personal

The tweeting dead

I didn’t do a whole lot today, on my first day off, beyond run a few errands and do a very little bit of writing. I watched most of Carrie Fisher’s Wishful Drinking one-woman show, mostly just because I stumbled across it on HBO. It’s kind of a weird experience, but she’s thoroughly engaging.

Then this evening, I watched 28 Days Later with friends over Twitter. I liked the movie a lot when it first came out, but it was a lot of fun and truly interesting to re-examine it. I remember not being as enamored with the sequel, but I definitely need to revisit it as well now.

Party hearty

Today was our New York office’s annual holiday party, which meant lots of silly games throughout the day — a pair of scavenger hunts and a trivia contest, none of which I had the time or inclination to participate in — and an early close to the work day. The party ran from two o’clock to four at a club a few blocks further uptown, and it was a lot of fun. There was decent hors d’Å“uvre, some music, and an open bar — which some people obviously partook of more liberally than others. A group of us were planning on heading to another bar afterward, since it was still pretty early, but we somehow got split up, and the two of us who hadn’t squeezed into the same cab didn’t know where they were headed. We had neither cell phone numbers nor the address nor even any certainty about the name of the place.

So instead we walked to Penn Station and caught our respective trains home. Which, in hindsight, is maybe just as well, given how much I had to drink myself this evening. I don’t drink much, or often — the last time I even had a drink might have been the last holiday party — so a glass of champagne, a couple of whiskey sours, and a bottle of beer can start to catch up with me, especially over the short span of two hours on a relatively empty stomach. I wasn’t really drunk — I don’t think I’ve ever been really drunk, quite honestly — I was just buzzed enough to recognize that I’d probably start getting annoying, and a little too loud, if I got any more buzzed. Which, in my experience, is usually the right time to stop drinking.

Otherwise the day was pretty uneventful. I managed to get pretty much everything I wanted to get done this week finished and off my desk, and anything else can wait until I go back in 2011. Because between now and then, for the next sixteen days, I am on vacation. Which I plan to enjoy thoroughly by not doing much of anything at all, though I’m sure I’ll think of something to pass the time, what with Christmas and New Years and everything.

Duck season

Today was our group’s holiday lunch at the office — not to be confused with tomorrow’s office-wide holiday party — and so we trekked down a few blocks to Brasserie Les Halles, perhaps best known as the setting for Anthony Bourdain’s cooking memoir Kitchen Confidential. We’ve been going there for a few years now, and the food’s usually pretty good, even if we’ve never seen Bourdain in the flesh. (He’s apparently still “honorary Chef-at-Large,” whatever that means, although he hasn’t manned the kitchen in quite some time, and I’d be surprised if he’s often there.) I had a very tasty plate of duck confit, and there was a bottle of wine for the table. All in all, not a bad way to spend a couple of hours on a work day.

I spent the rest of the day thinking I might just get everything I need done this week finally done, before I’m off on my two-week vacation…and that’s a dangerous feeling, I have no doubt, just inviting something to go wrong at the final hour. Most of it’s just waiting for information to come in, so I can authorize something else, and get this thing finalized before I leave. It won’t be the end of the world if it waits until January — and I could probably even check my e-mail from home next week — but it would be really nice to get it off my plate.

Not an early Christmas miracle or anything, but a nice way to cap 2010 at the job.

And snow it goes

I had a doctor’s appointment first thing this morning, and since it snowed all night — not much, I’ll admit, but enough to leave behind more than a light dusting — I had to get up a little earlier to clean off my car. The appointment went well enough — it was mostly just a follow-up — and I think I spent more time in traffic and the waiting room than in with the doctor.

I came home and then caught a later train into Manhattan, arriving at the office just in time to miss the tail end of a two-and-a-half-hour-long production meeting previously scheduled for that morning. Aw shucks?

The rest of the day was largely uneventful, spent mostly just trying to get caught up on a couple of projects in the very little time I have left before the end of the week — and, for me, the end of the year. I may have to accept that these projects might not get done before early January, but if I can manage to cross them off my list before the holidays, that would be great.