I Cannot Ever Blame It On Alcohol

Hi friends! Happy 2007!

Our party last night was fun! I hope you all had a great New Year's Eve!

I've been in bed all day. I'm not hung over - I had 3 beers over 8 hours - but I am really tired and it's grey and rainy and stinky outside. And I have coffee and chocolate and a phone and the Internets right here. Why go anywhere?

Except that I have to bathe and go to a birthday party. In like 20 minutes. Thankfully, I won't have to make scintillating conversation. The guy whose birthday it is was alarmingly inebriated last night. And he's this huge, 6'5" guy. He was totally uncoordinated drunk and I was afraid that he'd fall over and take out 3 normal sized people in the process. I'm kind of curious to see how he's doing, actually.

Last night I saw this very cute guy that I'd met a couple times last summer. A mutual friend, someone I know, but not well, who is a very close friend of his, left me a message last fall while I was away for two weeks, asking if this guy could contact me.

So when I got back from my trip and listened to the message, I called her and said, "Absolutely! He's so cute and so funny!" And then I never heard from him.

I ran into him at a holiday party a couple weeks ago and we made slightly awkward conversation. And then last night I learned from this friend that he's dating someone. She was very apologetic - he'd wanted to contact me, but then it took a while for her to get in touch with me, and then it took me weeks to get back to her, and by then he'd met someone...Which is fine, of course; I barely know him.

So last night I was the temporary tattoo queen. I ordered these very fun sparkly tattoos from eBay. They work just like the ones you got in Cracker Jack boxes as a kid - you put them on your skin and put water on the back. But these, these are fabulous! Tacky blue roses, butterflies, daggers, dragons!

I offered everyone tattoos as an ice breaker. If you were standing alone in a corner, I accosted you. People who initially were like, "no way!" had a couple drinks and then came to find me to ask for one. The women, with few exceptions, wanted them in their cleavage (as consequence, I patted a lot of boobs). The men, who tastefully had very little skin exposed, mostly got them on their necks.

So the cute fellow, who initially was one of the no way! people, came up to me late in the evening for a tattoo. I was in the process of putting a tattoo on this very unappealing, bossy woman. She'd found me and requested one, and so I had just finished applying it when he arrived and said he was ready for one.

She immediately started telling him where it should go. And so I thought, oh, God, his girlfriend is awful! Yikes!

And so they haggled over where he wanted it. She wandered away mid-application, and then he walked away after I turned to tattoo someone else.

And later he came back and said, "Wow, your friend really is bossy!"

"My friend? She's not your girlfriend?"

"My girlfriend???"

"Yes!"

"You were talking to her when I walked up to you! I don't even know her!"

"Oh. But she was telling you where to put it."

"I know. Very bossy."

"Yes. And so I thought, wow - he never called me, and instead he chose to date this dreadful woman! I decided you must just have really bad taste."

Did I really say that out loud? Yes, I did. Ah, well. Happy new year, cute guy.