Lovely lovely party
Mar. 14th, 2004 10:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatAh, last night was just lovely. One of the best birthday parties I've had, anxiety free, with lots of great booty.
My friend cjlasky picked me up last night to take me to my birthday celebration around 7:15.
Now, those who know me, know I get horribly stressed regarding logistics. I worry about how I get somewhere, and get home. Once I'm there, I'm fine. What I love about NYC is the subway system which most of the time is very reliable and gets you to just about anywhere in the city within 45 minutes. Except lately, on weekends, when each line has been undergoing massive construction. Some lines aren't running. Some on different tracks. Some only stop at certain stations not others. And this was one of those weekends - my train, the F line, wasn't stopping at my station. To get to the restaurant in Manhattan, I'd have to go backwards two stops into Brooklyn, then Express, then change to another train, and then find the restaurant somewhere in Chinatown. So before cjl appeared, I quickly went online and got a map of the area from mapquest, just in case he didn't know the area.
Welll...my lovely friends found a way around that little problem. When we left my apt. cjl started walking in the opposite direction from the train station. I stopped and called, "uhm, the train is that way.."
cjl:"I know, trust me.."
me:"but you're going in the opposite direction from the train.."
cjl:" Trust me..." he turns a corner before I can say anything else, so I follow, shrugging my shoulders in confusion.
And find him opening the door of a stretch limo. A long black stretch limosine. OMG. Okay, so we're taking a limo to the restaurant and meeting everyone there, I think to myself. I open the door...and inside is CW, Wales, Kid Bro, pumpkinpuss, all greeting me with happy birthdays. We're meeting anom and sdeve later at the restaurant. Apparently pumpkinpuss had won 6 hours of limo service at her office's holiday party and kindly decided to use it for my birthday. They'd brought two bottles of champagn, two bottles of sparkling cider, horse-radish cheddar cheese, crakers, maple-peanut butter waffle cookies, water and presents in a huge bag.
It took us about twenty minutes to mosey through Brooklyn and over the Manhattan Bridge to Manhattan. The view of the city at night from the Manhattan bridge through the windows of a limo is a lovely sight to behold. Also wandering through the crowded streets of Chinatown - feeling like royalty. Yep, I have to admit, I've never been in a stretch limo before. I've been in limos - to and from airports mostly, but never a stretch with a bar.
The restaurant was a nice family style three tier Chinese restaurant in Chinatown which was also very cheap. It's called the Sweet 'N Tart and had selections for vegetarians, etc. We basically ordered a range of dishes, some beer, tea, funky deserts like mango with snow-mushrooms, assorted ice cream with sago (huge pearl tapoica), lemon-ginger tea with sago (huge pearl tapoica), seaseme seed sludge. Then I opened my presents.
Which ...I'll keep to myself. ;-)
The party reminded me once again what's important in life - people. Our connections with one another. The rest? Is just gravy.
In other news - finished Disorderly Knights by Dorothy Dunnet - very interesting book. Discusses the pitfalls of using religion to excuse your actions. Although I think the villain in S3 Angel, Holtz may have been a little bit better written in complexity than Dunnett's religious villain. Not that the two are really that comparable.
Currently reading HARRY POTTER & THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX. Rowling really does remind me a bit of Ronald Dalh - a very light perky Dahl, but she has some of the same twinges of dark humor and snarkiness. Such as the town Harry's relatives living in being "Little Whinging" - hee! (Whinging means whining.) Sort of Ronald Dahl meets Frank L. Baum, I guess, with a twist of
SE Hinton. Really enjoying it. I've been grinning through the first few chapters. The lovely thing about historical novels (taking place in 16th century) and fantasy novels is that they are so distant from our world that I can fully escape into them. Novels that deal with issues that are literally close to my own as opposed to metaphorically, tend to depress me right now for some reason.
Oh for the musical aficionados out there - I now know who Tom Lehrer is - anom gave me a CD of his songs for my b-day.
Starting to get some good responses on my evil fanfic - thanks guys! You can find it in Friday's lj entry. Completely unbetaed - so it's bound to have mistakes. I'm working on Chapter's 3 and 4.
Been stuck on Chapter 3 for a while now. Chapter 3 is a hard one since it is in Buffy's pov and Buffy's character has confused me a bit since Grave. I personally find the main Scoobies the hardest to write - Buffy, Xander, Willow, and Giles - maybe because I'm trying to stick to canon and want to be sure to capture the essence of their voice and the audience reading the fic knows these characters so well. Hence all the nickname bits in the Xander part - Xander always seemed to be using people's nicknames or coming up with nicknames for people - which fits since his name is a nickname (Xander short for Alexander). Can't imagine Willow or Buffy really doing it though. Dawn maybe. Giles? Rarely.
My friend cjlasky picked me up last night to take me to my birthday celebration around 7:15.
Now, those who know me, know I get horribly stressed regarding logistics. I worry about how I get somewhere, and get home. Once I'm there, I'm fine. What I love about NYC is the subway system which most of the time is very reliable and gets you to just about anywhere in the city within 45 minutes. Except lately, on weekends, when each line has been undergoing massive construction. Some lines aren't running. Some on different tracks. Some only stop at certain stations not others. And this was one of those weekends - my train, the F line, wasn't stopping at my station. To get to the restaurant in Manhattan, I'd have to go backwards two stops into Brooklyn, then Express, then change to another train, and then find the restaurant somewhere in Chinatown. So before cjl appeared, I quickly went online and got a map of the area from mapquest, just in case he didn't know the area.
Welll...my lovely friends found a way around that little problem. When we left my apt. cjl started walking in the opposite direction from the train station. I stopped and called, "uhm, the train is that way.."
cjl:"I know, trust me.."
me:"but you're going in the opposite direction from the train.."
cjl:" Trust me..." he turns a corner before I can say anything else, so I follow, shrugging my shoulders in confusion.
And find him opening the door of a stretch limo. A long black stretch limosine. OMG. Okay, so we're taking a limo to the restaurant and meeting everyone there, I think to myself. I open the door...and inside is CW, Wales, Kid Bro, pumpkinpuss, all greeting me with happy birthdays. We're meeting anom and sdeve later at the restaurant. Apparently pumpkinpuss had won 6 hours of limo service at her office's holiday party and kindly decided to use it for my birthday. They'd brought two bottles of champagn, two bottles of sparkling cider, horse-radish cheddar cheese, crakers, maple-peanut butter waffle cookies, water and presents in a huge bag.
It took us about twenty minutes to mosey through Brooklyn and over the Manhattan Bridge to Manhattan. The view of the city at night from the Manhattan bridge through the windows of a limo is a lovely sight to behold. Also wandering through the crowded streets of Chinatown - feeling like royalty. Yep, I have to admit, I've never been in a stretch limo before. I've been in limos - to and from airports mostly, but never a stretch with a bar.
The restaurant was a nice family style three tier Chinese restaurant in Chinatown which was also very cheap. It's called the Sweet 'N Tart and had selections for vegetarians, etc. We basically ordered a range of dishes, some beer, tea, funky deserts like mango with snow-mushrooms, assorted ice cream with sago (huge pearl tapoica), lemon-ginger tea with sago (huge pearl tapoica), seaseme seed sludge. Then I opened my presents.
Which ...I'll keep to myself. ;-)
The party reminded me once again what's important in life - people. Our connections with one another. The rest? Is just gravy.
In other news - finished Disorderly Knights by Dorothy Dunnet - very interesting book. Discusses the pitfalls of using religion to excuse your actions. Although I think the villain in S3 Angel, Holtz may have been a little bit better written in complexity than Dunnett's religious villain. Not that the two are really that comparable.
Currently reading HARRY POTTER & THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX. Rowling really does remind me a bit of Ronald Dalh - a very light perky Dahl, but she has some of the same twinges of dark humor and snarkiness. Such as the town Harry's relatives living in being "Little Whinging" - hee! (Whinging means whining.) Sort of Ronald Dahl meets Frank L. Baum, I guess, with a twist of
SE Hinton. Really enjoying it. I've been grinning through the first few chapters. The lovely thing about historical novels (taking place in 16th century) and fantasy novels is that they are so distant from our world that I can fully escape into them. Novels that deal with issues that are literally close to my own as opposed to metaphorically, tend to depress me right now for some reason.
Oh for the musical aficionados out there - I now know who Tom Lehrer is - anom gave me a CD of his songs for my b-day.
Starting to get some good responses on my evil fanfic - thanks guys! You can find it in Friday's lj entry. Completely unbetaed - so it's bound to have mistakes. I'm working on Chapter's 3 and 4.
Been stuck on Chapter 3 for a while now. Chapter 3 is a hard one since it is in Buffy's pov and Buffy's character has confused me a bit since Grave. I personally find the main Scoobies the hardest to write - Buffy, Xander, Willow, and Giles - maybe because I'm trying to stick to canon and want to be sure to capture the essence of their voice and the audience reading the fic knows these characters so well. Hence all the nickname bits in the Xander part - Xander always seemed to be using people's nicknames or coming up with nicknames for people - which fits since his name is a nickname (Xander short for Alexander). Can't imagine Willow or Buffy really doing it though. Dawn maybe. Giles? Rarely.
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Thank you!
Date: 2004-03-16 09:28 am (UTC)appreciate the gesture!