nowhere to go but down

every year i generate a long list of new year's resolutions. most of them are pretty mundane, and as most of them appear on the list year after year, i've realized that regular gym attendance, daily flossing, and abstinence from chocolate covered raisin binges just aren't attainable goals.

as such, i've decided to go minimalist, whittling the list down the list to one, simple concept: low standards.

while my blogmate was, for the most part, supportive of this strategy, she did give me her trademark meaningful eyebrow raise which i correctly took to mean: "i hope you'll make an exception for men, where higher standards might be a better approach."

in truth, i think i've been doing this low standards thing for a while, but it all gelled as my blogmate and i planned our new year's eve festivities.

a few weeks ago, we heard that our boss of all bosses was having a party at his fabulous frank lloyd wright mansion in hyde park. it seemed perfect- high quality food and booze, walking distance from my blogmate's house, absolutely no social pressure. no need to go shopping for sparkly new year's attire (that invariably squeezes in all the wrong places)- no one to impress at this party, no pretense of coolness. and, of course, we'd get to to see the house.

it seems we were the only people with this point of view, and due to a dismal rsvp rate, the party was cancelled. had we rsvp'd on time, someone might have bothered to tell us... but of course nobody told us, and even though the house seemed bizarrely quiet, we rang the doorbell and had our coats off and hung up in the closet before the very important man that we barely know asked us, "did you think there was a party tonight?" did i mention that his fly was open? in spite of our obviously interrupting christmas present-opening with his family and friends, said important guy broke out a very nice bottle of wine and he and his thankfully granola wife proceeded to give us a private, thorough, tour of their fantastic, and thankfully interesting house. i think i made it a little easier by knowing a little moore about frank lloyd wright than the average person, and by opening with the bit about another one of our colleagues (who'd had the sense to stay home) asking about the andrew lloyd weber house.

one traumatic hour later we were back out on the streets of hyde park, desperately searching for someplace to ring in the new year, which turned out to be my blogmate's living room, since the only bar in the neighborhood was closed. it wasn't bad really- my blogmate mixed us captain morgan and diet cherry cokes (more rum than coke, i think, but it was hard to tell), we wolfed down the yummy brownies that mb had made, and watched the univision equivalent of dick clark's new year's rockin' eve- feliz 2006 live from acapulco. these women take boob job to a whole new level.

too stupid to quit while i was ahead, i convinced ck (who originally wasn't going to go out at all) to keep the party going and actually talked mr. andrew lloyd weber off his couch, out the door, onto the el, and into a bar. so then there was alot of drinking and a subsequent lot of headache.

one could argue that spending new year's this way- barging in on my boss' intimate family gathering, getting drunk at a bar with people who didn't want to go out in the first place- is downright pathetic. but in low standards land it was fantastic.