type of people that i would want to be friends with. until, of course, i meet someone under circumstances where i am able to slowly get to know them (like work, say) and my preconceived notions unravel. maybe it’s from living in texas which is full of right wing religious republican SUV-driving gay-hating yokels (ranging in looks from cowboy to highland park mom), and me being a left wing atheist/agnostic liberal tree-hugging gay-loving person, i tend to assume that there are very few people like me, and what are the odds that i’ll meet another one.
i oughta give strangers more credit, but somehow i just can’t. i guess it’s closed-minded of me to assume that. maybe i should work on it harder.
so today i tried to bust a move and get all my holiday shopping done. i nearly succeeded; i just need to get one more item from doc and i have to go to another location of the store i was at to find it. i spent about seven and a half hours shopping today. it was kind of a nightmare. i hate crowds, traffic, shopping, and people. i hate malls especially. do not, under any circumstances, go near town east mall this time of year. i held the door open for a woman who was exiting dillards, and got called a bitch for my trouble. i was going in the same door she was coming out of, and i stepped back and caught the edge of the door for her. did she think i was in her face or something? whatever. even though she was mean to me, i decided to be extra nice to other people while i was at the mall instead of taking it out by being rude to other people. building up extra karma points or something.
