Saturday

At the last minute I asked Ryan the Cop to go to the Simmons' Christmas party with me, and he actually said yes, so he picked me up in a real live car at El Paso, where I was wearing my new dress and having a sort of co-worker holiday party with some of the cool people from work. Dali had just eaten a radish that gave her a strange allergic reaction and her lip was swelling up terribly, but she wouldn't go home until she saw Ryan she said. I guess I talk about him a lot at work and she was curious! Not that we're dating--he just spends a lot of time over at my house with me and my roommates. Either we've adopted him or he's adopted us, I don't know.

The party was fun, with an "Up on the Housetop" theme, only it was too cold to stay up there for very long. We would dance for a few minutes and then rush back downstairs to warm up and eat treats. Afterwards, Ryan came over to my house and we tried to impress each other with our music knowledge. Apparently I'm the only person he's ever met who has heard of an 80s band called The Church, so I earned his respect. Ryan's music taste leans a little too much toward metal for me, but he's got a good ear. He had actually spent the day hanging out with Dan Nelson, who was recently fired as the lead singer of Anthrax.

Anyway, it was ridiculous, but I ended up staying up until 3:30 in the morning with Ryan, who fell asleep on the couch (don't worry mom, nothing happened! In fact, our mistletoe has been pretty useless, truth be told.) It was fine though, because then it was Saturday, and I didn't have anything important to do except laze around the house, and once I had my late breakfast of roast beef sandwich and diet coke, my energy was on its way back. A blizzard was supposedly imminent, but I decided to go do some late afternoon Christmas shopping downtown.

Actually, I meant to go Christmas shopping, but secretly I went to a hair salon, continuing the spending spree I've been on lately, and pampered myself with an eyebrow threading, and a wash-cut-blowdry. The hairdresser clucked in dismay over my bangs, which are evermore being cut by myself in random chunks on mornings when I can't seem to do anything with them. I told her I didn't care what she did, just make me look beautiful, and it worked. By the time she was finished, I looked like a hair model, and it was really snowing outside. I have never been so sad to put on a hat, but I had to protect my gorgeous hair, so I stuffed it all into my hat and went out into the storm.

The snow was quickly accumulating and everywhere storekeepers were throwing salt onto the sidewalks while shoppers and tourists rushed around busily. A brave choir sang on the steps of St. Patrick's cathedral, and 5th Avenue looked so picturesque in the winter weather. The lines were long at Borders but I managed to get one thing checked off my Christmas shopping list, and then I picked up some groceries at Whole Foods and was on the next train home.

The wind coming up from Riverside was something to contend with. It was blowing the snow sideways, piling it up into little drifts around the cars. When I got to my building I had little drifts of snow embedded in the buttons and creases of my coat! And inside our house, even though they were closed, there was a little bit of snow drifting in through the front windows, because the wind was so strong. Luckily I didn't have another reason to go out. In fact, all the neighbors in my building were having a Christmas celebration down in the lobby, with loads of Dominican food and music, and they were begging us to join them. So my roommates and I went down and mingled as best we could and partook of the feast. We live in Dominican Harlem, where plain white English speaking people are the minority, but Jessica speaks Spanish, so everyone in the building loves her, and after we ate Aja busted out a mean Latin dance solo, which earned a huge applause. Me, I just sat there and looked pretty in my new hairdo, and almost fell off a chair. Good times.