Party With Celestial People

Last night, Gerick and I went to a party given by a friend of his at work who invited several other people from their workplace. She gives the party the same weekend every year and its quite the shindig with live music and over 50 people showing up, but its usually Faerieworlds weekend so we normally miss it. (Except for the year FWs split up their festival and held it on 2 weekends in June and September.)

I’m always a bit nervous to start, but in this case, the nerves mostly melted away within a scant 10 minutes. I spoke to several people over the course of the evening and was happy to see some people I only see once a year at the annual company picnic or for a rare night out at a pub or something.

It felt strange to be there, in the ‘burbs, rather than at Faerieworlds this year. What a contrast! Even our own home is pretty far out from a normal type of neighborhood kind of place in these last few years and so being around a bunch of ‘norms’ was a total transition. But I just drank some wine, nibbled some snacks, and mellowed out.

We ended up talking to this mixed race couple from Vancouver about marijuana of all things. (Its GOT to be my long hair– everyone assumes I’m a weed-puffing hippie I guess…) They seemed to feel a little out of place themselves, but then when there are a lot of people you don’t know at these sorts of parties, that’s not too unusual.

The other interesting thing was that there were 4 big dogs at the party and I didn’t flinch once. Which for me is a big deal because for a time of my life I was nearly canine phobic! But they were all great big lugs and well trained and I wasn’t even slightly uncomfortable. Gerick spent some time playing with a couple of the dogs in the large front yard.

We came home at midnight, tired but happy. We’re trying to cut down on the over-socializing this last month of summer. We both got too overwhelmed with the long string of people-oriented events. Its just that we’ve been so busy! Things seem to be evening out now I think. The party was nice because we showed up and then left when we were ready to go. No prep. No clean-up. And the lady giving the party is a real sweetie and its been years since we were able to attend her annual gathering, so it was nice.