Best. Party. Ever.

1. Ballet dancers
2. Modern Dancers
3. Hot Buttered Rum
4. Bubbly drinks!
5. 3 kinds of soup
6. Fried norweigan cookies
7. HATS!!
8. Mistletoe. eh. that wasn't a big hit.
9. Dance Off
9a bedroom yoga
10. Childhood christmas stories over smokes & joints
11. Big Band Winter Wonderland & internet powered singalong
11a Chopin
12. Eggs, sausage, toast & coffee. 1 breakfast bun & 1 chocolate croissant.

thanks to all of us for putting it together, for lighting 10000 candles and for self-selection making those of us who were still in town in just the right frame of mind for a beautiful holiday blowout.

top 5 for the weekend

besides *everyone* being cool and beautiful and a little weird, here are my Top 5 Reasons I'll Never Stray Again, SF (bay area):

1) Casual Carpool- show up at a street corner, get in a stranger's car, drive with them downtown. Listen to NPR (thanks, Maggie), watch the sun over the Bay, watch the parade as everyone gets out of the strangers' cars at the appointed spot downtown.

2) Seeing the same dude (Lem?) 3 times in 5 days: on BARt, on Bart again, but going the other direction and far away, and walking by the Safeway. Knowing I'll meet him eventually.

3) Leaving the kitchen door open most of the afternoon. No bugs, just fresh good-smelling air.

4) Motorcycle ride across the bay (i'm crossing it a lot lately). VROOOOM!!!

5) All of the food is good. ALL of it.

6) Stumbling across an amazing farmers' market in the DMV parking lot. The egg seller is a hip skater kid from Santa Cruz.

7) Great haircut!

Who can stop at 5? This place is magic.

celebrity

Bay Area style:

Celebrity internet-LIST-er Craig Newmark just asked me "where's recycling?"

He came to me because earlier I told him I didn't know where the cookies were. That's how the magic happens, baby!

casual

i turned 30 yesterday. i ate crazy butoh sushi, drank sake and banged on blocks. then i got lots and lots of hugs and got stuck on the bridge! then a traffic fairy (disguised as an oakland man) showed us the secret way on to the bridge, and i cuddled up in my room wiht trees outside.

today i took the casual carpool to work! I'm temping. it's like I'm 22, but I'm not afraid to wear jeans. There's free organic yogurt. whee!!!

don't vote

For the first election since I was 18, I'm not voting.

I'm keeping it secret to the people in the office. I'm usually the Get out the vote cheerleader, so it's interesting to take an election off. I'm not going to be here to see what I vote for enacted, anyway. But most of all, I'm sick of losing.

I'm sick of feeling so high and empowered and civic-ly engaged when I leave the polls, only to feel just as alienated and unheard as ever when I watch the results come in. So I'm taking a breather. Just one more instance of the 9-month "vacation" I've prescribed myself!

(PS today's title comes from one of the tv commercials I sent out in my capacity as 'ad world monkey.' it's supposed to encourage you to educate yourself before you vote. oh, advertising.)

i'm not doing very well at my job today

that's all. i guess it's evidenced by the new work on the blog.

more later. i have stories to tell!

Halloween report- delayed by events

Last weekend, Halloween weekend, i went to a party in "the woods." My roommate (Jordan, one of the good ones in my life's long long list of housemates) calls it "the brush country", which is more apt.

We went as a mosquito (bug eyes, brown paper proboscis, striped sweater & brown leather pants) and a Rollergirl (hot pant denim jumpsuit, chest tattoo, pigtails, knee & thigh highs, two black eyes & assorted protective gear), and found the weirdest group yet. Our friends were Medusa and Mario (of Mario brothers), the hostess was a butcher, and the crowd was uncomfortably eclectic:

Thugs- real ones, in jerseys and big pants, and rolling blunts, ogling women but not interested in conversation with them

"White people"- not a costume either, these folks looked like cookie cutter campus greeks if they were from a wholesome, small town in Iowa where people went on dates to hold hands and talk about the corn harvest. They were slightly more conversational, but seemed to be worried that the skank of my Rollergirl might wash off on them. Next!

Panchita & Vaquero- most offensive costume I've seen yet, this woman had stuffed a strapless pink dress with gobs of padding, her husband sported the cowboy belt, hat & boots, they raised their tiny white picket fence & shouted "no fence!" whoa.

Middle Aged Ranch Dudes- these guys, again, dressed as themselves. WTF? It was a Halloween bonfire & hayride!! Come on people. They didn't want to talk much because they were listening to the UT game on the radio- super party faux pas, imho.

I'm not sure which one was dressed as the Chainsaw Massacre-r, but I guess he was one of the cool kids, having bothered to outfit himself. This guy put his chainsaw to use cutting down any trees that verged too close to the gigantic fire. That's right. They built a fire close to some trees, then chopped down the trees and burned them. No mojito could fix this party.

We went home, wishing for an indie rock dance party. We got pulled over, and thankfully the cop asked aobut my beaten face. He let us go with a "fix your headlight." and on!