The old folks do the city

It's a Saturday night. I'm home at 10:20, in my pajamas, face washed, glasses on, in front of the computer screen (which is where you can find me prior to putting myself to bed).

Friday, E & I drove back up to the city and checked into this weekend's hotel for our 4th trip to the city (granted some weren't overnight) in 6 weeks. The occasion this time? We were invited to go out out for beef in Union Square with one of my old companies for their holiday party. Of course we went! While we were enjoying dinner, one of the attendees was drunk enough to walk up to another patron at the restaurant and confirm that he was, in fact, Andrew Firestone. Always makes you feel good to be enjoying a meal in the same location as someone you know people want to emulate, but this time was nowhere near as cool as the time we were with the same crew at the same location and saw Richard Kiel (aka "Jaws" from Moonraker and The Spy Who Loved Me).

That party went on 'til 1 AM and ended in that incoherent searching for a cab, or something to do, or somewhere to go state where the entire group is looking for momentum but can't really find it and no one is quite ballsy enough to say, "uhhh...guys, looks like the night is over." Eventually, the group meandered to within walking distance of our hotel, so E and I walked to our hotel and closed down the bar with one last drink. Yeah... I had a headache this morning. I wish I could say it was because we went out like punks. But really, it was fairly mellow as far as holiday parties go. I'm just getting older.

Despite the headache, today was a productive day. We started with a delicious brunch with a friend at the least climate-controlled cafe in SOMA. From there, we did Christmas shopping and are now completely DONE! We also fit in tea tasting and purchasing: thanks to E2's gifts from china, our black, oolong, and green tea selection is fine. But we were short on herbal teas, and we are now the proud owners of violet, chrysanthemum, rose blend, and camomile herbal teas.

In a serious lapse of judgment, we'd promised to show up at tonight's holiday party with 24 cream puffs from beard papa. This required braving the traffic and people involved in the holiday shopping madness. We barely survived, but we did. We recovered with a beer and some chips at taqueria cancun. From there, we hit the holiday party and ate ourselves silly. 4 hours after arriving, we found ourselves leaving with white elephant gifts of roughly the same (okay, we got one of our own back) quality as the ones we left (read: amusing crap from Clement Street).

Tonight's holiday party was great. But we were out of there by 9 PM. (and exhausted to boot). Yeah, the next time one of the first years tries to tell me there's no difference between being a young 1st year associate and an older one, I think I'm going to puke.

That is all.