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2002-01-01 / 3:51 p.m. ~How I Spent New Year's Eve 2001~ The bad: The drunk woman leaning out of the SUV with Michigan plates, shouting "Happy Fucking New Year!!" at approximately 8:30 p.m. A fluffy black and white cat appearing in the glow of my headlights, running across the street in front of me, tail between her legs, cold, scared, stopping to look at me, and me wanting to take her home, cuddle her under the covers the way I do Gladys. Cold, 20something degrees, 4:00 in the morning. The man stumbling along the sidewalk, uphill, and when he goes to cross the street in front of me, stopped at the light, I see in the headlights his pants, and he has pissed himself. I want to give him money, shelter, a blanket, some of my leftover goulash from the party. I drive home, and at 4:00 in the morning, New Year's Day, there is traffic. The good: Everything else. I'm heating some leftover goulash in the microwave. I woke up around 10:30 or 10:45, unable to sleep any longer. Dreams, yes, of course, but now I don't remember them. Gladys was comfortable, but I wanted to get up, have coffee, eat, have a day, make sure I'm tired tonight so I can sleep, get up and go to work tomorrow, and tomorrow night....a snowstorm? We'll see. It's mostly sausage and potatoes, and spices, I'm still heating it, took it out to stir, this goulash, and last night I didn't even taste it. There was so much else to eat. I went out to Tarzhay (Target) last night to get champagne glasses for Anna and Guenter, having never heard back from Anna, via email, and I bought other items, impulsively, spending some $110, or charging it, to my Target Visa. Yeah, a Target Visa. I'll pay for it later....oh, will I pay for it later! Nah, just kidding. I bought a nice purple angora hat. Bunny fur. Did bunnies have to die to make it? Oh no, was that wrong? Well, it's a mix of fibers, and it's soft and WARM, and nice. And some Hello Kitty gloves, because they were with the Clearance stuff, like the hat, but they weren't marked down like everything else and the cashier was tired and didn't give a fuck, wouldn't give me a break....and I bought them anyway, un-clearanced. And clothes I didn't bother to try on, but things I wanted/needed. An acrylic sweater, so soft, stripey, I wore it to the party, and a couple pairs of flannel lounging pants, one is purple with chicks hatching from eggs all over them...cute...the other is a "purple heather" plaid. Nice, cozy, warm. And a pair of PJs with cool cats on them. And.....a Spandex-y club kind of shirt, tight, black with a Tiger design on the front, some old advertising logo....hard to describe, very cool, I was going to wear it to the party, but had a bit of a fever, was feeling crappy, felt I looked really tired, worn, feverish and crappy, so I didn't want to draw that kind of attention to me. Later. It wasn't expensive. None of it was, not separately. Just together, it all added up. (Mmmmm...goulash is good....sausage-y!) So, I got the last plain champagne flutes they had, at Tarzhay, and people were sort of clamoring for them all last minute-like. I held on to mine as I looked. And I bought them. Never got email from Anna, called Guenter to make sure it was cool to bring my 'puter, and I tried on clothes, all at home. I changed clothes a few times, wore my new sweater and jeans, polished a nice earrings/necklace set I got for Christmas a few years ago, amethyst, silver and pearls, and put that on, bucked up for the cold, ignoring my little fever, put on lots of outer wear, coat, scarf, hat, gloves, and loaded glasses, 'puter and champagne into the car and headed to the party. It was supposed to be the local Action Center chapter party, and a housewarming for Anna and Guenter, but only a few people showed up. Guenter made a valiant and noble effort to upgrade my 'puter, but I don't have a slot for an internal modem....so the 56K did not get installed. We (he) put in the memory modules Computer Dude at work gave me, and now that I'm using it, the 'puter, again, I see they must've been the same size, 'cause it's still 16MB memory. Oh well. It was fun though, watching him be all manly and computery. I like Guenter, he's very cool. There was a table filled with Middle Eastern food, hummus, stuffed grape leaves, felafel, tzatziki (how do you spell it?) sauce, feta and tomates with olive oil and herbs, hardboiled eggs, not deviled, just sliced, with peppers and tomates, olive oil drizzled over.....earthy bread, big hunks of it, olives, and a bundt cake with chocolate at the bottom, chocolate eggs, goodies from Vienna. We drank Mimosas, then straight champagne, Adam played bluegrass on his guitar and banjo, and sang. We got him to tell stories, like on VH-1's "Storytellers" series. We learned the banjo came from Africa, and we discussed the origins of potatoes, I'm not sure why. There were lit candles in the non-working fireplace, and every time I stood in front of it I felt like I was in front of a roaring fire. It was cozy and warm inside. Very cold outside. Outside on the porch were colored lights and balloons, a fantastic array of really good beers by the six-pack, bottles, a bucket with ice, spring water, several bottles of champagne, all Korbel, and a group of six or so people arrived all at once, bringing more champagne, and they stood and smoked, laughed, the girls ran their fingers through their hair, sucked on their cigarettes, and they never took off their coats. They left after a short while, and we were a core group of revelers, 7 of us. One of the 7 grew tired, she must have worked all day, and she works with alcoholics, she said, and so she doesn't drink....like this is what happens when one works with alcoholics, I don't know. She and her husband, a big time protester, left. The remaining leftist radicals sat and drank, made music, and at midnight danced to the Blue Danube Waltz. A tradition in Vienna. Guenter and Anna taught us the "left" dance, and when Guenter showed me the "right" one, well, it was complicated, the left much easier....left foot back, right joins it...two three, right foot forward, left joins it, two three. One, two, three, one, two, three, and Anna was spinning me all over the room, the sudden ballroom created after Guenter pushed everything aside. The lights down low, the candles in the fireplace, Adam refusing to join, a "moral compunction" against dancing (and NO, I never will let you live that one down!), Guenter holding me tightly against him and we spin around the room as one person, until we are both dizzy. Dianne dances with Anna, and Dianne and I together. Guenter and Anna dance together, they kiss, they hug, they stop to kiss some more, Guenter gets me again, but my hand is cold from the champagne in my glass and he doesn't like the feel of my cold, clammy hand........ Salsa takes over, we step out on to the porch, hear firecrackers, shout "Happy New Year" to the neighbors three houses down, we can see them inside their upstairs apartment, in this old neighborhood, the downtown skyline just around the corner, these old, old houses, this quiet little street. More snacking, on the shrimp cocktail Adam brought, more felafel, and the tzatziki (how DO you spell it???) is filled with garlic and onions, and more champagne, and we drank my good bottle I brought, at midnight. I insisted. I wanted to know good champagne......but it turned out they had a cabinet filled with champagne flutes, just like the ones I bought, a slight difference in the stems, and Anna said, "No, these are nicer!", when I said, "I can return them, get you something else, I didn't know you'd have champagne glasses, really, let me return them." Sitting, talking, about politics, the world, travel, everything, and the raffle to support the Action Center was 11 items amongst 5 people, so I said, "Oooo, I hope I win!", twice, and it was funny both times. I got a book, "Is Our Children Learning?" - The Case Against Prezident George W. Bush, by Paul Begala....and remember when bookstores were flooded with anti-George W. Bush books??? I love it. We melted lead in a spoon over the flame on the gas stove, dropped it, molten, into a bowl of iced water, analyzed the shapes, according to German tradition. A frog would indicate a good chance to win "much money" in the lottery, so I tried to find a frog in every blob of lead, but they all looked like road kill, or so Adam said. As they took turns I played with the poetry magnets on the refrigerator, creating little lines of meaning, not one full poem, champagne in hand. And Adam chided me, over and over, about how much I drank, about the words I put together on the fridge. I think he likes me. Around 2:00 in the morning the doorbell rang, and it was a couple people from the local radical radio station, Radio Free Georgia. Older protesters, radical leftist types. We gave them food and champagne, kept our conversations going, all over the place, jazz playing in the background, after Curtis Mayfield. And we opened chocolate eggs, milk chocolate on the outside, white chocolate on the inside, filled with toys. Eggs from Austria or Germany. And we all played with our toys, some had to be assembled, mine was a forest, with a Wolf and a Red Riding Hood girl cast in metal. The forest was three pieces of plastic, a tree, a series of bushes and the ground. I love it. We played with the inner eggs, the plastic eggs containing the toys, popping them at each other from across the room. And Anna grew tired, the new people left, we helped to clean, or tried. Anna and Guenter sent us all out with bags of food, and Guenter carried my 'puter and a vacuum cleaner they gave me to the car, I loaded down with bags of leftovers, on plates, in containers. Hermione had left me a "Happy New Year!!" message on my answering machine, and I could hear Lilly in the background.......at 12:14 a.m. I called her back, when I got up today, but got her answering machine, left a message. "Guiding Light" was an episode from 1991. They do that on Holidays. I started to watch it, but it was too weird.....way too weird. I've been watching "GL" for some 21 years or more, regularly, like really regularly, and to go back and see old ones, old actors, ones who got written off, characters dead, hairstyles changed, plots so convoluted since, it's too bizarre. I'm exhausted. I went to sleep around 5:30 or so, got up at 10:30 or so. I've stuffed myself with leftovers, now goulash and bread, I'll probably pass out early. But it was a great time last night. I'm sorry more people didn't come, they were prepared for a crowd, but I'm glad it was just an intimate few. And...it was nice when I entered the apartment and Adam and Dianne gave me such warm greetings, a handshake, a warm hug, asked where I'd been, and Jimmy had said the same....people miss seeing me at meetings. Wow. I'm not invisible after all. People actually listened to what I had to say, respected me as a person, except for Adam's innocent chiding. Today, after making sure my 'puter worked, noting that the added memory must've been the same amount, still 16MB, I went through my email and deleted maybe 50 to 100 emails. It felt good to do it, but I had to see all the crap again too, the recent crap I feel I need to save for documentation. I can't wait 'til I no longer feel that need. Now, I'll eat some more, rest on the sofa, watch a movie, with a cat or two. Cost of the War in Iraq
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