Well, the gathering at Carolina & Janos's has been upgraded to a small party. In addtion to Carolina, Janos, baby Roland and myself, there will be Woods & Wendy and Gab & Ponch. I don't feel quite so pathetic now.

I guess I should be thinking up some goals for 2004. I didn't really have any for 2003 and look what happened...

You know you've been watching too much reality TV when you have a dream about Jessica Simpson and a friend trying to bake a cake. While stacking the layers of the cake, Jessica turns to her friend and says, "is this a cake?"

Sheesh!

UGH. Stinky Curry Girl is at it again! I think I may barf.

Am I the only one who gets stressed out about New Year's Eve? That frantic feeling that you must do something auspicious? This is what seems to happen every year: everyone will be going along, Christmas/Holiday parties planned well in advance, lots of talk about who goes where for Christmas itself, etc. And then all of a sudden two days before New Years, one or two people start to frantically try to put a party together. It's like we all woke up from our Christmas stupor only to discover (horror of horrors) that [GASP] "We don't have plans for NEW YEARS!!!" So there will then be a flurry of emails, phone calls, voice mails, etc. "What are you going to do?" "I don't know, what are you going to do???" "I think D is having a party, are you going to go to that?" "I don't know, who's going to be there???" During which I will surely at one point just sit back and realize that all I really want to do is relax at home with Lola, some beer and some movies. But will I feel like crap later for not having gone to a party or something? Or I could do the Midnight Run in Central Park. It'll be relatively mild this year and I can bring Lola. But without fail, every year I go through this same thing. Every. Damn. Year.

Have I mentioned that I really hate it when people bring their kids to work? First of all, it takes a whole lot of arrogance to assume that nobody else has any work to do, just because it is a "play day" for you. But secondly, I invariably end up in the position of having to make goo-goo eyes at some kid I have no connection to, whose parent I am just acquainted to because our desks happen to be in some relative proximity. Or the alternative is to sit at my desk and continue to work, ignoring the squealing spawn & adults outside my cube walls, in which case I come across as the crabby crab of the year. Guess which option I chose today?

UGH. It's only a little after 10 AND I got here late this morning. This is going to be one loooooooong day. Somebody just shoot me right now.

There's at least one really good thing about having to work during a holiday week, when so many others seem to be off: The trains sure are a lot emptier in comparison. Nice to have a relatively stress-free commute for a change.

So, on Christmas Eve I watched "It's a Wonderful Life" for about the bazillionth time. To me, the movie is so over-acted and melodramatic, but it still manages to make me cry like a complete idiot. Anyway, I was watching the climatic scene where he is running around town realizing how horribly off all his friends and family would have been, had he not been born. And it gets to the part where the angel has to tell him what has happened to his wife. George Bailey keeps insisting that he be told, Clarence (the angel) doesn't want to. Finally he exclaims, "You're not going to like it!" and then goes on to say in a very grave voice, "she's an old maid, she never got married." And I really had to laugh at this point, because the inference was that this was the absolutely worst thing, the pinnacle of bad things that happened to everybody. Worse than his brother dying at age nine. Worse than his uncle in an insane asylum. Worse even than a whole shipload of soldiers dying in the War because his brother wasn't there to save the transport. The worst thing by far was to be an unmarried woman. Oh yeah, and one other thing. For some reason, by not ever having married George (or perhaps any other man) Mary also required the use of glasses.

Christmas at my father's turned out to be relatively uneventful, if somewhat boring. Although watching my father and his new wife hanging on each other from time to time, was disturbing. Her daughter from Kansas is also there for the week and luckily I get along quite well with her. And my brother was there as well, and so it was also nice to see him, particularly since I haven't seen him in a couple of years and communicating with him is not easy. Basically, I will email or call, but he never returns my messages or posts. If I do (by some miracle) happen to catch him on the phone, his responses to me are always grunts or non-committal, ambiguous one-syllable words. So I gave up trying to keep in touch with him years ago. He's much better in person. Anyway, I stayed overnight on the pull-out couch, but was happy to come home this morning as I didn't sleep more than a couple of hours there, as usual. Even Lola was restless all night long. Anyway, another Christmas overwith. Don't have to stress again until next year.

Happy Holidays to all.

Actually kind of glad I didn't end up going out to Jersey tonight. I'm kind of enjoying relaxing here with Lola. Plus, I get out of having to go to Midnight Mass to watch Lori (my father's wife) sing.

Scary: Just spoke with my father to arrange what time and where he will be picking me up tomorrow. After we've figured all of that out, I ask him what car he'll be driving (so that I know what I'm looking for). And he says, "well, we'll either be in 'ZoomZoom' or 'Bluey'". ???!!! I said, "let me get this straight, you've named your cars???" Well apparently so. I may just lose my lunch.

Decision made. Lares swung by and invited me to go to lunch. Since we rarely do that anymore, and he is moving to upstate in another month and we won't have too many chances to again, I decided to go. So a couple of beers and a burger later, we were ready to call for the check, when this other guy who works for our company sent over another round of beers -- ACK! HAPPY HOLIDAYS! Needless-to-say I don't think I'm going out to Jersey today. Still have to figure out what to do about my shower though.

Oh, and the other thing is, even though the rest of the company appears to be more or less gone, everyone in this department is still more or less here. So, it's not like I could have told my father that I would be out of here by 3:00 or whatever. Bastards.

Well now, Christmas. I am in a real quandary about what to do. I'm somehow supposed to go out to my father's house in North Jersey. He generously has offered to pick me up in Manhattan (he draws the line there, getting out to Queens is completely ridiculous) since I'll be carrying a 25+ lb pug in a bag. I debated about bringing her to work with me today, but I sit in a cubicle and I didn't really know what the atmosphere was going to be around here, but now that I'm here, I see that it's pretty quiet. Could probably have gotten away with bringing her. I was also running around this morning dealing with the shower disaster and generally just freaking out, so I just. couldn't. deal. Now that I'm here, I wish I had brought her though. So now my options are to: A) somehow do a round-tripper home on a (long) lunch hour to pick her up and bring her back. B) once I leave for the day, go home and come back into Manhattan. Or, C) take the train in with her tomorrow. And I just can't decide what to do. Any thoughts?

I did the dumbest thing this morning. Was finished with my shower, had just brushed my teeth, etc. when I reached into the shower to twist the faucet tighter since the water was still dripping (it is always dripping). Well, I completely snapped off the faucet. Broke clean through. On Christmas Eve, no less. I am a moron. Now I don't know what I'm going to do.

Since today is the 21st -- is it the equinox or Winter solstice or whatever? Does that mean the days will start getting longer again? Finally?

Christmas party last night at Gabrielle & Ponch's. At first I was pretty taken aback when we arrived and found a roomful of kids. Michelle and I (the only single people at the party, I might add) at one point just turned to each other in horror when more people arrived with yet more kids. The situation just called for drinking wine, and lots of it. It ended up being fun though, got to see some people I hadn't seen in a loooooong time. Like years & years & years. Most notably Mica & Cindy -- Mica used to have a duplex apartment in Chelsea with a couple of guys and they used to throw the best parties! I forged many of my current friendships at some of those parties. As a matter of fact, I remember at one of their New Year's Eve parties my current boss (who was just a distant friend at the time -- we didn't work together until years later) drank so much that he ended up rolphing into one of those plastic, New Year's top hats. I still think of that now, whenever he pisses me off, or if I feel intimidated. I'm so evil (heh).

So funny. I just ran into the UPS guy when I was coming in with Lola. He had a whole handcart full of boxes. He looks at me and says, "Sullivan, right?" I replied, "Yes, how did you know???" and he says, "I just know." So strange.

Oh, one thing I forgot to mention about the Queer Eye video thing from the other night. They filmed part of it in "The Fez" (nightclub associated with Time Cafe ). I can't tell you how many Friday nights I've spent in that place (the one in the video on Lafayette, not the one on the Upper Westside) drinking (what Bridget Jones, or some other heroine from some novel I've read, would call) "complicated cocktails". Of course this was all a few or more years ago before all of my friends started having babies and we all got so dull and old and boring.